Charles Thomas: One Question to Transform Your Relationships

Relationships are hard. 

Those of us who have lived more than a couple of decades have probably learned this lesson the hard way. We’ve had bitter fights with our parents over inconsequential nonsense, we’ve broke up with romantic partners because we thought they were sociopathic narcissists, and we’ve had vicious fights at work because our co-workers didn’t understand the right way to do things.

In my work as a therapist, I frequently see the profound ramifications that relationships — good and bad — have on my clients. People in solid and strong relationships are often able to weather incredible adversity while those who have a poor support system or who have high conflict relationships struggle with their self-esteem and often their physical health as well.

But don’t take my word for it. There’s ample research to support the connection between healthy relationships and better physical health. Take heart disease, for example. Isolation and loneliness are associated with a 30% to 60% increase in coronary heart disease while strong relationships are associated with lower mortality in heart disease patients and better overall health outcomes. Large studies have shown that those in stable, loving relationships tend to live longer than those who are single or who have never married. 

Good relationships seem to be good medicine. 

If only there were a medication that you could take that would improve your relationships like a statin reduces cholesterol. The bad news is that, as far as I know, this pill does not exist. The good news is that there is one question that you can ask yourself to massively improve the quality of your relationships. And even better, it’s a very simple one.

This question was first posed in the book Crucial Conversations: Tools for Talking When the Stakes Are High. The book, while written as a business self-help book, has wide applicability to all relationships. The question is this: “What do I really want?”

Why is this question so powerful? It’s powerful because in our most intimate relationships, we often act in ways that are not congruent with what we really want. Don’t believe me? Let’s look at an example.

When we argue with our spouse, it is very common to fight with a focus solely on winning the argument. But many times, winning the argument is not what we want at the deepest level. Think about it. Would it be worth it to you to win a fight with your spouse about a new dishwasher if it meant that you would have to insult them and denigrate their intelligence to the point that they were in tears? 

Getting the dishwasher that you want is probably not worth that cost, but in the heat of the moment, we often do not consider what we want on this deeper level. What would happen if instead of acting with our reptile brain, we took a moment to engage our frontal lobe by asking ourselves “what do I really want?” before we opened our mouths?

I think that most of us would think about goals that go deeper than besting our partner or getting what we want in the moment. I think that asking this question would lead to thinking more about longer term goals like having a strong relationship rather than focusing only on short-term goals like getting that beautiful stainless streel Bosch.

While it makes sense to not think very much about some of the decisions we make in our lives, our most intimate relationships deserve the attention that this question demands. Importantly, this question is something that we ask about ourselves. It’s directed at working on how we contribute to relationship problems and not focusing on fixing our broken partner who, upon further reflection, may not be the sociopathic narcissistic that we initially thought they were.

While this question isn’t a pill that you can take to solve all your relationship woes, it is a very useful tool that will help you improve your relationships. And if you improve your relationships, the research suggests that you’ll likely live longer and be happier, too. This simple question is damn good medicine if you ask me, and the side effects are close to non-existent. 

Charles D. Thomas is a writer and psychotherapist who made Three Rivers his home for over a decade. Feedback is welcome at Charles@charlesdthomas.com. 

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Any views or opinions expressed in “Big World, Small Town” are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views or opinions of the Watershed Voice staff or its board of directors.