Plays Well with Others: The Surprising Science Behind Why Everything You Know About Relationships Is (Mostly) Wrong

by Eric Barker

Impractical and wasteful isn’t very sensible but makes the heart sing.

Diamonds are absurdly expensive rocks and have little resale value—extremely romantic. Why pay a lot of good money for flowers or stones that have little practical use and no long-term value? Because it signals you are crazy. The irrationality of love is, ironically, exceedingly rational.

We’re just more accommodating when our lovestruck brains dial down our reactions to our loved one’s flaws.

When people are in love, their brain actually dials down how attractive it sees other people who might threaten the relationship.

The facts don’t matter as much as the story we tell ourselves when it comes to happiness. We need the crazy. Love is blind—and should be.

Most of the time romantic love drops off after a year to a year and a half. You see this in the fMRI studies, the serotonin blood tests, and survey data. The addicts become habituated to the drug, and the high wears off.

Much like the physical universe, love is also subject to entropy. Energy dies down.

What did a study of almost 1,100 people in long-term relationships show was the biggest threat to the union? “Fading away enthusiasm.”

After the first four years of marriage, satisfaction drops an average of 15–20 percent.

University found that they’re about as happy as they were before getting married. Regression to the mean. Entropy. You’ve probably heard reports of studies showing cohabiting couples are more likely to divorce. One reason for this is believed to be that they burn through the period of crazy love before settling down to get married. By the time they tie the knot, entropy has already kicked in.

This decline doesn’t necessarily spell utter doom. Most couples shift from the crazy of romantic passion to what is known as “companionate love”—a more relaxed, durable feeling of comfort without the fireworks. But idealization fades. A 2001 study found that “idealistic distortion” was cut in half as couples transitioned from engagement to marriage. It’s the rise of love’s mortal enemy: reality.

Yes, sustaining romantic love during a marriage is tough. Actually, it’s even tougher than that: don’t forget survivor bias. All the studies above that look at currently married people are doing just that—only studying the ones that lasted, not the ones that already threw in the

There’s an average six-year delay between the first cracks in a marriage and actually getting help. But it should still be able to help somewhat even at that point, right? Nope, and that’s because of the greatest enemy a couple can face: NSO.

negative sentiment override.

It’s a flip from dealing with someone you assume has good intentions but occasionally makes errors, to someone you assume was forged in the darkest pits of Hades but occasionally does something nice.

study by Robinson and Price showed unhappy couples don’t notice half the positivity in their marriage.

More often than not, marriages end with a whimper, not a bang. You scream because you care.

“The single biggest problem in communication is the illusion that it has taken place.”

Unspoken assumptions start to multiply until you’re not having conversations with your partner, you’re just having them with yourself because you “know” what they would say.

But here on Planet Earth people can’t hear what you don’t say.

The emotional landfill grows.

Meanwhile, the average dual career couple spends under two hours a week in discussion. You gotta talk.

“If they don’t or can’t or won’t argue, that’s a major red flag. If you’re in a ‘committed’ relationship and you haven’t yet had a big argument, please do that as soon as possible.” You. Gotta. Talk.

It’s about regulation, not resolution, of the conflict.

“All happy families are alike but an unhappy family is unhappy after its own fashion.”

But, as Gottman found, unhappy couples all make the same four mistakes. And if we learn them, we can avoid them. He calls these problems the Four Horsemen, and they predict divorce 83.3 percent of the time.

CRITICISM

The first is about an event, the second is about your fundamental personality.

We can fix events. Attacking someone’s personality does not tend to go very well.

So turn your criticisms into complaints. Address the event, not the person. Or better yet, see your complaints as “goals” to be reached or problems to be solved. Criticism is something women do a lot more than men, but don’t worry, we’ll get to the problems the guys usually cause soon enough.

2. STONEWALLING

Stonewalling is when you shut down or tune out in response to issues your partner brings up.

“you or your concerns are not important enough for me to deal with.” It doesn’t reduce conflict: in most cases it dials it up.

DEFENSIVENESS

Listen, acknowledge your partner’s issues (no matter how ridiculous they might seem to you), and wait your turn to prevent escalation.

You may be right, but you don’t need to make this harder than necessary by starting it as an attack.

“repair”: soothing and supporting each other, laughing or showing affection in the midst of an argument. Take their hand. Make a joke. This dials back escalation. Even couples with lots of horsemen riding around can have happy stable marriages if they repair.

What’s an overall perspective to keep in mind that encapsulates much of this? Well, Gottman emphasizes the importance of friendship in a marriage and that is very true.

No, don’t be condescending like you might with a kid, but we create a lot of problems because we expect our partner to always be a competent, emotionally stable “adult.” They’re not. I’m not. And you’re not.

Showing the generosity and compassion that you naturally give to a child when they’re upset is a simple way to get around many of the problems we create.

We’re just a lot more charitable. And that injection of positive emotion makes all the difference. Adulting is hard, and when someone relieves us of that enormous responsibility and realizes that inside we’re always a bit of a moody child, it works wonders.

A 2001 study shows people who are compassionate with their partner during arguments have 34 percent fewer of them, and they last half as long.

To stay the same, it must change. This is how you fall in love with someone over and over again.

Arthur Aron and Gary Lewandowski found that when couples do stuff that makes them feel they are learning and becoming better, it increases love.

Just like boredom kills love, when we feel our partner is helping us become a better, more interesting person, we love them all the more.

Doing things together that are stimulating and challenging stretches our self-concept wider and provides a buzz. The angle of ...

The research is clear here: you need to do exciting things.

Couples who went out to dinner or a movie didn’t get nearly the marital satisfaction boost that those who danced, skied, or went to concerts did.

“Adrenaline makes the heart grow fonder.”

In fact, any strong emotion can increase love. People often reference Stockholm syndrome, the phenomenon of hostages coming to sympathize with their captors. It’s real. And what many people forget is that after the actual 1973 event in Stockholm, two of the hostages actually got engaged to the criminals. This is why some people stay in toxic relationships.