50 Psychology Classics (29 page)

This idea originated with psychologist Carl Rogers (see p 238), who taught that nonjudgmental listening and acceptance of another person's feelings create rapport. Applied to the marriage relationship, however, Gottman says that this approach definitely does not work. Most couples who use it become distressed, and of those who do seem to benefit, most relapse into their old conflicts within a year. However well each partner is made to air their grievances, it was still a case of one person trashing the other, and very few people—maybe the Dalai Lama, Gottman suggests—can remain magnanimous in the face of criticism.

Gottman reveals a shocking truth about marital conflict: “Most marital arguments cannot be resolved.” His research found that 69 percent of conflicts involve perpetual or unresolvable problems. For example, Meg wants to have children, but Donald does not. Walter always wants more sex than Dana does. Chris always flirts at parties, and Susan hates it. John wants to bring the kids up Catholic, Linda wants to raise them Jewish.

Couples spend years and huge amounts of energy trying to change each other, but significant disagreements are about values and different ways of seeing the world—things that don't change. Successful couples know this and therefore decide to accept each other “warts and all.”

The truth is, plenty of good marriages shove a lot of issues “under the rug.” When many couples have a fight, the man storms off to watch television, and the woman rushes off for some retail therapy. A couple of hours later, the argument has blown over and they are pleased to see each other again. Many partnerships remain stable and satisfied without airing deep feelings.

The fact that men are from Mars and women are from Venus may have an impact on marriage problems, Gottman notes, but it does not actually cause them. Some 70 percent of couples said that the quality of the friendship with their partner was the determining factor in happiness, not gender or anything else.

After many years of research, Gottman's astonishing claim is to be able to make 91 percent accurate predictions of whether a couple will divorce or stay married—after observing them for only five minutes.

Couples do not end up in the divorce courts because they have arguments, he writes, it is the
way
they argue that massively increases the chance of them splitting up. In watching endless hours of taped interaction between couples, Gottman identified several signs that they may be on the road to divorce—if not in the next year, then some years hence. These include the following.

Discussions that begin with criticism, sarcasm, or contempt have what Gottman calls a “harsh startup.” What begins badly, ends badly.

There is a difference between complaints, which refer to a particular action by your spouse, and personal criticism.

This includes any form of sneering, eye rolling, mockery, or name calling that aims to make the other person feel bad. A worse version of contempt is belligerence, often expressed in the phrase, “What are you going to do about it?”

Trying to make the other person seem like they are the problem, as if you have not made any contribution.

Stonewalling is when one partner “tunes out,” unable to take regular criticism, contempt, and defensiveness. By disengaging they are less exposed to being hurt. Gottman notes that in 85 percent of marriages, it is the man who is the stonewaller. This is because the male cardiovascular system recovers from stress more slowly. A man's response to conflict is likely to be more indignant, with thoughts of getting even or “I don't have to take this.” Women, on the other hand, are better able to soothe themselves down following a stressful situation, which also explains why women nearly always have to raise the issues of conflict in the relationship and men try to avoid them.

Regular emotional “flooding” is when either partner is overwhelmed by verbal attacks from the other. When we are attacked, heart rate and blood pressure increase and hormones are released, including adrenaline. On a physiological
level we experience verbal attacks as a threat to our survival. As Gottman puts it, the response is the same “whether you're facing a saber-toothed tiger or a contemptuous spouse demanding to know why you can never remember to put the toilet seat back down.” When frequent flooding occurs, each partner's wish to avoid the experience results in them emotionally disengaging from each other.

Unhappy couples fail to stop a heated argument in its tracks by saying, for instance, “Wait, I need to calm down,” or employing an amusing expression to prevent the conflict escalating. Happy couples all have this vital ability.

On their own, these signs do not necessarily predict divorce, but if they occur on top of one another over a sustained period, they are very likely to end a relationship. Gottman describes defensiveness, stonewalling, criticism, and contempt as the “four horsemen of the apocalypse.” The level of negative sentiment slowly starts to overtake the positive, so that the “set point” of happiness in the relationship declines to a degree that it becomes too painful. The partners emotionally disengage, stop bothering to try to sort things out, and begin leading parallel lives within the same house. This is the time at which affairs are most likely, because one or both of the partners becomes lonely and seeks attention, support, or care elsewhere. An affair, Gottman points out, is usually a symptom of a dying marriage rather than the cause.

Most of Gottman's principles for creating sustainable and happy marriages revolve around one crucial factor: friendship. The partners are able to maintain a mutual respect for each other and enjoyment of each other's company. Friendship kindles romance, but also protects against a relationship getting adversarial. As long as you can retain “fondness and admiration” for your partner you can always salvage your relationship. Without it, there is more chance of disgust being expressed in arguments, and disgust is poison to a relationship.

According to Gottman, the purpose of marriage is “shared meaning.” That is, each partner supports the other's dreams and hopes. A marriage is going in the wrong direction if one partner has to sacrifice what they want to make the other person happy. Genuine friendships are equal.

Related to this central issue of friendship are the following needs.

Partners in strong relationships have good “love maps” of the other person—they're in touch with their partner's feelings and wants, and they know basic things like who their friends are. Without such knowledge, a major event such as the birth of a first child is likely to weaken the relationship, not strengthen it.

Romance can stay alive even in the most humdrum conversations, Gottman points out. It is when you stop even acknowledging each other (turning away) that the relationship is on its way out. While some couples believe that romantic dinners or holidays can make a marriage happy, in fact it is the little daily attentions given to the other person (turning toward) that count.

Women are naturally open to the influence of their partners, but men find this more difficult. Yet the happier marriages are generally those in which the man listens to his wife and takes account of her views and feelings. Better, longer-lasting marriages are those in which the power is shared.

Once you understand “what makes marriage tick” at a scientific level you are in a much better position to improve your relationship and protect it against failure. This, of course, applies to long-term relationships of any kind. Gottman also conducted a 12-year study of gay and lesbian couples, and found that their interactions were not that different to those of straight couples. Gays tend to take things a little less personally, use fewer hostile or controlling tactics, and generally employ more affection and humor when they bring up a disagreement, but the basic dynamics of conflict and conflict resolution are the same.

It is probable that in 50 years' time we will look back and be amazed how little knowledge the average person had on physiological and psychological responses to conflict, and on how to manage relationships overall. Paradoxically, hard science has much to teach us about the sort of things—love, romance, and friendship—that make life worth living.

Gottman is a professor emeritus at the University of Washington, where he was first appointed in 1986. He is the author of over 100 academic articles and many books, including
A Couple's Guide to Communication
(1979),
What Predicts Divorce
(1993),
Raising an Emotionally Intelligent Child
(1996),
The Relationship Cure
(2001), and
The Mathematics of Marriage
(2003)
.

The Gottman Institute, founded with his wife Julie Schwartz Gottman, provides training to professionals and families. Gottman's Family Research Lab, which received funding from the US National Institute for Mental Health for 15 years, is now part of an independent body, The Relationship Research Institute
.

Co-author
Nan Silver
is a contributing editor of
Parents
magazine
.

“The little we know about love does not transcend simple observation, and the little we write about it has been written better by poets and novelists. But of greater concern is the fact that psychologists tend to give progressively less attention to a motive which pervades our entire lives. Psychologists, at least psychologists who write textbooks, not only show no interest in the origin and development of love or affection, but they seem to be unaware of its very existence.”

In a nutshell

Warm physical bonds in infancy are vital to our becoming healthy adults.

In a similar vein
Stanley Milgram
Obedience to Authority
(p 198)
Jean Piaget
The Language and Thought of the Child
(p 222)
Steven Pinker
The Blank Slate
(p 228)
B. F. Skinner
Beyond Freedom and Dignity
(p 266)

In 1958, primate researcher Harry Harlow was elected president of the American Psychological Association. In the same year he visited Washington DC, where the Association was having its annual meeting, to deliver a paper on his recent experiments with rhesus monkeys.

In the 1950s, American psychology was dominated by the behaviorists, whose endless experiments with lab rats aimed to show how easily the mammalian mind was shaped by its environment. Harlow and his wife Margaret went against the norm by studying monkeys, which they thought gave much better insights into human action. A straight talker, Harlow also refused to use terms like “proximity” when what he really meant was love. He told his audience:

“Love is a wondrous state, deep, tender, and rewarding. Because of its intimate and personal nature it is regarded by some as an improper topic for experimental research. But, whatever our personal feelings may be, our assigned mission as psychologists is to analyze all facets of human and animal behavior into their component variables. So far as love or affection is concerned, psychologists have failed in this mission.”

The behavioral doctrine was that human beings were motivated according to their primary drives of hunger, thirst, elimination, pain, and sex. Other motives, including love and affection, were secondary to these. In child rearing, affection was downplayed in favour of the belief in “training,” and there was little understanding of what we now know about the importance to babies of physical contact.

Harlow's paper “The nature of love” turned all this on its head. With his refusal to see love and affection as simply a “secondary drive,” it became one of the most celebrated scientific papers ever written.

Harlow chose to work with young rhesus monkeys because they are more mature than human infants, and show little difference to human babies in how they nurse, cling, respond to affection, and even see and hear. The way they learn and even how they experience and express fear and frustration are also similar.

He noticed that, in the absence of contact with their mothers, these labraised monkeys became very attached to the cloth pads (actually diapers or
nappies) that covered the hard floors of their cages. When they were periodically removed in order to put new pads down, the baby monkeys had terrible tantrums. This reaction, Harlow noted, was just like the attachment that human babies develop to a certain pillow, blanket, or cuddly toy. Startlingly, his research found that baby monkeys raised in wire-mesh cages with no pads had very little chance of surviving for more than five days. It seemed that “soft things to cling to” were not merely a matter of comfort, but in the absence of their mothers were a primary factor in the monkeys' survival.

The behaviorist view was that babies—monkey or human—loved their mothers for the milk that they provided, since this satisfied a primary need. But what Harlow had seen with the cloth pads made him wonder whether babies might love their mothers not for their milk only, but because they provided warmth and affection. Perhaps love was as basic a need as food and water.