Following are seven signs of happy, stable relationships.
1. Matches in conflict style. In 1974, an important book by Harold Raush was published.18 It
described the first observational longitudinal study of the transition to parenthood; the study was also the first to analyze sequences of interaction. Raush divided his couples into three groups:
“harmonious,” “conflict-avoiding,” and “bickering.” He suggested that the two extreme styles of conflict (conflict-avoiding and bickering) were dysfunctional. However, in our own research we found that all three styles (which we called “validators,” “avoiders,” and “volatiles”) were actually functional (stable and happy) if the ratio of positive to negative interaction during conflict was greater than or equal to 5:1. It was mismatches between conflict styles that predicted divorce. These mismatches were rooted in one person’s wanting change and the other person trying to avoid it, which psychologist Virginia Satir had previously called the “pursuer-distancer” pattern19 and psychologist Andy Christensen later studied as the “demand-withdraw”
pattern.20 An avoider paired with a validator was the most common mismatch we found.
Because we didn’t see any avoiders paired with volatiles we speculated that those couples would never get beyond the courtship phase to the phase of commitment. Susan Johnson also identified this mismatch as a basic contributor to attachment injuries.21 More specifically, we think that mismatches in how people feel about emotion (which we call “meta-emotion mismatches”) are at the heart of these conflict-style mismatches. I will say more about those mismatches later in this book.
2. Dialogue with perpetual issues. By studying couples repeatedly over many years and asking them what their unresolved problems were at each time, we learned that only 31% of couples’
major area of continuing disagreement was about a resolvable issue. Much more frequently—
69% of the time—it was about an unresolvable perpetual problem. These perpetual problems arose because of lasting personality differences between partners. All couples have those differences. There was also enormous stability in couples’ interaction over time in our data.
Some couples can talk about these perpetual problems with positive affect (which I call
“dialogue”) while others have only negative affect (which I perhaps call “gridlock”).22
On the other hand, functional problem solving about resolvable issues had the following characteristics:
a. The much-touted active listening model of functional relationship received no support in our research in discriminating happy from unhappy couples. We also found that people rarely naturally engaged in active listening during conflict, even in stable, happy relationships, and even when they did, it wasn’t predictive of positive outcomes for the relationship.23 Furthermore, in Kurt Hahlweg and Dirk Revenstorf’s Munich marital study, extensive training in active listening (using Bernard Guerney’s intensive method) was essentially ineffective, with a low effect size and high relapse.24 We now believe that the problem with active listening is that in order for it to be effective, the speaker needs to be
“down-regulated” (so that he or she is not in attack mode) which rarely happens in conflict.
More often, the speaker begin the instruction with hostility and anger, and studies show that very few people can be constructive as listeners in these situations. We found this to be true even in stable, happy relationships: When conflict begins with hostility, defensive sequences result (although happy, stable couples go through these negative sequences but less often). In other words, although active listening seems like a good idea in theory, in actual practice it seldom works, except on the rare occasions when the speaker employs neutral affect in beginning the interaction. That said, our initial reaction against active listening has been
tempered over time by the success of Markman and Stanley’s PREP psychoeducational program for couples, in which they consider active listening effective.25 Clearly active listening may have some positive effects. We suspect that when it works at all, the speaker has been down-regulated to be much gentler. Later in this book I discuss modifying the active listening model by substituting what I call “the Gottman-Rapoport blueprint” for constructive conflict discussions (Chapter 6).
b . Softened startup rather than harsh startup. The woman’s role here is usually critical, as in heterosexual relationships (in most Western culture) it is the woman who brings up the issues 80% of the time, according to research by Philip and Carolyn Cowan at Berkeley.26 Again, the findings suggest that starting with attack is less likely to result in nondefensive or empathic listening. In one study in which couples talked about the events of their day before the conflict discussion, Bob Levenson and I discovered that harsh startup by the wife during the conflict discussion was predictable by a lack of interest or irritability by the husband during the events-of-the-day conversation.27. I recall one husband who was totally disinterested in his wife’s excited report about their one-year-old’s 30-minute concentration on a flower. He looked at his watch and acted bored and she lost all her enthusiasm and eventually just stopped talking. Then he talked excitedly about a pump for his truck coming in that week, mentioning that he was looking forward to finally fixing the truck this coming weekend. She reciprocated being bored and he eventually lost all his enthusiasm for his topic. Their conflict discussion began very harshly. In another case, a husband said to his wife, in a hostile manner, “Why don’t you talk about your day? It won’t take you very long.” That was our first inkling that friendship and conflict are strongly correlated. Later, Janice Driver and I went on to discover that positive responses to a partner’s requests for interest and attention during dinner time in our apartment lab (which we called “turning toward bids”) were related to gentler startup, as well as to affection and a shared sense of humor during conflict.28
c . Accepting influence rather than “batting in back.” The pattern of saying “no” to every request by a wife was characteristic of characterologically violent men in my research with Neil Jacobson.29 Jim Coan and I then discovered that in newlywed nonviolent heterosexual relationships, the man’s role was critical in not rejecting influence from his wife. An important negative finding was that negative reciprocity in kind (anger being met with anger, for example) was generally unrelated to anything bad in couple outcomes. It was the escalation of negativity—that is, when a partner responds to sadness or anger with criticism or contempt—that was predictive. That was a very new finding, and it has been controversial in the literature, with authors differing on how to define anger.30 In this book we will reexamine negative-affect sequences and explore why some negative-negative exchanges in unhappily married couples become what I call an “absorbing state,” meaning that it is easier to enter than it is to exit.
d . Effective repair attempts. In one study we looked at repair attempts by newlywed couples a few months after their wedding. Those who were still married 6 years after the wedding repaired at a less negative threshold than those who wound up being divorced (this was discovered with the Gottman-Murray math model).31
e. Deescalation of negativity. This was usually done by the male partner, but only with low-conflict situations. In general, men seem to be socialized to try to calm things down
when they start becoming a little negative. However, once the negativity reaches a certain point, men simply withdraw (stonewall).32
f. Anger was not a dangerous emotion by itself, but when the four horsemen and belligerence were coupled with it, anger suddenly became dangerous. However, we did discover that for emotionally disengaged couples, anger when we first started studying the couples (at “Time 1”) was a predictor of later divorcing. So the final word is not yet in on the ways that anger hurts relationships.33
g. Positive affect. This was the only variable that predicted both couple stability and happiness in our newlywed study.34 Furthermore, the positive affect was not distributed evenly or randomly during the conflict conversation—rather, it was used precisely—it was in the service of conflict deescalation. Positive affect and deescalation were used in the service of physiological soothing, particularly of the male in heterosexual relationships.
That’s why even small amounts of positive affect during conflict predicted positive outcomes in the relationship. Bob Levenson’s lab has also found that humor is effective at reducing physiological arousal.35
h. As I mentioned, 69% of the time, a couple’s conflict was shown to be about perpetual issues in the relationship that never got resolved. These lasting issues were due to lasting personality differences between partners. Often the very qualities in our partner we find most attractive during courtship become irritating later on, and these become the seeds of the perpetual problems. These perpetual problems have led family therapist Salvador Minuchin to proclaim that “all marriages are mistakes” (personal communication). Minuchin then added, “But what matters most is what one does with the mistakes.” We found that what mattered most was not resolution of these perpetual problems but the affect that occurred around discussion of them. The goal of happily married couples seemed to be establish a
“dialogue” around the perpetual problem—one that included shared humor and affection and communicated acceptance of the partner and even amusement. In this way happy couples actively coped with the unresolvable problem rather than getting trapped in “gridlock.”
Therapist Andy Christensen has also emphasized this idea of the importance of accepting each other’s personalities.
3 . Happy couples presented issues as joint problems, and specific to one situation . Unhappy couples, on the other hand, presented issues as if they were symptoms of global defects in the partner’s personality. As previously noted, Bob Levenson and I discovered that the ratio of positivity to negativity in a conflict discussion was predictive of what would happen to the relationship later.36 But we wondered if all negativity was equally corrosive.
Studies showed that, indeed, there were four behaviors that were more corrosive than other negative behaviors: the aforementioned “four horsemen of the apocalypse” (criticism, defensiveness, contempt, and stonewalling).37 Partners in unhappy relationships saw it as their responsibility to help their partners become better people. They acted as if they believed that the problem in relationships is that we pair with people who aren’t as perfect as we are. Then it becomes our responsibility to point out to our partners how they can become better human beings. They need us to point out their mistakes. We expect them to be grateful to us for our great wisdom. In miserable relationships our habit of mind is to focus on our own irritability and disappointment, and to explain to our partners how they are responsible for these miserable feelings we have.
Happy couples, on the other hand, presented issues by talking about what they felt and what they needed. They were gentle in the way they talked about their negative emotions (this was particularly true of women in happy relationships). For both men and women there was a positive recipe for the partner to be successful with them. Their habit of mind was opposite of that of unhappy couples: They were not involved with the partner’s mistakes but rather noticed what was going right and appreciated it. These differences can appear small, but their implications are vast. Here’s an example: If I am upset that my wife took up the whole dinner conversation talking about herself, I could say, “Julie, what is wrong with you?”(a question people rarely answer by saying, “Oh I am so glad you asked; let me take a look. Oh, there is something wrong with me—you’re right!”) and continue by saying, “You are so self-centered and selfish. You never think about others. You always just think about yourself.” Or I could act like a master and say, “Honey, this isn’t a big deal, but I was upset about the conversation at dinner. I need you to ask me about my day.” Her response might then be, “Sorry, how was your day?”
4. Successful repair attempts. Even the masters of relationships disagree, get defensive, and hurt each other’s feelings at times. But they are able to repair, even during the conflict discussion (see Chapter 8). This suggests that the goals of couple therapy ought not be to avoid fights, avoid hurting each other’s feelings, or attempt to stay close at all times. Rather, a goal of couple therapy should be to help couples fully process these inevitable regrettable incidents that happen in all relationships, and to be able to repair the relationship.
Relationship happiness relies on the ability to talk fully with each other about negative affect, a process we will talk about extensively in this book. Dan Yoshimoto found a way to study these processes in his couples’ “meta-emotion” or “attunement” interview. In this book I will call this process “emotional attunement.” It is the major mechanism through which couples build trust.38
5 . The ability to remain physiologically calm during conflict. Physiological arousal and feeling overwhelmed by negativity make it very difficult to listen well or be understanding and empathetic. The ability to create peace and the ability to self-soothe and soothe one’s partner are central to relationship happiness.39
6 . The ability to accept influence from one’s partner. As noted earlier, this was especially true in the case of men. Men’s acceptance of influence from their female partner was critical for well-functioning heterosexual relationships. The inability to accept influence from women was a stable predictor of relationship meltdown.
7 . Active building of friendship, intimacy, and the positive affect systems. In relationships that were happy, people continued courtship and intimacy and nurtured emotional connection, friendship, fun, adventure, and playfulness.