Reporter Request/replies to Will Your Marriage Last? -4/00

Fri Apr 28 14:43:36 EDT 2000

from: Smart Marriages

McCalls Magazine is looking for couples that divorced and reunited - and 
are happy. They
want happy endings and couples who are between 25 and 42 years old.  

If you have leads let me know ASAP and I'll hook you up to the reporter.

***********

Hi Diane, remember me? We've worked together on previous articles.  
I need to find a statistic. Do you know where I 
could find how much time, on average, today's couple spends together one 
on 
one on a weekly or daily basis? I keep hearing around 20 minutes a day 
but no 
one seems to know where that figure comes from.
Beth Levine, Readers Digest

Do any of you have a reference on this? 
***************

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****************
Responses to article "Will Your Marriage Last?" 

<< "The dominant approach has been to work 
 >with couples to resolve conflict, BUT it should focus on preserving the 
 positive feelings. >>

Well, this is interesting work.  I can actually agree with the premise 
for 
the most part.  

However, a few thoughts (should you want to post them with regard to the 
PREP program).  

I'll take this opportunity to make the point that many people do not 
really 
know the content very well of the various programs in the field (Ted may, 
though).  But as far as we at PREP go, we find people consistently overly 
"tag" it as merely a conflict resolution program.  

So, to be unambiguous with regard to PREP, we focus a great deal on both 
handling the negative side well (for which we find skills and structure 
immensely helpful for couples) and on preserving the deepening the 
positive 
side.  Hence, while many know us relatively well for the aspects of 
handling 
negative interaction and conflicts better, we also have very strong focus 
on 
such positive dimensions as friendship, fun, sensual connection, 
spiritual 
connection, forgiveness, and commitment.  

In our model, we also see the positives as crucial to how couples will do 
over 
time.  However, we believe it is the highly salient negatives that erode 
the 
positive connections over time -- that the positives are powerfully 
damaged by 
the negatives.  This, along with a failure to preserve time for the 
things 
that bonded the couple in the first place (a commitment point), leads all 
too 
many couples to a place where they are out of touch with the positives 
that 
drew them together in the first place.  

As we say in (Stanley, S.M., Blumberg, S.L., & Markman, H.J.  (1999).  
"Helping Couples Fight for Their Marriages: The PREP Approach" in R. 
Berger & 
M. Hannah, (Eds.), Handbook of preventive approaches in couple therapy.  
New 
York: Brunner/Mazel.  Pp. 279-303.):

"Certain patterns of mismanaged conflict that are destructive for 
relationships will be repeatedly expressed in many couples (Gottman, 
1993; 
Gottman & Krokoff, 1989; Markman, Stanley, & Blumberg, 1994; Notarius & 
Markman, 1993).  Out of this mix, a very important change occurs over 
time in 
the relationship: the presence of the partner becomes increasingly 
associated 
with pain and frustration, not pleasure or support.  For most couples, 
this 
violates a basic assumption about what being together is about--having a 
most 
intimate and supportive friend for life."

I have come to think that the hallmark change from being on the path to 
making it to not making it for most couples is this shift wherein one or 
both 
begin to reliably associate the other with pain.  

Back to the main point:  It's NOT an either or proposition.  Effective 
interventions for couples are very likely to include two major thrusts:  
1) 
an emphasis on how to protect and nurture the positives (which in our 
work, 
includes making the time for them and protecting those times FROM the 
negatives); and 2) strategies to help couples manage the negative side 
better, which can include measures for reducing negative interaction, 
stopping negative spiraling interactions, ways to talk more safely about 
differences and disagreements, etc.   It is the latter focus, we believe, 
where the benefit of specific skills and startegies is most important.  
We 
seek to help couples structure the negative side better and keep room for 
the 
positive to blossom. 

Final point:  from some simple polling data we have here that we have 
recently submitted for publication, we find an interesting point.  We 
asked 
subjects all kinds of questions about their relationships, including 
about 
the presence of negative interaction as well as about the presence of 
positives such as happiness, friendship, fun, and sensual connection. We 
also 
asked about the degree to which subjects had been talking or thinking 
about 
divorce.  I quote from the document we have under review:

"Most interestingly, the regression analysis suggests that, for males, 
negative interaction plays a stronger role than positivity in their 
thinking 
about divorce whereas, for women, positivity explained more of this 
variance 
than negative interaction. As such, these data are consistent with the 
view 
that women are more sensitive to an absence of connection in romantic 
relationships whereas men are more sensitive to the presence of negative 
interaction. "

I conclude by noting that both maintaining and building positives is a 
very 
important goal as is reducing and controlling negatives.  Further, I 
would 
agree with a point being made by Huston that a high level of positives 
can 
buffer how people approach the negatives.  In other words, when partners 
are 
doing really well and feeling good about one another, they will inhibit 
negative behavior.  And conversely, when they are not able or willing to 
inhibit negative behavior, the positives will be greatly and rapidly 
damaged. 
 Either can, in a sense, be reduced theoretically to the other. Both are 
very 
important and not to be diminished.

Scott Stanley
University of Denver
   ----------------------
Diane,  
I feel essentially all marriages  fail.  One or both partners break a lot 
of 
the rules (e.g. as described in "HIS NEEDS HER NEEDS" or "THE LAWS OF 
MARRIAGE").  They break the rules because no one is telling them what the 
rules are and what the consequences are.  My feeling is those who make it 
are 
the ones who decide to go on in spite of the desire to end the marriage.  
If 
someone was teaching the rules and consequences the stats for that group 
would be better than the 50% failure we see nation wide.  Church members 
for 
example fare no better than non church members sothe churches aren't 
providing this teaching.  People who attend marriage seminars and 
psychological counseling have the same stats too.

The reason I feel is we don't realize the consequences of our "wrong 
actions" 
until it's too late.  Even the marriage seminars and books on marriage 
(except mine "THE LAWS OF MARRIAGE" ) don't warn that failure to follow 
certain rules will almost certainly lead to affairs, loss of love for 
each 
other, divorce, etc.  Hence most people attending seminars or reading 
books 
on marriage feel distanced from the advice they receive.  In other words 
it 
sounds like good advice but it's other people and not themselves who need 
to 
heed the advice and actually make an immediate change for the better. 

Most people feel they will make these changes later if the need arises.  
They 
then find out it's too late when they catch their mate in an affair, etc. 
etc..  It's how they handle this calamity that determines whether they 
will 
divorce.  The rates would be much better if the changes were made before 
the 
calamity.  Also teaching that these calamities should be expected unless 
we 
are willing to really work hard at the rules would soften the blow when 
the 
calamity happens.  Without this teaching everyone thinks the calamity 
certainly gives a reason to leave the "wrong doer".  

Marriage counselors, the church, the divorce lawyers give credence to the 
complaint that "the other person" deserves to be corrected.  Trying to 
tell 
the person who is "innocent" that they've done wrong too is virtually 
impossible after a calamity has happened.  Hence instead of reasoning 
that 
"we've both done wrong and need to make major changes" the reasoning is 
whether to forgive the one who is obviously so bad.

Jon Clerry

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