In the world of relationships, the most important numbers to learn
are: five to one. That is the ratio of positive interactions to negative
ones that predicts whether a marriage will last or become one of the sad
statistics of divorce.
It isn't that you can't argue with your spouse. But the
couples that make it also manage to deliver positive emotional messages
even when they don't see eye to eye.
"When the masters of marriage are talking about something
important, they may be arguing, but they are also laughing and teasing
and there are signs of affection because they have made emotional
connections," says psychologist John Gottman, Ph.D., who has
developed a mathematical model of relationships. "But a lot of
people don't know how to connect or how to build a sense of humor,
and this means that a lot of fighting that couples engage in is a failure
to make emotional connections. We wouldn't have known this without
the mathematical model."
The Masters of Marriage is Gottman's term for the long-term
happily married. Gottman has been observing couples for decades and
measuring their every blip—from blood pressure to facial grimace
during their interactions.
All the observations have been quantified and turned into a kind of
Dow Jones Industrial average for marital conversations. Gottman has found
that marriages fall into the danger zone for divorce when the ratio of
positive to negative interactions falls below five to one. Just by watching a
videotape of a couple in the first few moments of a conversation about an
area of marital contention, Gottman can predict with 94 percent accuracy
which couples will later divorce.
In describing and quantifying the positive and negative forces on
relationships, Gottman has found that a heavily weighted factor is
whether one partner will accept influence from the other. A crucial
predictor of divorce is a man's unwillingness to be influenced by
his wife's suggestions or his blindness to her emotional
expressions.
Along with a team of mathematicians, Gottman has developed what he
calls bilinear influence functions. These describe a person's ability to
affect his or her spouse's mood, a kind of emotional contagion. Good
couples routinely influence each other's moods, in a positive
direction.
Some couples, are "volatile"—they often unleash anger at
one another but they offset that anger with even larger doses of warm
feelings. Despite the volatility, such couples tend to be stable and
successful. They not only influence each other with anger but also with
affection.
Another critical dimension is the attempt to turn a difficult
conversation in a positive direction—what Gottman calls repair
attempts. These typically include jokes, soothing comments or changing
the subject when things are too hot. Some couples, on the other hand, are
skilled at "damping" conversations—they add more
negative fuel to the fire. They may make hurtful comments even when their
partner is clearly trying to be positive.
In the mathematics of marriage, certain expressions of emotion
carry a disproportionate amount of emotional weight. Expressions of
contempt, Gottman has found, register at -4. Displays of disgust each
count for three points in the negative column. Whining comes in at
–1. On the other hand, a display of affection—a smile of
sympathy, a touch—registers 4 on the plus side.
The good news is that you don't have to be a math whiz to
have a happy marriage, and there's no one right answer. Every
couple is free to write their own positive equation.
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