By the time we reach midlife, most of us have been married for quite a while. Even if we’ve been divorced, we’ve still been married for quite a while, just not to the same person. Marriage can be incredibly fulfilling, sort of ho-hum or a downright ordeal, depending on how we treat each other.
The Love Lab is a real place at the University of Washington in Seattle. About 30 years ago, John Gottman, a professor of psychology and a marriage counsellor, tried videotaping counselling sessions with a particularly troubled couple. Both he and the couple were amazed at how clearly the video showed words and facial expressions of criticism, contempt and defensiveness.
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This led to Gottman’s life work, which has been to use the Love Lab to develop a huge body of information based on a variety of data-
gathering methods, including
hooking couples to a battery of physiological sensors and video-
taping them while they discuss sensitive subjects.
Gottman now says he can predict with 94 percent accuracy which marriages are headed for divorce. He says the amount and degree of conflict in a marriage is not a predictor of divorce, but the balance of positive to negative moments is.
Valerie and John have a volatile relationship. At least once a month they have a rip-roaring dust-up. It never gets physical, but it sounds as though it could. In between, they often bicker and verbally push away at each other.
However, they actually have the kind of marriage Gottman predicts will last. That’s because despite their volatility, for every negative comment they make in their fighting, in the rest of their life together they have at least five positive interactions that are supportive and connecting.
Gottman’s Love Lab research also shows there are four types of exchanges that no marriage can survive over the long-term: criticism, defensiveness, contempt and stonewalling.
John might say to Valerie, “it makes me mad that you didn’t give me that message from the bank. Now I have to go suck up to get our line of credit increased.”ÊOr he could say, “when are you ever going to learn to be responsible? As usual you screwed up and didn’t give me that message from the bank. Why don’t you use your brains?”
The first exchange will not hurt a marriage provided there is an ongoing balance of five positive interactions to one negative, but the nature of the second exchange is too hostile for any marriage to survive for long. The anger is not the issue; it is the insult and derision that is destructive.
Stonewalling is common when a couple has had a fight and one of the partners, either physically or emotionally, leaves the room. This is “crazy-making” for the partner who is left behind and wants to get things resolved.
Gottman’s research shows 85 percent of the time men do the stonewalling, and a difference in the sexes explains this. In a heated argument, men become more upset physiologically than women, and they continue to be distressed long after a woman has calmed down. The only way some men know to cope is to shut down and withdraw into a stony silence. This increases the frustration in the woman who pursues him to get him to talk to her.
So with Susan and Michael, a couple that doesn’t have big loud fights, their arguments see him withdrawing to cope with the intolerable distress he is feeling and Susan becomes more upset by that than if he had got into a shouting match with her. At this point neither partner is capable of any kind of reasonable interaction so the best idea is to take a time-out until both have calmed down. After that though, Michael had better be willing to talk about the issue if the marriage is going to last. And both need to treat each other with honesty and respect.
Here’s my wife’s favourite bit of good news from the Love Lab research: men who do housework are more likely to be happily married and also less likely to be sick. She said she’d pick a husband-vacuumed house over flowers or chocolates any day.
Now where did I put that Hoover?
