By Janis Siegel, JTNews Correspondent
“Love means never having to say you’re sorry,” said Ali MacGraw to Ryan O’Neal in the 1970 film Love Story. The line became one of the most famous clichés of the decade. In reality, however, saying you’re sorry and asking for forgiveness can go a long way toward healing all sorts of broken relationships.
This year, before the start of the High Holidays, on the evenings of Aug. 25 and Sept. 12, two therapists trained at the world-renowned relationship education center in Seattle, the Gottman Institute, and Herzl-Ner Tamid Conservative Congregation’s Rabbi Jay Rosenbaum will not only advocate apologies, but offer help in seeking forgiveness.
The two organizations are teaming up to teach tools for relationship-
mending that also include making behavioral changes that can really lead to emotional healing.
“Jewish people today are looking for things within their tradition to bring meaning to their personal lives,” Rosenbaum told JTNews. “One of the things about Gottman’s approach is that it dovetails nicely with Jewish teaching and focuses on very small, concrete things you can do to improve relationships, especially communication. We will integrate Jewish text into a session on healing relationships.”
Selichot is the 10 days of daily penitential prayers that lead into Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. It is a time when Jews ask God’s forgiveness for those they’ve hurt, as well as the person they’ve offended.
In the seminal Selichot prayer, the “Al-Chet,” Rosenbaum noticed that all of the requests for forgiveness deal with repairing human relationships. That’s when he had an “a-ha” moment to connect the two — Gottman techniques and religious practice.
According to Rosenbaum, it’s an opportunity to get in some good communication practice with experts in a Jewish context. The sessions are co-sponsored by Herzl-Ner Tamid and the Gottman Institute, and are free and open to the public.
Much of the hard work in fixing relationships really takes place in the Jewish concept of making teshuvah, which literally means to return or repent, said Rosenbaum. The idea is to restore or return a broken relationship to health.
“There isn’t as much guidance about this as you would think,” Rosenbaum added. “It’s not just a question of saying you’re sorry to someone, but also if you can do something more specific and change something small about yourself.”
Dr. Dave Penner, a psychologist and certified Gottman therapist who has been practicing for 25 years, will co-teach with Rosenbaum the first workshop titled “Reflection, Renewal and Repair: Improving Our Relationships for the New Year.”
“I think people are interested in working out their relationships from within their world view, and that includes their meaning system, their value system, and their faith system, if they have one, and their spiritual viewpoints,” Penner told JTNews. “Gottman’s research is consistent with the biblical view of relationships.”
The duo will use biblical couples, like Jacob and Rachel, and Torah texts as examples of how to deescalate arguments between couples.
According to the research, said Penner, the first three minutes of any argument between couples determines the outcome of the conflict. Disagreeing partners can approach a conflict with what is called a “softened” startup or a “hardened” or “harsh” startup, Penner said, but only 4 percent of couples achieve successful conflict resolution from a harsh startup.
“If you can get a couple to calm down and suspend trying to persuade each other…and approach each other more as allies than enemies, they can work out a compromise,” Penner added. “The climate has to be one of emotional safety.”
Penner holds a Ph.D. in clinical psychology from Western Seminary.
Co-founded by Dr. John Gottman and his wife, Dr. Julie Schwartz Gottman, the institute’s counseling approach is based on 35 years of research with more than 3,000 couples. Although their work seeks to educate them on how to communicate, the Gottmans also train therapists to use their techniques in their practices with individuals, children, and families.
For the second session, Dr. Trudi Sackey, a licensed marriage and family therapist since 1994 and a certified Gottman therapist since 2001, will co-teach a session with Rosenbaum called “Turning Toward Each Other.” Sackey will talk about “scenario thinking,” a strategy that encourages each person to see the other’s point of view.
“My purpose in working with couples is to help them have the conversations they need to have with one another, thereby, clarifying the meanings of issues that keep couples ‘stuck,’” wrote Sackey, describing her work on her Web site.
Rosenbaum has completed two out of three levels of professional training offered at the Gottman Institute, although he is not a therapist. He realized that much of Jewish wisdom deals with righting a single wrong toward our friends, family, or neighbors. But there isn’t as much written about the established and chronic patterns of fighting.
“You want to get underneath the argument and figure out what’s really bothering the other person, not what’s going to trigger a defensive reaction” said Rosenbaum. “In the case of Jacob and Rachel, she was infertile, and she said to him, ‘Give me kids, and if not I’m going to die.’ His reaction was, ‘What do you want from me? I’m not God.’ I think they could have used a good marriage counselor. Maybe if they had someone who was trained in the Gottman technique it could have helped them.”