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Friendship: The Secret to a Long-Lasting Marriage
"Friendship fuels the flames of romance because it offers the best protection against feeling adversarial toward your spouse" (Gottman & Silver, 2015, p. 22).
I'm pretty sure all of you out there know of some cute, older couples who can't seem to get enough of each other. You may have seen them on YouTube videos, walking down the street, seated next to each other in a restaurant, or you may know some personally and visit them often. Personally, I find these couples to be inspiring. They know how to laugh with each other, they know how to play with each other, and they still flirt with one another even after decades of being married to one another. It's adorable! After hearing how long they have been married, people will often ask, "What's your secret?" I don't know about you, but one of the answers I hear the most often is, "We're friends!"
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Now, it wasn't modeled for me growing up what friendship in marriage is supposed to look like. I know several other married couples with at least one of the spouses who grew up without great relationship models. We are all trying to figure out for ourselves how to keep the friendship with our spouses strong. This week, I learned of several ways to help cultivate friendship in marriage. The first thing you need to do is to build a sound, trusting relationship. According to Dr. John Gottman and Nan Silver (2015), leading researchers on how to make marriages last, enduring marriages have adopted these attitudes:
- the couple assumes the best about each other and their relationship
- when disagreeing, they acknowledge one another's perspective to some extent
- they are attuned to each other's emotions (if one spouse feels sad, the other spouse feels sad that their loved one is unhappy)
- they empathize with one another
- they have a high degree of trust (p. 24-25).
Now, most of us are not naturals at possessing these attitudes in our relationships. Most people need to work to adopt them and integrate them into the fabric of their relationships until we can do them consistently For this author, it is comforting to know that I am not the only one who had to learn how to adopt these attitudes. My husband and I still have our times when our friendship seems to take a backseat to stroking our individual egos, but, slowly and steadily, we are learning where the bad habits are in our relationship and
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Criticism: criticism is different from voicing a complaint such as, "I am annoyed that you didn't take out the garbage last night.
We agreed that if I swept the floor, you would take out the garbage. Would you do it now, please." A complaint generally has three parts: "(1) Here is how I feel . . . , (2) about a very specific situation . . . , (3) And here's what I need/want/prefer" (p. 32-33). A criticism is more general and attacks the other person's personality or character (p. 33), "What's the matter with you? We agreed that you would take out the garbage last night once I swept the floor. You have no consideration for my feelings at all!"
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Contempt: A form of disrespect. It comes across in snide or sarcastic remarks, name-calling, eye-rolling, mockery, and hostile humor. Each of these is meant to belittle the
other person and make yourself seem superior (p. 34). An interesting thing that Gottman and Silver brought up about this particular "Horseman" is that this one can actually erode the immune system of the person being disrespected, which makes the person more prone to infectious disease (p. 36). Yikes! So, if your significant other seems to be getting sick all the time, you may want to look out for instances where you might be using this horseman.
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Defensiveness: "The problem is not me, it's you." It's assigning blame in the relationship. The problem with using this tactic is that it rarely has the desired effect. Instead, the other person will only start becoming defensive as well and the argument escalates (p. 36-37).
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Stonewalling: This is the "horseman" where one or both partners become emotionally overwhelmed to the point where they simply shut down and refuse to either listen, look at,
or talk to the other person. The person may even leave the room or hang up the phone to escape. This is a problem because this causes the person to want to avoid the marriage and the person they see as an antagonizer (p. 38-39). It's better to ask for a break for a few minutes to calm down before continuing the discussion (this is known as a rescue tatic). You can also try using some humor in the form of an inside joke. Interestingly, this "horseman" occurs more often with men than with women because they get emotionally flooded far easier than women (p. 39-40).
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There are a few things you can do to combat these "horsemen" and get your friendship on track. We will go over each of these things in the future, but, for now, try to identify where you might be using the "four horsemen" in your relationship. Also, begin asking for help from the Lord to help you with identifying these tactics and where they are coming from.
For now, here are some final thoughts:
"Jesus' infinite grace and goodness can conquer our smallness, selfishness, and peevishness. There is no arena of life where this conquest is more needed than in the scuffing and irritations of marriage. Marriage is perfectly designed to provoke us to desperation. It will sometimes leave us injured and half dead [like the man robbed in Jesus' parable of the Good Samaritan]. Priests and Levites--or therapists and advisors--will not ultimately rescue us. They may give us helpful pointers, but they cannot change our souls" (Goddard, 2009, p. 33).
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The other piece of advice I will leave you with is to have an awareness of the ratio of positive tactics needed to overcome a negative tactic. According to Dr. John Gottman (2007), that ratio is five-to-one; five positive things such as "interest, asking questions, being nice to one another, being kind, being affectionate, [and] being empathetic" (Gottman, 2007) for every one negative thing such as criticism, hostility, anger, [and] hurt feelings" (Gottman, 2007).
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Friendship in marriage is typically something most couples need to consistently work on in order to build each other up and build trust. Beware of the marriage-destroying "Four Horsemen". Keep track of your interactions this week and see where you can make improvements (remember, you are not alone in having to make such changes, so don't belittle yourself if you find that you have been using the "four horsemen" tactics). Remember that the magic ratio of five positive things is needed for every negative thing in a healthy relationship. Invite Christ into your relationship. Through the power of the atonement, Christ can heal the wounds of your marriage as you and your spouse learn to overcome the bad habits that erode friendship.
References:
Goddard, W. H., Ph.D. (2009). Drawing heaven into your marriage. Cedar Hills, UT: Joymap Publishing.
Gottman, J. M., Ph.D. [BetterLifeCoaches]. (13 Mar. 2007). John Gottman: The magic relationship ratio [Video File]. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xw9SE315GtA
Gottman, J. M., Ph.D., & Silver, Nan. (2015). The seven principles for making marriage work. New York: Harmony Books.
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