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File this under “D” for “Duh:” according to a recent
news headline, researchers at the University of Washington have
found that men who want their marriages to succeed should simply do
what their wives say.
My wife and I were just 20 and 19 when we married,
giving us more than the usual collection of newlywed issues. One of
the first had to do with slovenliness: I favored it, my wife
opposed.
I was an adult, by my reckoning, and shouldn’t have
someone following me around telling me to keep my socks out of the
oven. My wife agreed up to a point, but had the questionable notion
that I should therefore pick up after myself. Finally, tired of the
constant skirmishing, she offered a cease-fire.
I went to bed that night satisfied that I had
established my independence. Chest-thumping macho dominance wasn’t
the object; my ego doesn’t require it, and I had (and have) too much
respect for her. Rather, I fancied myself a sort of “free-range
husband,” at liberty to indulge my personal habits unrestrained.
Smugly reassured, I laid my head on my pillow – and
bolted straight back up. It was cold! And wet! And stuffed with
the towels I had left on the floor after my shower. But true to her
word, she didn’t say a thing.
She didn’t have too. “Neatness” may have seemed an
abstract concept at the time, but a pillowcase full of wet towels
was something I could understand.
The University of Washington findings are part of a
larger body of work by Dr. John Gottman, one of the country’s
preeminent researchers on family and marriage relationships. His
conclusions are based on a six-year study of 130 newlyweds and a
larger 13-year study of happily married couples.
Dr. Gottman posits that “active listening,” long a
cornerstone of many marriage counseling programs, is no predictor of
success. The technique, which involves one spouse paraphrasing the
other’s words and expressing empathy, is “unnatural” during a
conflict, and the successful couples did not use it. “It’s just too
hard to be an empathic, active listener when somebody is attacking
or criticizing you,” he notes.
Well “duh” again. Gottman believes that women are
generally more willing to openly discuss problems and feelings than
men, which frustrates wives all the more. In my own random sample,
I found that 100 percent of the wife in my marriage is considerably
better at this than 100 percent of the husband. According to the
husband surveyed, “Yes, dear” rolls off the tongue a lot easier than
“I hear what you’re saying. What you really mean is that I’m being
an oaf again.”
Gottman’s findings are controversial and not universally
accepted. Though the news caption about men doing what they’re told
is catchier, Gottman’s actual words are “We found that only those
newlywed men who are accepting of influence from their wives are
winding up in happy, stable marriages.”
Happy couples do have problems, says Gottman, and they
tend to stay the same from year to year. The difference is that
they manage to establish a “dialog,” with humor and affection, all
while accepting each other as they are.
Gottman claims 94 percent accuracy in forecasting
divorces. Beside hard-headedness on the part of husbands, several
danger signals from wives were also noted. “A wife’s facial
expressions of disgust, such as raising the upper lip, are a very
good predictor of whether the couple will split within the next four
years,” he says.
In other words, snarling is bad. Also trouble is when a
wife rolls her eyes while hubby is talking. Making bunny ears
behind his back while he explained his side to researchers foretold
big-time grief.
OK, I made that last one up, but you get the idea. The
keys to marital success may be easier to list than to live, but the
concepts are as easy to grasp as a pillowcase full of wet towels:
love each other, listen to each other, respect each other, and hang
on to your sense of humor. It probably doesn’t hurt to keep your
socks out of the oven, either.
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