Social Engineering Blogs

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Why Marriages Fail

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Why do some marriages last and others fall apart?

This is a question that troubles countless people who may be worried about their parents divorcing, their spouse leaving them, or that an upcoming marriage won’t last. While there are no easy answers, Dr. John Gottman’s research can help shed light on this critical question.

As anybody in a relationship knows, sometimes major fights stem from seemingly insignificant interactions. Maybe one person bought the wrong milk at the store, failed to hang up a coat, or simply seemed distant in conversation. This can lead to a sharp criticism, spiraling into a significant conflict.

But why is it that these minor instances can explode in such a fashion? Often, they can just be the result of miscommunication or of a lack of understanding of the other’s feelings. The real problem, as Dr. Gottman describes it, arises when contempt enters the equation.

Contempt arises from unresolved negative thoughts about your spouse or the, perhaps subconscious, belief that you are superior. Often, these underlying feelings manifest themselves in the form of overly aggressive reactions, such as hostile humor, name-calling, or body language such as eye-rolling.

Not only do these reactions turn an otherwise minor conflict into an intractable war, but they also lead to more conflict down the line, making this behavior a leading cause of failed marriages. In fact, contempt can even lead to declined physical health, resulting in infectious illnesses like colds and the flu!

Dr. Gottman’s research, demonstrates just how dangerous these attitudes can be to the health of a relationship. While partnering with Berkeley psychologist Robert Levenson, the two researchers studied 79 Midwestern couples over the course of fourteen years. This 2002 study found that contempt, in addition to related behaviors, predicted divorce with 93 percent accuracy.

In a more recent study of 373 couples, Dr. Gottman found that acts of contempt and general disregard in the first year of marriage were strongly related to future divorces.

Given the acute danger of such underlying behaviors, it is especially critical to be mindful and aware of them. Dr. Gottman attempts to provide lessons that can reduce the catastrophic impact of contempt. Instead of focusing on the negative behaviors of a partner, for example, he recommends working to cultivate a sense of appreciation and respect for positive behaviors.

While this can take time and effort, it is important to see how any given interaction helps pave the way towards this sense of appreciation. It is helpful to consider other, related, relationship killers such as criticism.

In the case of criticism, he distinguishes critiques of the person’s behavior from their character, urging couples to avoid criticisms of character in favor of expressing positive desires. Rather than accusing a partner of some deficiency, one ought to express an active desire. This can involve pointedly asking for your spouse’s attention, rather than accusing them of never listening.

For more information on Dr. Gottman’s research, see our past blogs here and here.

The Power of Emotional Intelligence

We’ve all met that absolutely brilliant friend who still cannot read emotion any better than we can read Kant. This is a powerful example of the notion of emotional intelligence, which is often quite different from more traditional conceptions of intelligence.

Instead, emotional intelligence seeks to capture one’s intuitive grasp of other people’s emotional states and their ability to act on this insight.

Dr. John Gottman, who runs The Gottman Institute with his wife Julie, has explored how crucial emotional intelligence can be promoting healthy relationships, such as marriages. Based on his research, he emphasizes the need for couples to be in tune with the sometimes implicit emotional needs of their partners.

In fact, according to a 1998 study, successful marriages often depend on the husband and wife allowing each other to exert influence and control over their actions and behavior. While this is important for both sexes to keep in mind, he also found that men have more trouble accepting influence, seeing this as a loss of power.

While women already tend to allow their husband to influence their behavior, the frequent refusal of men to do so can contribute to tension in the relationship. This is certainly not intended to attack or criticize men, but instead opens the door to an exploration of how both genders are taught to interact from a young age.

In his book, The Seven Principles of Making Marriage Work, Dr. Gottman explores the different manners in which boys and girls are socialized as children. Boys’ games, he explains, are focused on winning, rather than on the emotions of those involved. It is generally accepted that some participants will lose or be hurt, and they are expected to handle that pain on their own.

Girls, on the other hand, are taught to emphasize feelings. Instead of dedicating play time to winning, girls will often focus on building relationships with their friends. This provides important training for future romantic relationships by developing an emotional sensitivity and an awareness of social nuances.

Because of the deep developmental roots at play, The Gottman Institute also promotes a course dedicated to helping parents cultivate the emotional intelligence of their children, both male and female.

This leads to the conclusion that husbands (and boyfriends) ought to avoid rejecting their partner’s influence. This can take the form of working to understand the other’s point of view or sometimes simply just doing what they ask without argument.

Dr. Gottman explores some practical applications of this principle by looking at everyday interactions between partners.  For example, this can involve looking beyond the tone or inflection of a critical comment and looking at such comments as “bids for connection” that help promote intimacy through commonplace actions like sharing chores.

In addition, he focuses on cultivating a deep appreciation for the other person’s perspective, accepting their inadequacies, and understanding their hopes or desires. This can be a difficult process, but helps further an understanding of how to recognize “bids for connection” and how to accept the other person’s influence.

For more information on Dr. Gottman and emotional intelligence, check out our past blogs here and here.

The Ben Franklin effect: How to turn haters into friends

“He that has once done you a favor will be more ready to do you another than he whom you have yourself obliged.”  – Benjamin FranklinBenjamin Franklin was an 18th-century American statesman, scientist, inventor, musician and author. You probably got introduced to him at a very young age when you read that nursery rhyme, “Early to bed”. Once, a person lambasted him publicly with a long speech. This angered him but instead of taking some kind of an outright revenge, he decided to try something different.He realized that his goal was to turn his hater into a friend because, according to his estimation, this man who’d berated him could one day become very influential.So Ben wrote him a letter asking him if he could lend him a ‘scarce and curious book’. Ben worked at and maintained a library at that time and was widely known for having good literary tastes.Needless to say, the hater was flattered and sent the book eagerly. Next time he met Ben in person he talked to him and ‘ever after manifested a readiness to serve him on all occasions.’The Ben Franklin effect What you just witnessed has come to be known as ‘The Ben Franklin effect’.It states that when we do a person a favor, we tend to like them more as a result- even if we didn’t like the person or hated them initially. In other words, you can effect a favorable change in the attitude of a person toward you just by asking them to do a favor for you.At first, it almost seems like magic but there is a good psychological explanation as to why this happens…Consider how you behave when you’re indecisive. If I offer you a chocolate cake you probably won’t show any indecision and will gladly take and eat it. It just tastes so good.However, if you’re watching your weight and I offer you a chocolate cake, indecision can kick in since the potential cost of eating a chocolate could be weight gain.In order for you to eat the cake, the perceived potential benefit of eating it has to outweigh the potential cost of eating it. ( see why we do what we do and not what we don’t do)While you’re still unable to decide whether to eat the cake or not, let’s say I insist that you eat it and you cave in. At this point, your mind will likely slip into a state of cognitive dissonance because you just did an action that didn’t match your psychological state. You weren’t psychologically prepared to eat the cake.In order to restore stability, your mind now has to invent excuses and rationalizations to justify what you did so that your cognitive dissonance is resolved.So you might say something like, “One piece of cake isn’t going to do any harm” or “I’ll do extra cardio tomorrow morning.”The human mind is designed in such a way that it tries its best to do those actions which carry more benefits than costs. If it fails and ends up doing something that carries more costs than benefits it has to somehow convince itself that it didn’t really fail because the knowledge that we incurred more costs than benefits is difficult to handle.When you ask someone for help and they do help you out, even if they had no good reason to do so, they’ll need to invent one. Since we usually help those whom we like, the person’s mind goes like, “I helped him, therefore I must like him.”“Did you just say you don’t like me? Would you mind passing me that bread, please?”In the incident of Ben Franklin, some other factors were at play too that shouldn’t be overlooked. We like it when someone likes our favorite book, movie or TV show because it helps us boost our ego. (see Why we want others to like what we like).In many cases, hatred is just a way to make yourself look better than your competitor. Often, when someone says “I hate you” what they’re really saying is “I hate how you’re better than me.”Ben Franklin’s hater probably hated him because he knew at a deep level that Ben was better than him- hence the need to lambast him publicly. When Ben fed his depleted ego by asking for help (the helper is at a superior position than the helped), he was pleased and ‘ever after manifested a readiness to serve him on all occasions’.He could now think of Ben as his equal or even as his inferior. But we all know who’s really the clever one and superior one over here.