Starting Out Together: The First Few Years of Marriage

The story is told of a Buddhist woman just arrived from Asia who fell in love with a young American student. They impulsively decided to elope. They went to the home of a local Episcopalian priest and asked him to officiate right there in the living room. The priest agreed, got out his prayer book and began the traditional vows, which the Buddhist woman had never heard before. "Do you," he asked the groom, "take this woman for better or for worse, through sickness and health, in good times or bad, whether she be . . ."

"Stop" the bride said, interrupting the priest. "Don’t say any more. If you keep going, you will talk him right out of it!"

In the United States Rabbis, ministers and priests officiate at 80 percent of all weddings. I myself have officiated at more than a thousand weddings. As the couple stands before us, we wonder if they will stay together.

People often say that half the couples in the United States divorce. This is not true. The demographics of divorce are routinely reported wrong, calculated wrong or misinterpreted. It is true that for every two marriages that occurred in the 1990s, there was one divorce. However, this does not mean that the divorce rate is 50%, because the people getting married in a single year are not the same ones getting divorced. In truth, the divorce rate peaked in the United States in 1978. That year there were 23 divorces for every 1,000 women in the United States over the age of 15. This statistic is the most accurate indicator of the rate of divorce. In recent years the divorce rate has declined. In the year 2000 their were 20 divorces for every 1,000 women over the age of 15.

To lower the number of divorces, many religious leaders put their faith in pre-martial counseling. But what advice should clergy give to young couples?

A popular premarital counseling program is called PREPARE. It is based on the research of David Olson of the University of Minnesota. Dr. Olson trains clergy to give couples a quiz of 195 questions. Dr. Olson has followed couples after they take his test and established that the test is 80 percent accurate in predicting whether a couple will stay together or break up. I have not been trained in Dr. Olson’s program, but I understand that clergy are trained not to tell couples who fail the test that they have an 80 percent chance of breaking up. Instead the clergy points out the areas the couple needs to work on and encourages them to seek additional counseling. Here are some samples from the quiz. Each person in the relationship marks; strongly disagree, disagree, undecided, agree, or strongly agree to a series of statements such as:

These are the types of questions that some clergy ask couples to answer and discuss before the cleric agrees to officiate at their wedding.

Personally I do not requiring such premarital counseling. In my experience most couples who are getting married are not at a teachable moment in the days and weeks before their marriage. Only a few couples whose weddings I have officiated at actively seek out premarital counseling. These couples are receptive to learning and they are excellent candidates for counseling. I believe effective counseling of couples is a skill that requires years of training and practice. Therefore, when couples ask for premarital counseling I refer them to full-time therapists.

Occasionally young couples do ask me for my advice on relationships. They are not looking for a referral to a therapist, and they are not asking for a long term counseling relationship. They just want one or two words of wisdom from the minister officiating at the celebration of their relationship. They want a sentence or two that they can easily remember and can help them through the hard times. What should I say?

Most advice on relationships comes from personal experiences—the intuitions, the hunches of the speaker. I can for example, give advice based on my parents’ marriage, my own marriage and the other marriages I have seen in my life. This may be interesting and valuable, but it is based on my limited experience.

Hoping to be more helpful, I have looked at some of the studies that have tried to discover what makes for a happy marriage. For example, I found one study that is based on 21,501 married couples. What are the top strengths reported by couples? Ninety-eight percent say they feel very close to each other. This does not feel like useful information to pass on to a couple in a newly committed relationship. More interesting are the top stumbling blocks for married couples. The number one problem that ninety-three percent checked was "We have problems sharing leadership together." Closely related was the number two problem: eighty seven percent said that "My partner is sometimes too stubborn."

This is data on which I might base my words of wisdom. In committed relationships, couples report that they have problems sharing leadership together and they find that their partner is sometimes too stubborn, so I can say to couples "share leadership and be flexible."

I looked for more in depth studies. I found a researcher who has done more than simply have couples fill out questionnaires. Starting in 1980 Dr. John Gottman has conducted extensive research on why relationships succeed or fail. He has studied both heterosexual and homosexual couples. A couple who agrees to be part of his study fills out a questionnaire about their relationship. Next they are asked to sit in a room in chairs designed to measure how much each person wiggles when they talk to each other. Two video cameras film every visible movement from the waist up. Their heart rate is tracked. Sensors are clipped to each person’s ear lobes to tell how fast blood is flowing from their hearts to their extremities. Microphones capture every sound each person utters.

For fifteen minutes a couple discusses an area of disagreement. When fifteen minutes pass, a researcher sets up a screen blocking the couple’s view of each other. Next they watched a split-screen image of the conversation that had just transpired. Using a dial that turns 180 degrees from "positive" to "neutral" to "negative" the couple watched the video twice. The first time, they rated their own feelings at the time the conversation unfolded, how positive or negative they felt moment to moment. The second time they used the dial to guess how their partner was feeling minute by minute. Later the same tape was viewed by psychologists trained to analyze the emotional content of people’s words. After the couples were videotaped they were tracked over years to see if they stayed together.

Combining data collected from hundreds of couples over many years, Dr. Gottman reached certain conclusions about what makes for a successful relationship. His basic conclusion is that a lasting relationship results from a couple’s ability to resolve conflicts. The research shows that:

A couple must have at least five times as many positive as negative moments together, if their relationship is to be stable.

Put another way, in a stable relationship, couples spend less than 17 percent of their time together in conflicts. If you spend six hours a day together, you should spend no more then one of those hours fighting. If you take a six day vacation together, you should spend an average of only one of those six days upset with each other. If your conflicts drag on for a week, to have a stable relationship you should have one week of conflict and five weeks of getting along with each other.

As long as there is five times as much positive feeling and interaction between two people as there is negative, the relationship is likely to be stable. Volatile couples can yell and scream at each other, but if they spend five times as much of their relationship making up and being loving, they are likely to stay together. Quieter, conflict avoiding couples may fight by not talking to one another. Still, if they maintain the 5 to 1 ratio of loving instead of sulking, they stay together.

The researchers found that if there is no conflict in the relationship at all, the relationship is likely to become unstable and lead to a separation. For a relationship to have real staying power, couples need to air their differences. Conflict and loving are like an ecosystem. When conflict and loving are in balance, the relationship thrives. When they get too far out of balance the relationship dies.

What causes couples to have more fighting than the 5 to 1 ratio? Conversations where persons attack each other’s personality or character, rather than a specific behavior lead to more conflict. To oversimplify, "I-statements" such as "I don’t like to be the one who always does the dishes" generally do not escalate conflict. "You-statements" such as "You are a lazy bum because you never do the dishes" tend to increase the amount of conflict.

Dr. Gottman discovered from his video tapes that couples in happy relationships use phrases and actions during an argument that prevent negativity from spiraling out of control. Conciliatory words and gestures act as a glue that helps to hold the marriage together during tense times. They include simply nodding or saying "I see" or saying "you are really upset," or saying "I hear what you are saying" (or if you have been together a long time, "I hear what you are about to say"—just kidding). Choosing to have a positive mind set about your partner and reintroducing praise and admiration into your relationship keeps the conflict under control.

When couples do not use these gestures or words to soften the fight, one or both of the people in the relationship eventually feel overwhelmed by their partner’s negativity. Dr. Gottman calls this feeling being "flooded." His research indicates that on average men become flooded, become overwhelmed, more often than women. When a person’s heart rate reaches 100 beats per minute, adrenaline is secreted in large doses. It is impossible to think straight when our blood is pumping furiously and our heart is racing. No rational conversation is possible. Dr. Gottman suggests that couples agree, that in an argument either should have the right to ask for a break so that they can calm down. It takes the average person about 20 minutes to calm down after a flood of adrenaline.

Looking at the content of the arguments recorded on tape, Dr. Gottman feels that men can help resolve a lot of arguments by accepting that housework and child care are not a woman’s exclusive domain. He has also discovered in his research that men who do more housework and child care report having better sex lives. Furthermore, he found a direct correlation between how much housework a man does and the likelihood that he will be physically more healthy four years later.

Dr. Gottman concludes by saying his research shows that the happiest, most stable couples are those who accept that all relationships—and all partners—have their limitations. Couples who accept each other’s limitations tend to stay together and remain happy.

Many of the couples whose weddings I have officiated at hope that their partner will fill their life with romance, excitement and laughter. They hope that their marriage will result in personal fulfillment. I wonder, what advice should I give them?

If they ask for a few words of wisdom, a few words from the minister they have asked to officiate at their wedding, I say something like this.

Everyone has some conflicts in their relationships. When you find yourself disagreeing, arguing, angry at each other, remember that this is a part of being together, and if it does not happen too often it can actually help your relationship. And try to remember even in the middle of a disagreement the feelings for each other that led you to join together in love.

I doubt that they will remember any of it.

I do save three words for the wedding itself. After the bride has walked down the aisle, joining the groom, and the two of them have turned to face me, the minister, I whisper to the two of them: "You look beautiful!" And I open my little black book to begin the wedding service.

* * * * * * * * *

Sources:

Gottman, John, Why Marriages Succeed or Fail Simon & Schuster, New York, New York, 1994.

More information about PREPARE can be found at http://www.lifeinnovations.com/

Data on top marital strengths: http://www.lifeinnovations.com/newsletter/2000_nov.pdf

Divorce Rates in the US: http://missourifamilies.org/features/divorcearticles/divorcefeature17.htm

Cedar Lane Unitarian Universalist Church
9601 Cedar Lane, Bethesda, Maryland 20814-4099
Tel: 301-493-8300    Fax: 301-897-5713
e-mail: office@CedarLane.org
Sunday Services at 10 a.m.
© 1998-2008, Cedar Lane Unitarian Universalist Church
Webminister