Tell Me How You Met Your Partner, and I’ll Tell You How Your Relationship Is Going

For Boomers, The Story of Us is a bad (oops) Bruce Willis and Michelle Pfeiffer movie, and for Millennials, it’s a whiny (double oops) Taylor Swift song. But for couples therapists, the “Story of Us” is a bed of relationship tea leaves.Simply put, the Story of Us refers to the narrative that couples tell about their relationship, from how they got together and fell in love to all the plot twists between then and now, certified Gottman couples therapist Alysha Roll, MSW, LCSW, tells Cosmopolitan. Amongst other things, “it’s where and how you met, what stood out about each other and drew you together, and how you decided to make a commitment and become a family,” she says. Developed by relationship researcher and psychologist John Gottman, the gist is that how you tell a story reveals how a couple feels about each other these days, she says.“Sometimes that story is very shared and similar, with partners finishing each other's sentences and prompting each other to fill details into a memory like their first date or what it was like to move in together,” licensed marriage and family therapist and certified Gottman therapist Sheila Addison, LMFT, tells Cosmopolitan. No doubt, we’ve all been the audience to the Dynamic Duo who has turned their meet-cute into comedy fodder.Other times, each partner’s twist on the story is different, leading to some mid-telling teasing about the other’s terrible memory. Or—and far more awkwardly for the audience—“an argument can break out over who remembers things correctly,” Addison says.But whether you’re finishing one another’s sentences or squabbling over the nitty-gritty, these accounts aren’t just entertaining for the person who asked how you met. Instead, your “Story of Us” is a peek into how the relationship is actually faring.Romance, Comedy, or Tragedy The genre of your Story of Us has surprisingly little to do with the plot. “It’s all in the tone,” says Addison. Indeed, she says, “how a couple talks together about their shared past offers helpful clues about how the relationship is going now”—even more so than the actual details (i.e., children, health, jobs, homes) of what they’ve been through.Meaning, a couple can shoulder layoffs and unemployment, health hurdles, deaths in the family, money problems, and other decidedly un-rom-com-y plot points and can still co-create a Story of Us marked by togetherness.“Couples don't have to have a story filled with happy times,” says Addison. Rather, they describe the times marked by gobbley-gook through a lens of getting through it together and coming out even stronger, she says. Even while recounting the muck, they joke in a friendly way, correct each other gently and accept those corrections, and make positive remarks about each other, she says.On the flip, two people with an objectively cutesy love story can tell a Story of Us that has you Googling “divorce attorney” by the end. “Folks who are unhappy now often get into squabbles even when talking about good things, arguing over details, making negative snide comments, or scoffing at the other person's positive memories,” says Addison. Hello contempt, my dark friend. Roll suggests considering a first-date example involving a tiny beat-up car, a lost dinner reservation, and an impromptu wine-and-cheese picnic in the park. Told with fondness, the busted window, restaurant snafu, and last-minute picnic show how much fun the couple could have together when absolutely nada, zil, zilch went according to plan.But years later, when the relationship is really struggling, the car becomes a “piece of junk,” and the reservation mishap becomes yet another (😤) example of their partner’s incompetence, she says. Suddenly, what was once a story of joy amidst chaos becomes a miserable tale of cheap wine, killer mosquitoes, and ruined shoes. “Same first date. Very different Story of Us,” she says.Main Character(s) Energy Another clue of happiness (or lack thereof) hiding in plain sight is who gets cast as the main character of your Story of Us: you or you two—a concept the Gottman Institute calls “we-ness.”“‘We-ness’ is the sense that a couple experiences themselves as a team, and you can often hear it in the language they use,” Roll tells Cosmopolitan. For example, “When we had our son” versus “When I had my son,” or “When we moved from California” versus “When I moved from California,” when the couple relocated together, she explains.Having we-ness (or not) isn’t just about swapping pronouns. It’s about whether the relationship story casts the couple as teammates plotting together—or as enemies constantly foiling each other. Very little we-ness can suggest that a “couple has gotten stuck in a place of disconnection and is having difficulty finding their way back to each other,” she says.Losing the Plot The Story of Us and how you currently feel about your relationship can get caught in a feedback loop.“How we each think and talk about our relationship really affects how we experience it,” says Addison. If you find yourself mentally—and verbally, while telling your Story of Us—trashing your partner and tallying their faults, it’s going to be pretty darn tough to feel warm fuzzies for them, she says. Meanwhile, when your partner's good qualities and positive memories of your time together readily come to mind and mouth, you’re viewing the relationship through a very different lens, she says.Addison explains: Memory isn’t a movie stored in your brain that you can simply press play on whenever someone asks about your first date. “A memory changes every time we review it, sometimes in little ways and sometimes in dramatic ones,” she says. And the emotions we associate with a memory can help shape what we notice and remember about it, she says.“If you’ve recently been feeling resentful at your partner over what you see as an unfair division of labor at home, when you think back to your first date, you’re likely to zoom in on aspects of that memory that confirm that same sentiment,” says Addison. “Maybe they said, ‘I don't care where we go. I just want to take you out to dinner so you choose,’ which at the time seemed charming,” she says. Now, though, that same memory can become “proof” that you’ve carried the mental load since your first freaking date.You may even exaggerate or misremember details without realizing it. “Instead of remembering that your partner was a couple of minutes late, for instance, you might remember you waited downstairs for 10 whole minutes before your now-partner showed up,” says Addison. With this telling, “your partner really looks like a jerk in retrospect, which is convenient because that's exactly how you’re thinking about them now,” she says.That tendency to Negative Nelly-ify your story can become even more obvious if you’re retelling it together. “If your partner doesn't adequately (in your opinion) acknowledge their faults in the re-telling, you might jump in and add some negative details to make sure the audience knows your partner is a selfish jerk, ” explains Addison.Happily Never After? Hear yourself telling the Story of Us and think, Goodness Gracious, do I even like this person?! The good news is that hearing yourself tell a bleak and bleary Story of Us can be the cue you need to break that cycle.No, that doesn’t mean you need to take an improv class or nail the audition for your local Romeo and Juliet. It also doesn’t mean slapping a Happy Filter on your story counts as Real Relationship Work. But “if you notice that your Story of Us has gotten overwhelmingly negative, I think it's time to get curious about how you got there,” says Roll.“There may be injuries that need repair, a friendship that needs a jump start, or some gridlocked conflict that needs better understanding,” says Roll. Whatever the culprit, identifying the roots of negativity—likely with the help of a couples therapist, workshop, or self-help book—will help you determine what the relationship actually needs repaired, she says. From there, you can start putting energy into the relationship you’re living now—not just the story you tell about the one you’ve lived so far.One way to do that is by increasing your number of positive interactions. “If, for instance, you catch your partner doing something good, let them know,” says Addison. And that includes the little things! “It literally means thanking them for replacing the toilet paper roll, complimenting their hair, or telling them you like the salad dressing,” she says.Similarly, you can make a point of turning toward one another’s bids for connection, or those tiny moments when one person tries to get the other's attention, says Addison. If your partner mentions they have a headache, for instance, maybe you offer to bring them water or their migraine relief cap, she says. Or, if they mention a new episode of Ted Lasso is on, offer to make popcorn for you both to enjoy as it plays.Importantly, this isn’t an exercise in relationship revisionist history where you play Movie Editor, clipping and trashing all conflict, disappointment, or rough patches out of your relationship lore. “I wouldn't tell someone to simply “think positively” or force themselves to remember the good times, because if there has been real hurt, it needs to be addressed,” says Roll.Ultimately, the goal isn’t necessarily for your Story of Us to double as a fairytale, says Roll. But rather, it’s one tool for tuning into how you feel about your relationship (and co-star) right now. “Once you understand what happened to your sense of ‘us’ and ‘we’, you can begin to find your way back to each other,” she says. Assuming you’re not ready to roll credits, that is.