Theos-Talk Archives (February 1998 Message tt00252)

Want a successful marriage? Listen to your wife


            (Release at midnight EST)
            WASHINGTON20 (Reuters) - Men who want their marriages to
succeed should just do what their wives suggest, psychologists
said Friday.
            John Gottman, a psychologist at the University of
Washington, and colleagues said advice to engage in ``active
listening'' and other interactive ways to resolve differences
may be on the wrong track.
            They said couples who tried to follow such trendy advice did
not have fewer divorces.
            ``This was the biggest revelation we've had about how
conflicts are best resolved in successful marriages,'' Gottman
said in a statement.
            ``Our analysis suggested that active listening occurred very
infrequently in marital conflict resolution and its use didn't
predict marital success.''
            Gottman's team followed 130 newlyweds for six years,
tracking how they handled disagreement. Many tried the ``active
listening'' model, which calls in part for each person to
re-phrase what the other has said and to indicate they are
listening with responses such as ``I hear what you are saying''.
            They compared these couples to couples followed in an older
study in which successful marriages were followed for 13 years.
They found the people who stayed together almost never used such
listening techniques.
            Gottman said this was because ``active listening'' was
unnatural. ``Asking that of couples is like requiring emotional
gymnastics,'' he said.
            Instead, the marriages that seemed to work had one thing in
common -- the husband was willing to be influenced by his
wife.
            ``We found that only those newlywed men who are accepting of
influence from their wives are winding up in happy, stable
marriages,'' Gottman said.
            ``Getting husbands to share power with their wives by
accepting some of the demands she makes is critical to helping
to resolve conflict.''
            The best predictors of divorce were what Gottman called the
''Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse -- criticism, defensiveness,
contempt and stonewalling.