Member-only story
Emotional Granularity Saved My Marriage
Learning to articulate a wider range of emotions can lead to better control and relationships
When our 16-month-old stopped sleeping through the night, my marriage became a battleground. It started shortly after the holidays. After all the houseguests had gone home, instead of an anticipated return to normalcy, our formerly independent sleeper began insisting we rock him to sleep. Night after night, it took an increasingly long time for Oscar to nod off, only for him to spring back up screaming the second we laid him in the crib.
My husband and I were repeating the routine three, four, five times a night. At four in the morning, the feelings of frustration, worry, and inadequacy would melt together into a blind rage, which we’d often direct at one another. My husband would interpret the tension in my voice as a criticism of him. He’d respond defensively, which would make me critical of him (if I wasn’t already) and more frustrated. In no time, we’d be relitigating earlier disagreements, attacking one another’s communication styles, and generally arguing over who was to blame. Our marriage was in crisis.
To say that my husband and I were pretty miserable as new parents is no exaggeration, nor does it make us very unique: Research finds that most couples experience an alarming drop in well-being after the birth of their first child. One study compared new parents’ unhappiness to other life situations such as divorce or the loss of a job.
Recognizing that our sanity and the survival of our marriage depended on it, my husband and I decided to find healthier ways to articulate how we are feeling. I recently learned about “emotional granularity,” a term coined by Lisa Feldman Barrett, a former clinical therapist and neuroscientist who’s been studying the nature of emotion for more than 25 years. In her book How Emotions Are Made: The Secret Life of the Brain, Barrett argues that emotions are not built into our brains at birth. Instead, she says, our brains construct emotions in the moment by linking physical sensations to past experiences. By learning to construct our experiences differently, Barrett contends, we have the capacity to dial down emotional suffering and its consequences.
