TINY SHIFTS
INTRODUCTION
“Let me just start by saying: I don’t have time for more generic advice that glosses over the real issues—as if we don’t already know we need to communicate better or have date nights!” 
 
Those were the first words out of Sandy’s mouth after she and Ted had settled into the two plush stuffed chairs in my therapy office to begin our initial session.  The two of them spent the next 30 minutes describing their desperation as they watched their 20-year marriage circling the drain. Their intent was clear. They wanted solid, applicable guidance that worked. 
I sat back in my chair, allowing what Sandy and Ted were saying to soak in. They were looking for a way to navigate the relentless complexity accompanying the love they still felt for each other. They had tried everything they could find in books, podcasts, and workshops. Coming to couple therapy was their last resort.
In my forty-plus years as a couple therapist I’ve seen this scenario often—couples arriving in my office as a last hope.
Intimate relationships are complex. Each partner comes to the relationship with his or her own complicated mixture of learned behaviors, genetic inclinations, and responses to immediate stimuli. They have the task of regulating themselves emotionally and behaviorally. This is difficult enough.
The relationship amplifies the challenge. As two unique individuals join, intending to create a coherent unit that brings stability and satisfaction to each of them, they also need to co-regulate, complicating matters further.
Emily Butler and Ashley Randall define co-regulation as a "continuous unfolding of individual action that is susceptible to being continuously modified by the continuously changing actions of the partner” (emphasis added).[1] As the repetition of “continuous” makes clear, an intimate relationship is not a once-and-done situation. It’s an ongoing, creative process that when stuck can be agonizing and when flowing can be one of the most beautiful, rewarding experiences life offers.
When a couple encounters a relationship challenge, conventional wisdom says they need to improve their communication and problem-solving skills. Many good books have been written on these skills for couples, and this book offers a few as well. Additional and improved skills are great. But if they are not accompanied by a substantially different perspective on the interconnectedness of their relating, they may simply amplify old, habitual ways of being together. In other words, what they need is a better understanding of the often-subtle effect each partner has on the other and how even a single such effect can alter the direction of an interaction.
They would do well to think of their interactions as a dance where the step one partner takes influences the next step the other chooses. Each partner’s steps affect the steps available to the other. The better the partners understand the dance and the more dance moves they know, the more likely their reciprocal movements will lead to connection.
So also in coregulation, the bigger your repertoire of moves, the more fluidly your relationship can progress.
Changing a relationship dance often requires little more than a small shift in awareness and behavior, a tiny yet effective shift that nevertheless may take some practice and courage to apply. Why so? Because changing an ingrained way of relating is not easy. A tiny step taken consistently and with attention to the subtlety of its effect is more likely to produce long-term change than the occasional dramatic step, which is often followed by disappointment.
What Sandy and Ted were really looking for was a manageable, meaningful, immediately applicable intervention—an initial tiny shift--that would begin their journey back to the secure love they once experienced. That tiny shift would then lead to the next tiny shift…and the next …and the next until they built reliable momentum up and out of that downward spiral and forward again.
If you are looking for that one thing that will solve all your relationship problems, you won’t find it in this book.  What you will find are suggestions for small steps meant to jog your thinking out of worn, perhaps outgrown patterns and into fresh perspectives and behaviors. The book’s approach is existential and experiential, grounded in the idea that new experience is the best route to meaningful change. In other words, less theory, more action.
This book contains nearly 80 short essays grouped into 11 sections by topic. Each essay presents a relationship truth that readers can immediately apply and is followed by “Consider this..,” a brief statment designed to focus the reader's attention on the essay’s content. Drawings by award-winning artist Robinson C. Smith accompany the essays.
​
Each essay considers an important facet of relating intimately. Each facet, taken alone, is simple. All facets put together acknowledge the complexity that naturally characterizes intimate relationships.
​
Most groups of essays end with an essay on a relational paradox, these paradoxes being a little-discussed aspect of relating that can decisively yet unconsciously influence the dynamics of a couple’s interactions. Recognizing a relational paradox provides a small yet profound shift that broadens the couple’s perspective on their relationship, offering them new options for interacting.
The essays can be read in any sequence. It’s not necessary to apply all of them to find a way forward with your partner. Choose the one, or several, that speak to you most directly, apply them, and pay careful attention to the sometimes subtle change that will likely ensue. In much the same way that a one-degree shift in the trajectory of a rocket can dramatically alter where it lands, thoughtfully applying a small step at a pivotal time has the potential for creating radical change in your relationship in the long term.
The book is designed to be read and reread. When you realize your relationship repertoire could use a new move or two, return to the book to find suggestions for change. Even if only one partner in a couple learns and applies the tiny shifts presented here, relationship change can happen. If both partners read the book together, the possibility of change is magnified.
[1] Butler, E. A., and Randall, A. K. (2013). Emotional Coregulation in Close Relationships. Emotional Review, 5(2), 202-210). http://doi.org/10.1177/1754073912451630