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January 31, 2023 - January 2, 2024
When addressing a partner’s request, their motto tends to be a helpful “Yes, and …” rather than “Yes, but …”
in an unhappy marriage people experience chronic, diffuse physiological arousal—in other words, they feel physically stressed and usually emotionally overwrought as well.
a good marriage may also keep you healthier by directly benefiting your immune system,
prevention workshops, in which couples worked on their relationship before conflict began to take its toll, were even three times more effective than our workshops designed for couples who were already troubled.
Perhaps the biggest myth of all is that communication—and more specifically, learning to resolve your conflicts—is the royal road to romance and an enduring, happy marriage.
Hmmmm
therapy that focuses solely on active listening and conflict resolution doesn’t work.
But here’s the catch: even if they do make your fights “better” or less frequent, these strategies are not enough to save your marriage. You need all Seven Principles.
The notion that you can save your relationship just by learning to communicate more sensitively is probably the most widely held misconception about happy marriages—but it’s hardly the only one.
If you can accommodate each other’s “crazy” side and handle it with caring, affection, and respect, your marriage can thrive.
Couples simply have different styles of conflict. Some avoid fights at all costs, some argue a lot, and some are able to talk out their differences and find a compromise without ever raising their voices. No one style is necessarily better than another—as long as the style works for both people.
The determining factor in whether wives feel satisfied with the sex, romance, and passion in their marriage is, by 70 percent, the quality of the couple’s friendship. For men, the determining factor is, by 70 percent, the quality of the couple’s friendship. So men and women come from the same planet after all.
At the heart of the Seven Principles approach is the simple truth that happy marriages are based on a deep friendship. By this I mean a mutual respect for and enjoyment of each other’s company.
although she’s not crazy about spending a lot of time with their relatives, she has pursued a friendship with Nathaniel’s mother and sisters because family matters so much to him.
Friendship fuels the flames of romance because it offers the best protection against feeling adversarial toward your spouse.
“positive sentiment override,” or PSO, a concept first proposed by University of Oregon psychologist Robert Weiss. This means that their positive thoughts about each other and their marriage are so pervasive that they tend to supersede their negative feelings. It takes a much more significant conflict for them to lose their equilibrium
The more highly skilled at achieving it that partners become, the more resilient their friendship and the more solid and promising their future.
The key is learning how to better attune to each other and make friendship a top priority.
a repair attempt. This term refers to any statement or action—silly or otherwise—that prevents negativity from escalating out of control. Repair attempts are a secret weapon of emotionally intelligent couples—
The success or failure of a couple’s repair attempts is one of the primary factors in whether their marriage is likely to flourish or flounder.
almost everybody messes up during marital conflict. What matters is whether their repairs succeed.
In the strongest marriages, husband and wife share a deep sense of meaning. They don’t just “get along”—they also support each other’s hopes and aspirations and build a sense of purpose into their lives together.
most marital arguments cannot be resolved. Couples spend year after year trying to change each other’s mind—but it can’t be done. This is because most of their disagreements are rooted in fundamental differences of lifestyle, personality, or values.
The clues to Dara and Oliver’s future breakup are in the way they argue, which leaves them vulnerable to increasing negativity and distrust.
When a discussion leads off this way—with criticism and/or sarcasm, which is a form of contempt—it has begun with a “harsh start-up.”
the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. Usually these four horsemen clip-clop into the heart of a marriage in the following order: Criticism, Contempt, Defensiveness, and Stonewalling.
A complaint focuses on a specific behavior or event.
a criticism is global and expresses negative feelings or opinions about the other’s character or personality:
Dara’s sarcasm and cynicism are types of contempt.
This is a textbook example of contempt. He’s not merely pointing out that they spend their money differently. He is accusing his wife of a moral deficiency—of being spoiled.
Contempt is fueled by long-simmering negative thoughts about the partner. You’re more likely to have such thoughts if your differences are not resolved.
Horseman 4: Stonewalling. In marriages where discussions begin with a harsh start-up, where criticism and contempt lead to defensiveness and vice versa, eventually one partner tunes out.
Usually people stonewall as a protection against feeling psychologically and physically overwhelmed, a sensation we call flooding. It occurs when your spouse’s negativity is so intense and sudden that it leaves you shell-shocked.
When a pounding heart and all the other physical stress reactions happen in the midst of a discussion with your mate, the consequences are disastrous. Your ability to process information is reduced, meaning it’s harder to pay attention to what your partner is saying. Creative problem solving and your sense of humor go out the window. You’re left with the most reflexive, least intellectually sophisticated responses in your repertoire: to fight (act critical, contemptuous, or defensive) or flee (stonewall). Any chance of resolving the issue is gone.
It’s a biological fact: men are more easily overwhelmed by marital conflict than are their wives.
you’ll find examples of all the horsemen and even occasional flooding in some stable marriages. But when the four horsemen take up permanent residence, when either partner begins to feel flooded routinely, the relationship is in serious trouble.
Frequently feeling flooded leads almost inevitably to emotional distancing, which in turn leads to feeling lonely.
The more contemptuous and defensive the couple are with each other, the more flooding occurs, and the harder it is to hear and respond to a repair.
The presence of the four horsemen alone predicts divorce with an 82 percent accuracy rate. But when you add in the failure of repair attempts, the accuracy rate reaches into the 90s.
In marriages in which the four horsemen have moved in for good, even the most articulate, sensitive, well-targeted repair attempt is likely to fail abysmally.
