Masters of Love: Lasting relationships come down to kindness, generosity (2014)
theatlantic.com
theatlantic.com
> Every day from as early as I can remember, they were clearly and obviously in love with each other. Even after 50 years of marriage they were still acting like two teenagers going steady. They always supported each other in everything they did or tried to do. They "had each other's backs" at all times.
> I have spent my life trying to find that same kind of relationship - and haven't been able to.
> They unknowingly set the bar too high, I guess.
Like Richard, my parents had an essentially perfect marriage for 18 years until my mother passed away from cancer. They never fought. Ever. They were truly each other's best friend. I guess as a kid I just assumed that all marriages were like that since I didn't grow up knowing otherwise.
My biggest dream in life had always been to have a marriage like theirs. My own marriage just passed the one year mark, and unfortunately it has been a disaster so far. I'm crushed in so many ways, and it's really just taken the spirit out of me. I hope we can fix it (with counseling) but I'm not sure if we can truly ever recover; I have too much resentment over what has been said and done to me at this point.
It's also common for parents to hide their fighting from their kids. Unfortunately, this also hides how they resolve conflict so we have to learn that later in life. Relationships are not about fixing the perfect match that is in alignment with your wants and desires, but about finding someone who will help you grow. It sounds like your partner has introduced you to conflict and conflict resolution which sucks in the moment, but if you can make it through and grow from it will help with your relationship or any future ones you pursue.
The goal is not to never fight; it's to always fight fair. Sounds like your parents didn't show you how to do that — which is too bad, if they themselves knew, because most people don't. In any case, you now need to learn how, and any relationship you're in is a great place to start.
If you reach a point where you know you're fighting fair but your spouse isn't, and doesn't seem to care that they're not, that's a reasonable time to give up on the relationship.
Reread everdev's reply too — it's really good. Good luck!
Buying into this argument that "every couple fight sometimes" is why so many people never eliminate fights from their relationships, because they think it's normal and so never put the effort into bettering themselves and addressing the root causes of problems so that fights don't reoccur. It's much easier to treat fights as inevitable than work on improving one's own self-control, compassion and empathy.
I’m not saying that is an excuse for fighting unfairly or being hurtful. But my wife, my parents, and my (step)sons are the only people I have a deep emotional connection to that I won’t separate myself from awhile if they get on my nerves.
Self-control and compassion don't make disagreement or bad feelings over important things disappear. They are still present. The "never fight" relationships (not just marriage, but also friendships) are either "we do things as separately as possible" or one of the two ceased to talk about his or her issues. The latter are then "I had not idea partner is unhappy and bam shock divorce" situations.
The easiest way how to keep calm is not to care. It does not have to be screaming match, but if you never disagree about things like child raising, it is likely that one did checked out.
If both partners disagree about a core value (and no mutually agreeable compromise is possible), the rational thing to do is either separate or for one party to accept the disagreement and move on. Repeatedly arguing about something serves absolutely no purpose, as there's extremely little chance of one party changing the other's mind this way (as is the case for angry arguments in general). As the Einstein quote goes, the definition of insanity is doing the same thing again and again but expecting a different result.
Stress and sleep deprivation indeed make this more difficult, but these are things that can be eliminated, if not easily: case study, people who aren't sleep derived or stressed (everybody's probably met at least one).
>Self-control and compassion don't make disagreement or bad feelings over important things disappear.
Compassion and empathy make it easier to see why other people feel/think about a matter in a particular way, and hence easier to sympathise with their point of view, which in turn reduces bad feelings about it. Self-control helps us not get angry about things we've accepted (if we haven't chosen to separate, and can't convince our partner to accept our view, then we've implicitly accepted them having their view), as we can make our brain see how silly/irrational it is to get angry about something we've agreed to, reducing bad feelings.
> It does not have to be screaming match, but if you never disagree about things like child raising, it is likely that one did checked out.
I agree disagreement is practically unavoidable, but a disagreement need not become a fight. Getting angry is a terrible way to resolve disagreements. People manage to disagree about things they care about at work without getting physically angry, as they know getting angry will probably harm their case.
I have seen enough angry collegues to know that people in fact don't manage to not be angry in work. Plenty of them angry without being abusive or toxic for the record, but clearly pissed and venting or yelling.
Anger is feeling, it is not rational, compassion and listening don't stop it. Self control is about what you do, not what you feel.
Repeated discussions make sense and can bring you two closer over time. Bit by bit. Can make you two learn to live with difference. That quote is not true. I am very glad I did not divorced first time serious difference arose.
To some extent I think we're just using the words differently. What I would say is that a fight doesn't have to get ugly. It's still a fight, though, if one person wants one thing to happen in the relationship, and the other wants something different to happen; it's more than just a factual disagreement — it requires resolution. This may be a matter of one person recognizing that they're being self-centered and backing down, or it may require both people pressing their arguments until a compromise or, better, a creative resolution is found. A fight doesn't require shouting, but it may require saying "I'm angry about this".
Compassion and empathy are critical for fighting well, but they don't eliminate the need to fight, on occasion. Nor do fights have to be about the same things over and over — they do tend to be repetitive, though, when people fight dirty, as nothing is ever really resolved.
You missed one more option: "we can discuss a problem without involving emotions or clinging to our opinions too much".
After all, you are marrying real independent person not a clone.
Also, it is true that when you dont involve emotions in relationship, problem solving is easier. However, that situation describes more work relationship then lifetime partner relationship. We are supposed to be emotionally invested in the whole marriage thing.
On the contrary, it's more important to be able to reconsider your strong opinions.
> It is harder to move away from what you consider right in ethical sense
Why marry if your ethics are different?
> what is important for your self respect
Unless it's an abusive relationship, I can't imagine a situation where the self respect can be involved. Usually it's just the ego whining about getting what it wants and disguising it as "self respect".
> We are supposed to be emotionally invested in the whole marriage thing.
There's a wide spectrum of emotions but most of them aren't required in a relationship. As the OP's article says, focus on kindness and appreciation.
Is this meant to be demostration or rational kind non-emotional solution to dis agreement? Because on the face of it, you simply tried to insult fictional partner. Sure, partner is less likely to argue if you label his demands this way. It won't actually solve the problem however and over time he will figure out what you are doing.
It won't lead to appreciation through, more like resentment and anger.
> There's a wide spectrum of emotions but most of them aren't required in a relationship. As the OP's article says, focus on kindness and appreciation.
You partner will not appreciate if you ignore his negative emotions. Or mock them as above. For one, it is not kind. For the other, he or she will have to look for support elsewhere.
You can have illusion of kindness if you mock partner for not being perfect match to you or if you split first time serious real disagreement happen. Or if you never marry because by the time you know everything about partner to be absolutely certain you two agree about everything including situations you have never been through, you two about to retire.
The problems you're describing do not arise at all when both partners keep their egos in bay and strive for kindness.
If you're with someone you trust, you inherently respect his/her POV. For some, this causes disagreements to boil into violent outrages. They feel an attack on that trust. For others, they take a step back and say, 'This is someone I trust with my life. Either he/she or I am missing something somewhere.'
How exactly do you have no emotions in a marriage disagreement? Most arguments are about emotions. No one argues about things they aren’t emotional about (unless it’s a proxy argument for something they are emotional about).
And you cannot divorce emotions completely from the things that cause them. This is absurd, and akin to saying that someone with a phobia should just rationally analyze it and the problem will go away.
I’ve always preferred a more relaxed and methodical approach to “fights,” which makes them more like solution focused discussions, and my most recent ex seemed to expect to scream at each other before we could get to the bottom of the issue. It reminded me of the Monty Python bartering sketch. Why cause hurt if you both want to solve a problem?
Feelings will be expressed whether you like it or not, so it's better to say "I'm fucking mad!" about this than to have an argument four hours later about who doesn't put the cap on the toothpaste back on properly.
At least one don't. We had fights in the beginning but more than 10 years later there are none. The recipe is staying aware of the ego's childish behavior, so both of you can stop and think instead of trying to have it your way or being afraid to look silly.
And it must be reciprocated.
If you are in a relationship where there is no way to get that, and counselling isn’t helping enough, the future will most likely be bleak: full of accrued resentment, feelings of being trapped that get worse as time goes by, bitterness and pettiness will rule your life.
People always hope that things will get better and if the relationship is worth it, it’s essential to fight to overcome the struggles, but if there is no foundation of kindness, I’m convinced the only outcome is misery.
We shouldn’t stay with someone out of fear of being alone.
What complicates gratitude in my opinion is our expectation and how we value different acts of kindness. In large parts of Africa women are still expected do the cooking. It is easy for a man to think that task is her duty anyway so no need to be thankful. I think this is where problems start. You are absolutely right, we should be grateful first for the people in our lives.
I say this because when kids are small, they stress the hell out out their parents.
And that stress often turns into arguments. Little sleep, and endless menial tasks like cleaning poop does that even to people who never had any issues before. As the kids get older, there's less of the drudgery and the kids end up being more interesting. Less pressure on the relationship, and a huge relief as you slowly realise you've wiped your last poop. As stress recedes, kids are getting older and forming positive memories.
Also remember survivorship bias. If you have a fight and get divorced before you have kids, there won't be any kids around to remember your happy marriage.
But if you look at us now, you would think we are the perfect couple and our marriage is a well oiled machine . It took four years for us to get there.
Our sons saw this first hand and were old enough to know what was going on. But if their earliest memories were us four to seven years into our marriage, out of the financial jams that we were both in when we got married, etc. Thier perspectives on how easy a great marriage is would be completely different.
If I look at my parents marriage growing up, I would have idealized it too. My parents have been married for close to 50 years and together for almost 60 - they were high school sweethearts. By the time I was born, they had already been together for 14 years.
In my opinion, just like a job, there is only so much willpower and motivation you have. It’s a finite resource. A person that you are
1) Sexually attracted to
2) Emotionally connected with
3) Makes you happy by just being themselves
Will make you happy and motivated to work things out, and vice versa.
Saying it’s a skill is like saying working at a frustrating job for decades is a skill. Sure but why not find one you actually are happy to come to every day?
The actual problem in today’s society is how much we expect from what we see is possible, versus how POOR matchmaking is today when you are single!
Traditional societies have this all over the planet!
Who wants to switch to such a file system? :)
The idea that you need to find the perfect match, be totally yourself all the time and spend no effort making compromises is toxic. You’ll never have those expectations met.
Assuming people don’t really change, if each day you have 2x as many negative possibilities to deal with, that compounds. And similarly if you have 2x as many positive things like a smile vicerally lighting up your world. You want to minimize the former and maximize the latter before you get married!
There's always plenty of gossip in the news about rich people with bad marriages, infidelity, repeated divorce and remarriage etc.
Though I imagine serious poverty doesn't generally improve a relationship.
They were already together for a few years when he almost went under with one of his companies, on the verge of losing millions of euros (and most of his capital at the time), and she helped turn it around by helping out as much as she could.
Wealth however does make it possible to keep your lifestyle "fun" -- they travel frequently to interesting locations (a long trip every 3-4 months, sometimes with and sometimes without the kids)
As far as true love goes, it sure seems like that is what they have.
The problem had something to do with missing kindness and generosity, but those were just the symptoms.
The reasons were unmet expectations.
The problem with expectations is, you just have them and don't necessarily know how to articulate them. Often you don't even know that you have them.
So you are in a relationship, don't say what you really want, because you don't know it, or feel shame for it etc., and then you start to lose interest in your partner because they don't give you the right thing. Then you become unkind and your partner leaves you.
When we first started working together we got in a lot of fights and put our relationship at risk. We realized that we had to figure it out or our relationship would break.
Around the same time this happened, we were incredibly lucky to have attended a free workshop called Founder's Communication (done free by innerspace.org highly highly recommended for anyone in a long term committed relationship, not just founders) which opened up our eyes and helped us improve our communication to the point where we realized that almost without exception, our arguments and fights were triggered by things that had nothing to do with what we were arguing about.
We discovered that "99%" of the time, the cause of our fights were that we were hungry, sleepy, in pain, or worse, a combination of any of those. Then we first started getting in the habit of trying to pause fights as early as possible and ask each other/ourselves if we were hungry, sleepy or in pain, then if either of us was, we would try to address the issue first (get some rest, food or comfort). Then we realized, why not prevent these things altogether? We could easily plan to avoid hunger and sleepiness, pain is harder but also a lot more unusual.
Now we are so aware of this stuff that we hardly ever fight, and whenever we end up saying something bad/mean in the heat of the moment, we are able to understand that we didn't really mean it, forgive ourselves quickly and move on.
As a side note, this is really just an application of the realization researchers have made, that verbal communication only conveys a small fraction of what we are trying to say, the rest is all body language. Watch out about thinking too much of the meaning of what anyone has said to you. Highly recommend reading the book The Charisma Myth by Olivia Fox.
You also need to be aware of how that overlaps with you being hungry/sleepy and try to address it in the best way. It's so easy to get angry at your kids just because they got cranky at an inconvenient time for you.
At the same time, at this stage of their lives, I believe kids should experience some stress/frustration/pain to know how it feels and learn how to deal with it. Very important life skill.
Isn't this the most natural feeling in all animals. It is ok to be hungry, most people all over the world don't think of hunger as a feeling to be avoided at all costs.
Being hungry is ok.
It can also be used in your favor, for example there was some research about the severity of sentences relative to the time of day. What they found out is that judges are more lenient (give out lesser sentences) at the beginning of the day (right after breakfast) and right after lunch - the opposite was true as well, the harshest sentences were given right before lunch and by the end of the day.
Several startup teams have said to have used this when scheduling their YC interviews. It would be amazing if the YC teams could share acceptance rates based on this info.
But I was concerned that eliminating a natural feeling will also eliminate benefits associated with both for mind and body.
I grew up poor in third world country and eating constantly was not a thing and being hungry was as natural as being sweaty. In rich countries you never get practice dealing with hunger, you never get a chance to make peace with in recognize it as a valid feeling. People never leave house without a snack in their bag.
If that's true, and I can imagine it may hold some weight, it is a depressing reality we live in.
Fighting doesn't help, it only aggravates the situation and deteriorates relationships over time. Try to avoid it whenever possible. The techniques on my previous comment are just one way for doing that, there are others as well.
I'll add my own conjecture: the root problem is that this hypothetical couple you describe (who is more common than many would like to admit) are both settling.
They are settling because they didn't take marriage seriously earlier in their lives. They didn't take marriage seriously because society stopped forcing them to do so. And nature also didn't force them to either, thanks to birth control.
These aren't individuals at fault here - these are systemic incentives warping previously traditional behavior.
So then this couple got into their 30s, which isn't young, as the decades are not created equal. And they realized - oh shit, better actually try figuring out how to have a family, lest we live alone and with limited meaning for the latter 40 years of life. Seriously - what are people thinking that they'll be happy being single into their 40s and beyond?
Here's a sad truth: most people will get a decent, but not super meaningful job. There can only be so many entrepreneurs and rockstars. So from ages 35 onwards, you better be set up to have a family and create something that will provide you meaning for Act II of life, because it's quite long.
Maybe the systemic issue is that people who are reaching their 30s often feel pressured by their social group to get married and thus believe their lives are meaningless without that ring or child validating its purpose.
Phase 1 - 20s. Graduated from college, moved from my small city to a larger metro area, went through some physical issues while at the same time trying to establish my career. It was a lonely time. I had one or two female friends who I would hang out with occasionally but they were both in the “friend zone” (one by mutual choice and one no shared attraction).
Phase 2: late 20s, early 30s. Got married just because I was lonely and all of the warning signs were there before we got married. It was an equally lonely marriage, with no love and I started spending a lot of time pursuing working side hobbies to ignore the problem.
Phase 3: early to mid 30s. Divorced. I had a more active social life, lots of friends, fun hobbies, no serious relationships. It was better and more fulfilling than the first time around but still there was something missing coming to a big house in the evening and being alone.
Phase 4a - mid 30s to 40. Started dating my now wife. Our marriage was really on the rocks. We were both older, set in our ways and dealing with the financial repercussions of our former marriages and in my case, my failed real estate side business. It wasn’t lonely but it was unstable.
Phase 4b. We both worked out our former issues and as we got through our previous financial issues things are a lot less stressful. We have what I consider a pretty good marriage.
I don’t care what anyone says. Having money solves a lot of issues. There are a lot more “ands” than “ors” - we don’t have to argue about doing this or that - we can do both.
It’s scary, but I can’t imagine having a fulfilling life without being able to come home and having someone to share my life, my victories, my defeats, and just share life with.
Yes but the essence of a relationship is how problems get solved. You are avoiding the problems! That's cheating, but if you got the cash, all power to you!, just hope you guys don't disagree at some point, because cash doesn't solve EVERYTHING :)
I was both trying to dig my way out of the disaster of what was my real estate side business and trying to get my career back on track. I had a five year plan to do it. My wife and I discussed this before we got married. But talking through it in practice and living through it, is entirely different. I never gave her any reason not to trust me, but I didn’t “have a resume.” She trusted me intellectually but not emotionally while we were going through.
5 years, 4 jobs, $45K more in salary and a nice house in the burbs later. I’ve built a resume. This time around with 5 years under our belt, she has a lot more confidence in my leadership (for lack of a better word).
When you are in your mid 30s and you are your second marriage (we both are) no matter how positive you are, you can’t help but to be a little more jaded starting out and you both have a lot to prove. It took a lot more of a leap of faith on her part to believe all of the things I was telling her and a lot more faith on my side that she would be thier through thick and thin.
When you are in your thirties getting married, there is a lot more practicality and lot less looking through rose colored glasses.it took us both almost a decade to recover from our previous divorce. Neither one of us were willing to risk that happening again. We prioritize our marriage before anything else.
Aside from that, what is it from that we must be "prevail", exactly? If you are suggesting the continuation of our species, I might remind you that our global population is steadily increasing.
That doesn't mean I have to participate if I'd rather live my life in a different way. I have no desire to be a parent, or to produce children to satisfy a biological imperative.
True.
> Its our kids that matter.
If you and I don't matter, neither do the kids.
>And with this mentality humanity will prevail. If we loose sight of this humanity will eventually not.
This also doesn't matter.
Yes, for the vast majority of people. There may be exceptions. There may also be a lot of coping behavior necessary to live without what you could have had.
> Maybe the systemic issue is that people who are reaching their 30s often feel pressured by their social group to get married and thus believe their lives are meaningless without that ring or child validating its purpose.
There is less pressure than ever, given the "freedom" and "free love" everyone is expected to have in their teens and 20s. The pressure in the 30s is that real-life realism coming to crash down. And again, I would argue this is even less as there are less marriages and less childbirths to citizens in the developed worlds (to which my comments apply), so therefore even less relative pressure than in the past.
But of course that's just people for whom I have the data, very small sample.
There is a huge gaping chasm between the family mentality of the western world and the rest.
> Statistics show that feminists with multiple partners have a very high chance of divorce and lifetime alimony paid by a man
They are not kind and understanding at each other at that time. They are settling into roles without talking about whether they like roles and without talking about how to change their roles so that they are happier.
I don't think (but I may be wrong) that a lot of people take fights at random (the med school example looks very dumb, to me) unless there's a underlying cause.
And, learning to give _and accept_ criticism is as important as well. It's very easy IMHO to be positive when everything is fine, the sun shining, and you've got plenty of free time for yourself and your partner.
What if life/job/kids make you feel "squeezed" and you can't totally and always fulfill somebody's emotional requirements? The art of compromise, alas, is the hard part of a relationship.
Have fun on your next date, finding out what emotional responses are part of the long term bonding, why they are important and how they act directly/ indirectly against your interests.
In machine learning parlance, it's equivalent to deriving a formula using training data and not checking if the formula is accurate w/ a validation data. I doubt many (anyone?) here would trust an autonomous car built w/ only training data and never tested w/ validation data. Similarly, I don't believe/trust the Gottman's prediction rate (94%) for a second.
More info: http://www.slate.com/articles/double_x/doublex/2010/03/can_y... (2010)
You also need to be able to discuss challenges and issues without eroding the value of the relationship.
> there is a trend which suggests Americans are growing less happy each year. So maybe in the interim of 4 years the world.
So are you saying that Amricans = World? Please (for example) go to Spain and look about how happiness works differently than America.
I'll have to work on my presentation skills next time.