Article from
The AtlanticEvery day in June,
the most popular wedding month of the year, about 13,000 American
couples will say “I do,” committing to a lifelong relationship that will
be full of friendship, joy, and love that will carry them forward to
their final days on this earth.
Except, of course, it doesn’t
work out that way for most people. The majority of marriages fail,
either ending in divorce and separation or devolving into bitterness and
dysfunction. Of all the people who get married, only three in ten
remain in healthy, happy marriages, as psychologist Ty Tashiro points
out in his book The Science of Happily Ever After, which was published
earlier this year.
Social scientists first started studying
marriages by observing them in action in the 1970s in response to a
crisis: Married couples were divorcing at unprecedented rates. Worried
about the impact these divorces would have on the children of the broken
marriages, psychologists decided to cast their scientific net on
couples, bringing them into the lab to observe them and determine what
the ingredients of a healthy, lasting relationship were. Was each
unhappy family unhappy in its own way, as Tolstoy claimed, or did the
miserable marriages all share something toxic in common?
Psychologist
John Gottman was one of those researchers. For the past four decades,
he has studied thousands of couples in a quest to figure out what makes
relationships work. I recently had the chance to interview Gottman and
his wife Julie, also a psychologist, in New York City. Together, the
renowned experts on marital stability run The Gottman Institute, which
is devoted to helping couples build and maintain loving, healthy
relationships based on scientific studies.
John Gottman began
gathering his most critical findings in 1986, when he set up “The Love
Lab” with his colleague Robert Levenson at the University of Washington.
Gottman and Levenson brought newlyweds into the lab and watched them
interact with each other. With a team of researchers, they hooked the
couples up to electrodes and asked the couples to speak about their
relationship, like how they met, a major conflict they were facing
together, and a positive memory they had. As they spoke, the electrodes
measured the subjects' blood flow, heart rates, and how much they sweat
they produced. Then the researchers sent the couples home and followed
up with them six years later to see if they were still together.
From
the data they gathered, Gottman separated the couples into two major
groups: the masters and the disasters. The masters were still happily
together after six years. The disasters had either broken up or were
chronically unhappy in their marriages. When the researchers analyzed
the data they gathered on the couples, they saw clear differences
between the masters and disasters. The disasters looked calm during the
interviews, but their physiology, measured by the electrodes, told a
different story. Their heart rates were quick, their sweat glands were
active, and their blood flow was fast. Following thousands of couples
longitudinally, Gottman found that the more physiologically active the
couples were in the lab, the quicker their relationships deteriorated
over time.
But what does physiology have to do with anything? The
problem was that the disasters showed all the signs of arousal—of being
in fight-or-flight mode—in their relationships. Having a conversation
sitting next to their spouse was, to their bodies, like facing off with a
saber-toothed tiger. Even when they were talking about pleasant or
mundane facets of their relationships, they were prepared to attack and
be attacked. This sent their heart rates soaring and made them more
aggressive toward each other. For example, each member of a couple could
be talking about how their days had gone, and a highly aroused husband
might say to his wife, “Why don’t you start talking about your day. It
won’t take you very long.”
The masters, by contrast, showed low
physiological arousal. They felt calm and connected together, which
translated into warm and affectionate behavior, even when they fought.
It’s not that the masters had, by default, a better physiological
make-up than the disasters; it’s that masters had created a climate of
trust and intimacy that made both of them more emotionally and thus
physically comfortable.
Gottman wanted to know more about how the
masters created that culture of love and intimacy, and how the
disasters squashed it. In a follow-up study in 1990, he designed a lab
on the University of Washington campus to look like a beautiful bed and
breakfast retreat. He invited 130 newlywed couples to spend the day at
this retreat and watched them as they did what couples normally do on
vacation: cook, clean, listen to music, eat, chat, and hang out. And
Gottman made a critical discovery in this study—one that gets at the
heart of why some relationships thrive while others languish.
Throughout
the day, partners would make requests for connection, what Gottman
calls “bids.” For example, say that the husband is a bird enthusiast and
notices a goldfinch fly across the yard. He might say to his wife,
“Look at that beautiful bird outside!” He’s not just commenting on the
bird here: he’s requesting a response from his wife—a sign of interest
or support—hoping they’ll connect, however momentarily, over the bird.
The
wife now has a choice. She can respond by either “turning toward” or
“turning away” from her husband, as Gottman puts it. Though the bird-bid
might seem minor and silly, it can actually reveal a lot about the
health of the relationship. The husband thought the bird was important
enough to bring it up in conversation and the question is whether his
wife recognizes and respects that.
People who turned toward their
partners in the study responded by engaging the bidder, showing
interest and support in the bid. Those who didn’t—those who turned
away—would not respond or respond minimally and continue doing whatever
they were doing, like watching TV or reading the paper. Sometimes they
would respond with overt hostility, saying something like, “Stop
interrupting me, I’m reading.”
These bidding interactions had
profound effects on marital well-being. Couples who had divorced after a
six-year follow up had “turn-toward bids” 33 percent of the time. Only
three in ten of their bids for emotional connection were met with
intimacy. The couples who were still together after six years had
“turn-toward bids” 87 percent of the time. Nine times out of ten, they
were meeting their partner’s emotional needs.
* * *
By
observing these types of interactions, Gottman can predict with up to 94
percent certainty whether couples—straight or gay, rich or poor,
childless or not—will be broken up, together and unhappy, or together
and happy several years later. Much of it comes down to the spirit
couples bring to the relationship. Do they bring kindness and
generosity; or contempt, criticism, and hostility?
“There’s a
habit of mind that the masters have,” Gottman explained in an interview,
“which is this: they are scanning social environment for things they
can appreciate and say thank you for. They are building this culture of
respect and appreciation very purposefully. Disasters are scanning the
social environment for partners’ mistakes.”
“It’s not just
scanning environment,” chimed in Julie Gottman. “It’s scanning the
partner for what the partner is doing right or scanning him for what
he’s doing wrong and criticizing versus respecting him and expressing
appreciation.”
Contempt, they have found, is the number one
factor that tears couples apart. People who are focused on criticizing
their partners miss a whopping 50 percent of positive things their
partners are doing and they see negativity when it’s not there. People
who give their partner the cold shoulder—deliberately ignoring the
partner or responding minimally—damage the relationship by making their
partner feel worthless and invisible, as if they’re not there, not
valued. And people who treat their partners with contempt and criticize
them not only kill the love in the relationship, but they also kill
their partner's ability to fight off viruses and cancers. Being mean is
the death knell of relationships.
Kindness, on the other hand,
glues couples together. Research independent from theirs has shown that
kindness (along with emotional stability) is the most important
predictor of satisfaction and stability in a marriage. Kindness makes
each partner feel cared for, understood, and validated—feel loved. “My
bounty is as boundless as the sea,” says Shakespeare’s Juliet. “My love
as deep; the more I give to thee, / The more I have, for both are
infinite.” That’s how kindness works too: there’s a great deal of
evidence showing the more someone receives or witnesses kindness, the
more they will be kind themselves, which leads to upward spirals of love
and generosity in a relationship.
There are two ways to think
about kindness. You can think about it as a fixed trait: either you have
it or you don’t. Or you could think of kindness as a muscle. In some
people, that muscle is naturally stronger than in others, but it can
grow stronger in everyone with exercise. Masters tend to think about
kindness as a muscle. They know that they have to exercise it to keep it
in shape. They know, in other words, that a good relationship requires
sustained hard work.
“If your partner expresses a need,”
explained Julie Gottman, “and you are tired, stressed, or distracted,
then the generous spirit comes in when a partner makes a bid, and you
still turn toward your partner.”
In that moment, the easy
response may be to turn away from your partner and focus on your iPad or
your book or the television, to mumble “Uh huh” and move on with your
life, but neglecting small moments of emotional connection will slowly
wear away at your relationship. Neglect creates distance between
partners and breeds resentment in the one who is being ignored.
The
hardest time to practice kindness is, of course, during a fight—but
this is also the most important time to be kind. Letting contempt and
aggression spiral out of control during a conflict can inflict
irrevocable damage on a relationship.
“Kindness doesn’t mean that
we don’t express our anger,” Julie Gottman explained, “but the kindness
informs how we choose to express the anger. You can throw spears at
your partner. Or you can explain why you’re hurt and angry, and that’s
the kinder path.”
John Gottman elaborated on those spears:
“Disasters will say things differently in a fight. Disasters will say
‘You’re late. What’s wrong with you? You’re just like your mom.’ Masters
will say ‘I feel bad for picking on you about your lateness, and I know
it’s not your fault, but it’s really annoying that you’re late again.’"
For
the hundreds of thousands of couples getting married this month—and for
the millions of couples currently together, married or not—the lesson
from the research is clear: If you want to have a stable, healthy
relationship, exercise kindness early and often.
When people
think about practicing kindness, they often think about small acts of
generosity, like buying each other little gifts or giving one another
back rubs every now and then. While those are great examples of
generosity, kindness can also be built into the very backbone of a
relationship through the way partners interact with each other on a
day-to-day basis, whether or not there are back rubs and chocolates
involved.
One way to practice kindness is by being generous about
your partner’s intentions. From the research of the Gottmans, we know
that disasters see negativity in their relationship even when it is not
there. An angry wife may assume, for example, that when her husband left
the toilet seat up, he was deliberately trying to annoy her. But he may
have just absent-mindedly forgotten to put the seat down.
Or say
a wife is running late to dinner (again), and the husband assumes that
she doesn’t value him enough to show up to their date on time after he
took the trouble to make a reservation and leave work early so that they
could spend a romantic evening together. But it turns out that the wife
was running late because she stopped by a store to pick him up a gift
for their special night out. Imagine her joining him for dinner, excited
to deliver her gift, only to realize that he’s in a sour mood because
he misinterpreted what was motivating her behavior. The ability to
interpret your partner’s actions and intentions charitably can soften
the sharp edge of conflict.
“Even in relationships where people
are frustrated, it’s almost always the case that there are positive
things going on and people trying to do the right thing,” psychologist
Ty Tashiro told me. “A lot of times, a partner is trying to do the right
thing even if it’s executed poorly. So appreciate the intent.”
Another
powerful kindness strategy revolves around shared joy. One of the
telltale signs of the disaster couples Gottman studied was their
inability to connect over each other’s good news. When one person in the
relationship shared the good news of, say, a promotion at work with
excitement, the other would respond with wooden disinterest by checking
his watch or shutting the conversation down with a comment like, “That’s
nice.”
We’ve all heard that partners should be there for each
other when the going gets rough. But research shows that being there for
each other when things go right is actually more important for
relationship quality. How someone responds to a partner’s good news can
have dramatic consequences for the relationship.
In one study
from 2006, psychological researcher Shelly Gable and her colleagues
brought young adult couples into the lab to discuss recent positive
events from their lives. They psychologists wanted to know how partners
would respond to each other’s good news. They found that, in general,
couples responded to each other’s good news in four different ways that
they called: passive destructive, active destructive, passive
constructive, and active constructive.
Let’s say that one partner
had recently received the excellent news that she got into medical
school. She would say something like “I got into my top choice med
school!”
If her partner responded in a passive destructive
manner, he would ignore the event. For example, he might say something
like: “You wouldn’t believe the great news I got yesterday! I won a free
t-shirt!”
If her partner responded in a passive constructive
way, he would acknowledge the good news, but in a half-hearted,
understated way. A typical passive constructive response is saying
“That’s great, babe” as he texts his buddy on his phone.
In the
third kind of response, active destructive, the partner would diminish
the good news his partner just got: “Are you sure you can handle all the
studying? And what about the cost? Med school is so expensive!”
Finally,
there’s active constructive responding. If her partner responded in
this way, he stopped what he was doing and engaged wholeheartedly with
her: “That’s great! Congratulations! When did you find out? Did they
call you? What classes will you take first semester?”
Among the
four response styles, active constructive responding is the kindest.
While the other response styles are joy-killers, active constructive
responding allows the partner to savor her joy and gives the couple an
opportunity to bond over the good news. In the parlance of the Gottmans,
active constructive responding is a way of “turning toward” your
partners bid (sharing the good news) rather than “turning away” from it.
Active
constructive responding is critical for healthy relationships. In the
2006 study, Gable and her colleagues followed up with the couples two
months later to see if they were still together. The psychologists found
that the only difference between the couples who were together and
those who broke up was active constructive responding. Those who showed
genuine interest in their partner’s joys were more likely to be
together. In an earlier study, Gable found that active constructive
responding was also associated with higher relationship quality and more
intimacy between partners.
There are many reasons why
relationships fail, but if you look at what drives the deterioration of
many relationships, it’s often a breakdown of kindness. As the normal
stresses of a life together pile up—with children, career, friend,
in-laws, and other distractions crowding out the time for romance and
intimacy—couples may put less effort into their relationship and let the
petty grievances they hold against one another tear them apart. In most
marriages, levels of satisfaction drop dramatically within the first
few years together. But among couples who not only endure, but live
happily together for years and years, the spirit of kindness and
generosity guides them forward.
Thoughts?
Re: Article: Masters of Love (the science behind lasting relationships)