You can avoid patterns that lead to divorce, and—Why Marriages Succeed or Fail will show you how. Home Why Marriages Succeed or Fail. Markman,Scott M. Stanley,Susan L. Popular Books. Census records by researchers at the University of Wisconsin found that, based on data, divorce among recent first marriages stood at a shocking 67 percent.
In other words, two out of every three new couples are headed for divorce—unless something changes. That something is what this book is about—how to change your marriage to save it. What makes the numbers even more disturbing is that no one seems to understand why our marriages have become so fragile.
It is as if some hidden, evil force is loose in America that is making marriages fall apart. But the reason marriage and its troubles seem so mysterious is really quite simple: until recently, almost no scientific studies of this complex relationship had been done. The vast majority of books of advice to couples have been based, at best, on the insights marital therapists have gained from the couples they happened to see, and, at worst, on mere anecdote and theoretical musings.
And most of the research on marriage has suffered, in my opinion, from a number of flaws ranging from asking the wrong questions to conclusions that are simply not valid. The solution, of course, is to conduct solid experiments that examine stable and troubled marriages, systematically tracing the emotional currents that lead one couple to drift apart and another to flow through life together. For the past two decades my research teams have been doing just that.
The result has been a number of surprising, scientifically sound findings that go a long way to filling in the knowledge gap. I have written this book to share our latest results with you and to offer my best understanding of just how you can strengthen your marriage, no matter how rocky it may seem. Of course, not all couples ought to stay married. On your wedding day you had hopes for a happy, blissful union, and I believe that despite the rising divorce rate you can still fulfill that dream—even if your marriage has started to show signs of trouble.
Although our research is far from complete, our current findings offer the most accurate picture available of why some marriages succeed and others fail—and what you can do to improve your own chances of ending up on the positive side of the odds.
Early in my career as a psychologist, a young couple came to me for help with their ailing marriage. Wendy was energetic, spontaneous, and had a flair for design. Bob was more conservative, intellectual, with a penchant for order. He loved her vivaciousness and found her exciting— a bit of a gypsy. She was drawn to his reason, his dependability, his even temper. But once they were married with a child, the stresses of family life began to bear down.
Wendy worked full time in a fast-paced media job. Bob was struggling to get through graduate school while caring for the baby and the house. Wendy countered. You know what your problem is? And so it went day after day. Despite their best intentions, conversations seemed to deteriorate into an endless loop of criticism over housework, child care, and personal habits.
And once they took their positions, they felt trapped, as if there was no way to break out of their defensiveness and anger. One day, on a hunch, I suggested that we videotape their discussions so I could take a closer look at the dynamics of their interaction. We made three tapes in all. For the first one, I proposed that they play a game called The NASA Moon Shot Problem, in which two people rank in order a set of items needed for survival on a trip to the moon.
Here, the couple shined. They had a lively, productive discussion, filled with lots of laughs. They got superb scores for cooperation and problem solving.
But perhaps more important, their affection for one another was palpable. Clearly, this was the pair who had met years ago and fallen in love. With the second tape, however, the harmony faded. I asked them to discuss a major problem in their marriage, and before long, they were back to bickering, pouting, whining, feeling angry and bitter.
The third session, which they recorded on an audiotape at home, was even worse. They rehashed the same issues over and over again. Each time they got anywhere near a solution, one of them inevitably would sabotage the process. When the tape finally ended, Bob and Wendy were exhausted and full of despair. I watched and listened to these tapes over and over again.
Then I listened to them with Bob and Wendy. I asked them to tell me what they were thinking and feeling at certain critical or puzzling moments in the conversation. What I detected hidden beneath their seemingly trivial skirmishes was a rich and painful history of unresolved issues concerning his need for autonomy and her need to feel valued by him. But, also like so many distressed couples, their communication had become distorted. The recurring episodes scared both of them.
Still, Bob and Wendy were committed to saving their marriage and they had gained insights about their interactions from our work together. Determined to find better ways to express their needs to one another, they worked hard in therapy. When I last saw them some twenty years ago, they seemed to be on track toward a more stable relationship. And, thanks in part to their willingness to help me with this videotaped experiment, I was on a new track as well. I was determined to find out why some marriages fall apart while other marriages thrive.
I felt that a better understanding of the destructive interactions that lead to divorce might help save couples who feel trapped in a downward spiral of hostility and bitterness. This was uncharted territory in the early s, a time when divorce rates were already soaring. There was a plethora of psychological theories about how to fix broken marriages. But preventing divorce can be compared to preventing heart disease. The same could be said for treating the heartbreak of a marriage in distress.
But this sound, systematic research had not been conducted among divorced and stable couples, to tease out the differences between them. Trained as a mathematician and a research psychologist, I decided to take such an approach. Using scientific methods, I would observe the conversations of husbands and wives, distilling out of the mists and confusions of anger, frustration, and isolation the differences that lead some couples to stay married and others to divorce.
Two decades later, this strategy has reaped an enormous reward. For the first time we can name with precision the subtle early warning signs of a troubled marriage, and tell you how to put these insights to good use, setting your own marriage on the right track and keeping it there for years to come.
My laboratory conducts what amounts to the most intensive studies of couples interacting ever attempted, something akin to an X ray or CAT scan of a living relationship. My research teams have compared, microsecond to microsecond, how couples talk to one another. Do unstable couples express more sarcasm or contempt in these situations than stable couples? Do they breathe harder? Do they find it more difficult to listen? And what about discrepancies in the way couples describe the history of their relationships?
Does it make any difference if he recalls she wore yellow the first time he saw her? Does it matter whether they laugh when they reminisce about hard times?
What we have found is that all of this matters. To use the heart disease analogy again, preventing heart attacks requires an ability to predict the events leading up to the crisis: plaque formation on arteries, high blood pressure, chest pain, and so on. Divorce prevention requires this same foresight. In doing so, we have been able to predict with startling accuracy which couples will stay together and which couples will split.
That remains the highest prediction rate ever achieved by a scientific study on marriage! The predictions of marital outcome in my research were arrived at after about twenty hours of direct laboratory observation and contact with each couple, and even then the predictions were not perfect.
Many couples who at one point in marriage have difficulties are able to find their way to a stable, satisfying marriage. But being aware that specific patterns and interactions in your marriage are part of a process that leads to divorce—and knowing how to reverse those patterns—may indeed help you back away from that slippery slope. I do so with some hesitation because I know that my research is not yet finished; the dynamics of marriage are complex and I feel we have much to explore.
Still, we have learned a tremendous amount from comparing how couples treat each other in thriving and failing relationships. I hope that by sharing our insights with you, we can help you improve your marriage today, and help it last through many tomorrows. Over the years, plenty of theories have attempted to explain the underlying cause of the surge in divorce. Looked at together, these explanations point to a weakening of the social threads that keep marriages intact.
If you are currently married or planning to marry, what you most want to know is how to avoid falling on the sad side of the statistics. Take the money myth, for example. Some figures show that if you have financial difficulties you are twice as susceptible to divorce. But many couples with low incomes stay together. In his book, Children of the Great Depression , G. Elder, Jr. Open navigation menu.
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Difficulty Beginner Intermediate Advanced. Explore Documents. Cancel anytime. Start your free 30 days Read preview. Released: Dec 11, ISBN: Format: Book. Psychologist John Gottman has spent twenty years studying what makes a marriage last.
Now you can use his tested methods to evaluate, strengthen, and maintain your own long-term relationship. This breakthrough book guides you through a series of self-tests designed to help you determine what kind of marriage you have, where your strengths and weaknesses are, and what specific actions you can take to help your marriage.
You'll also learn that more sex doesn't necessarily improve a marriage, frequent arguing will not lead to divorce, financial problems do not always spell trouble in a relationship, wives who make sour facial expressions when their husbands talk are likely to be separated within four years and there is a reason husbands withdraw from arguments—and there's a way around it.
Gottman teaches you how to recognize attitudes that doom a marriage—contempt, criticism, defensiveness, and stonewalling—and provides practical exercises, quizzes, tips, and techniques that will help you understand and make the most of your relationship. You can avoid patterns that lead to divorce, and— Why Marriages Succeed or Fail will show you how. About the author.
Read more. What Makes Love Last? Related Books. Why Him? Why Her? Related Podcast Episodes. Dave discusses the importance of relationships, providing value to people, and the Ratio rule of thumb to go by.
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