Marriage: The Revealing Question You Need to Answer

Excerpted from
How We Love: A Revolutionary Approach to Deeper Connections in Marriage
By Milan Yerkovich, Kay Yerkovich

For years, Milan and I danced through marriage, each with two left feet, tripping each other and stepping on each other's toes. Little did we know we were each moving to songs we knew by heart-and the melodies didn't match.

Had we known the significant impact one little question about our early lives would have on our marriage, we might have avoided a lot of problems and made some important changes a lot sooner. We call it the comfort question. It is not a question about your marriage, but its answer can accurately pinpoint the relative difficulties you're currently experiencing. We have asked this question to thousands of people when we speak together at seminars. People often tell us the question haunted them for weeks. We've asked it of couples and their family members when we do counseling. We've asked it of friends in everyday conversation. But we started by asking it of ourselves. The question is simple: can you recall being comforted as a child after a time of emotional distress?

Your answer to that question could potentially reveal more about your relationships than any other insight you might uncover. Realize here we aren't talking about when you fell down and scraped your knee or got sick with the flu. We are looking for a time when you were significantly upset and a parent offered consolation and relief. You might think, I had a happy childhood. I can't remember needing comfort. But the fact is, we all experienced something emotionally upsetting during the first eighteen years of life. It didn't have to be a major trauma. Maybe your best friend moved away or you were disappointed because you didn't make the baseball team. Perhaps a good friend hurt or betrayed you. You may have faced something serious like a learning disability, a divorce, a death, or verbal or physical abuse that left you confused, upset, and in need of comfort. Whatever happened to you, at a specific time during your childhood, you experienced either comfort for your pain or the stark absence of it, and that representative memory influences your current relationships in untold ways.

Sometimes people who haven't experienced real, soul-level comfort have trouble understanding what exactly it is. Awhile back, I spoke with a group of people who have chronic or terminal illnesses. When I asked them the comfort question, only one person in the entire group had a memory to share. "I remember my grandma bringing me soup when I was sick in bed," she said. "I was sick a lot. My grandma was very sweet and kind."

"That's nice. Did your grandma hug you or sit and talk?" I asked.

She thought about that for a moment. "No," she finally said. "She just brought soup and left."

Bringing food to a sick child is certainly a nurturing act, but it alone lacks the ingredients of comfort that would have really connected to the heart of a child. Perhaps Grandma could have stroked the little girl's hair. She might have asked about any special events she was missing by being sick, consoled her, or soothed her concern about other family members becoming ill. Maybe her parents should have been looking at their family situation to see if stress was undermining her health

Related to the comfort question is this: How was conflict handled in your family? For example, was there a time when you were not getting along with one of your parents or when stress or a specific problem caused a lot of tension in the family? Did disagreement leave you feeling alone and disconnected to your parent or family? If you were fortunate enough to be a part of a family that acknowledged problems and successfully resolved them, you learned an important lesson: when conflict raptures a relationship, repairing it brings relief. If, when you were young, you experienced the relief that comes with resolving disagreements, you will seek that same experience in your marriage as an adult. If not, when things go wrong in your relationships, you may have difficulty expressing yourself, finding solutions, and feeling relief.

If distressful feelings were soothed or problems were resolved when you were a child, you experienced comfort and relief. You therefore know what comfort feels like; you understand its depth on an intuitive level. If you have a memory of comfort, you may not struggle in your relationship the way others do who cannot understand the importance of the three components that make up this unique emotional state.

See if you recall receiving any of these three critical ingredients of comfort

Touch

Significant studies have shown the incredible importance of touch on a baby's development.2 If you have a memory of comfort, was your parent hugging you or holding you? Was there tenderness, and were you soothed? Some parents touch and hold babies and toddlers but then stop offering nurturing physical contact as their children get older. Yet touch is and remains a vital component of the comfort. When I asked one of my friends the comfort question, she said, "I don't like to be touched. I wouldn't want anyone touching me when I was upset." She went on to explain how her mom was often cold and critical, and her dad left the family when she was only five. She undoubtedly received physical comfort as a baby and toddler, but as an adult she didn't have conscious memories of soothing touch to help her know her need for this kind of comfort.

The fact is, we all need touch-it's a necessary part of comfort.

Listening

Second, was at least one of your parents able to listen and help you talk about what was upsetting to you? Parents who are good listeners ask questions so they can understand what is going on in their child's heart and mind. Some parents only ask questions when their kids are in trouble. "Did you clean your room?" "Who ate the ice cream?" "What did you do to your brother?" Hopefully there were also inquiries about what was happening in your heart. "You look sad. What's bothering you?" "I know you don't want to go, but help me understand why not." These kinds of requests tell us someone is interested in our hearts. It's even better when the feelings we then share are confirmed as appropriate, reasonable, or understandable. If your parent said something like "Now I can see why you are so sad" or "I would be mad too if that happened to me," they validated your feelings. In your memory of comfort, did your parent ask questions, listen, and accept your feelings?

We often offer reassurance and miss the opportunity to really listen. A man in my office was trying to comfort his wife who was crying about their rebellious teen. He told her several times, "It will be okay. He'll grow out of it." He was trying to help, but it never occurred to him to ask questions to find out more about how she felt or to validate her tears. I asked him to hold her and tell her it was okay to cry, because this was a tough time for her as a parent. With arms of comfort and permission to feel, she cried harder. After she quieted down, I helped him ask some questions that clarified what was most upsetting to her. They both left feeling better.

Relief

Finally, did you feel relief? When we were children, if someone noticed we were having a hard time and offered us a safe place to share our troubles, we felt seen and valuable. Being touched and being listened to brings relief if we felt sad and our parents listened to what was troubling us and held us as we cried, we were soothed. If we were able to express our frustration and someone listened and responded, we felt relief. If a parent assured us that someone bigger and stronger would keep us safe, we were undoubtedly comforted

Comfort is not possible unless an emotional connection was made. If you have memories of being consoled, it is safe to assume that your family both encouraged you to express your feelings and then responded when you were hurting. Talking about your inner emotions and experiences helped your parents know you, but there is another benefit. It also helped you know yourself. When a parent listens to us and asks questions, we have an opportunity to reflect and put words to what's going on inside us. The self-awareness that comes from learning to reflect gives us the ability to understand our reactions, behaviors, needs, and inner conflicts when we're adults. And, as we will see, this ability is one of the most important skills to bring to a marriage.