MARCH 30 “WORDS DESTROY”
In order to uncover the processes that destroys marriages & relationships, marital researchers studied couples, over the course of years, and even decades, and retrace the star-crossed steps of those who have split up back to their wedding day.
What they are discovering is unsettling.
None of the factors one would guess might predict a couple's durability actually does:
• It has nothing to do with how in love a newlywed couple say they are.
• Has nothing to do with how much affection they exchange;
• or how much they fight or what they fight about.
When psychologists Cliff Notarius and Howard Markman of the University of Denver studied newlyweds over the first decade of marriage, they found a very subtle but telling difference at the beginning of the relationships.
Among couples who would ultimately stay together, only 5 out of every 100 comments made about each other were putdowns.
Among couples who would later split, 10 of every 100 comments were insults. Twice the amount.
That gap only tripled and magnified over the following decades for couples that would ultimately split.
It increased, until couples heading downhill were flinging five times as many cruel and invalidating comments at each other as couples that would stay together.
Their conclusion in their study:
"Hostile putdowns, act as cancerous cells that erode the relationship over time," says Notarius, who with Markman co-authored the new book “We Can Work It Out”.
What they are discovering is unsettling.
None of the factors one would guess might predict a couple's durability actually does:
• It has nothing to do with how in love a newlywed couple say they are.
• Has nothing to do with how much affection they exchange;
• or how much they fight or what they fight about.
When psychologists Cliff Notarius and Howard Markman of the University of Denver studied newlyweds over the first decade of marriage, they found a very subtle but telling difference at the beginning of the relationships.
Among couples who would ultimately stay together, only 5 out of every 100 comments made about each other were putdowns.
Among couples who would later split, 10 of every 100 comments were insults. Twice the amount.
That gap only tripled and magnified over the following decades for couples that would ultimately split.
It increased, until couples heading downhill were flinging five times as many cruel and invalidating comments at each other as couples that would stay together.
Their conclusion in their study:
"Hostile putdowns, act as cancerous cells that erode the relationship over time," says Notarius, who with Markman co-authored the new book “We Can Work It Out”.
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