What's Your Relationship IQ--Diane Sollee, SmartMarriages.comTango June 2007

1) The number one predictor of divorce is:
a) Ongoing disagreement over money and financial issues.
b) The habitual avoidance of conflict.
c) Yelling and screaming during fights.

2) Couples that “go the distance”—whose marriages are successful—have fewer disagreements about the three core issues: sex, money, and housework.
True or False?

3) Couples that are constantly yelling or complaining are doomed.
True or false?

4) When discussing a problem or disagreement, it is important to:
a) Keep feelings out of the discussion, and try to stick to the facts.
b) Be sure you can accurately state your partner’s position, including his or her feelings and fears about theissue being discussed.
c) Focus on practical solutions—on solving the problem. Too much discussion can sidetrack you.

5) Extramarital involvement occurs in happy marriages and is not necessarily a symptom of a distressed relationship.
True or False?

6) After the birth of the first child:
a) There is little impact on the marriage; the quality of a marriage depends more on issues of couple compatibility.
b) The marriage enters the “warm glow” stage and stays there for several years.
c) Marital satisfaction drops.

7) Couples should try to resolve most of their disagreements as soon as they come up.
True or False?

Answers:
1) b. Which is sad, because we usually avoid conflict precisely because we are so much in love, and we fear that disagreeing or fighting might cause a divorce. We’re aware that there has been a 50-percent divorce rate for 30 years, and we’re scared. But the way to have a happy marriage is to understand that disagreement is a normal and expected part of any loving relationship and to learn how to handle the inevitable disagreements that will come up.

2) False. Research shows that the couples that make it and the couples that fail disagree the same amount. They also disagree about all the same issues, and there are five core issues, not three—add children and in-laws/friends to the list. It turns out it’s not whether you disagree that makes a difference (that’s normal and very much to be expected); it’s how you handle your disagreements that matters.

3) False. Yelling, complaining, crying, and even revisiting the same issue “over and over and over” might be annoying, but it’s behaviors like avoidance, disengagement, contempt, blame, criticism, and “the silent treatment” that lead to divorce. Complaining is saying, “It drives me totally crazy when you call and get the answering machine, and don’t leave a message!” Criticism is, “You are so inconsiderate! You never leave a message when you call.” Contempt is deadly: “Some people know what an answering machine is for. I guess that takes a brain. More proof that you’re as dumb as your mother.” Complaining—even if you yell, even if it’s the same old complaint—brings up the issues. That’s a good thing. Criticism and contempt erode love.

4) b. Many disagreements have nothing to do with the facts, and everything to do with our feelings about them. It is crucial that you understand each other’s positions—both what you think about the issue, and also how you feel about it, your fears, ambivalence, and dreams. Oftentimes understanding and mutual respect are all you really need; some issues don’t have solutions. In fact, most disagreements in a marriage have no solution—they are chronic or “irreconcilable.” Couples simply need to how to manage them and keep them from contaminating the rest of the marriage. Mary Matalin and James Carville are the poster couple for how this can work.

5) True. Many people who have affairs report that their marriage is fine, they love their spouse and family, and they don’t love their paramour—they just wanted excitement or variety and deluded themselves into thinking that if they were clear about that then it wouldn’t hurt anyone. Frank Pittman, M.D., author of Private Lies and Grow Up!, says a man’s male relatives’ and buddies’ views on monogamy are a better predictor of affairs than the quality of the marital relationship. For example, if a Kennedy was faithful for too long, his dad might have asked if he was eating his Wheaties. Barry McCarthy, Ph.D., author of Rekindling Desire, agrees. McCarthy also believes that a commitment to honesty is as important as a commitment to monogamy. Often couples discuss how they will deal with money, kids, and housework before they marry, but not what they’re going to do when sex gets stale or someone is attracted to a coworker or neighbor.

6) c. There is so much more to disagree about. This is when couples really need skills. In 70 percent of couples, marital satisfaction drops during the three months before and the three months after the birth of the first child.

7) False. All couples have approximately ten issues they will never resolve. If you switch partners you’ll just get ten new issues, and they are highly likely to be more complicated the second time around—especially if kids are involved. What’s important is to develop a dialogue or “dance” with your particular set of irreconcilable differences, just as you would cope with a chronic bad back or trick knee. You don’t like them, you wish they weren’t there, but you keep talking about them and learn how to live with them.

original article can be found here:

Premises of Meaningful Dialogue

These are a few premises to meaningful dialogue and by extension vitalized relationships. The common denominator among all the couples that I see in my practice is that their struggles revolve around the core issue of "not being heard." The following premises are preconditions for speaking so that you can be heard, and listening so that you can hear.

• A genuine relationship is two-sided and beyond the control of either person’s will
  
  



• Words spoken with meaning heal
  
  



• Speech with meaning depends on each of us finding the courage to make our word count

• It requires the courage to imagine what is real for another

• Engagement is made real and vital when people face each other, hold onto their own ground, and try to hear what another really intends

• Acknowledging another person eases tensions between you and offers a chance to re-engage

• Willingness to risk initiative provides a reparative way
  

*from www.trustcounts.org/premises

Being and Seeming

The great philosopher and teacher Martin Buber recognized two types of human existence: “One proceeds from what one really is, the other from what one wishes to seem.” The duality of being and seeming really is the core problem in relational society today. The wish to be noticed and credited by another human is a powerful lure. It is a seductive force that intoxicates us into a world of make believe absent from who and what we really are. All of us are subject to this seductress. Self-disclosure or self-delineation is too hard; revealing who we really are to another human being is fraught with risk and potential danger. Revealing who we wish we were, what we want to appear as, is a much more protected shelter from judgment and shame.

The tension between being and seeming revolves around the struggle to find the “courage” to be versus the intrinsic flight from ourselves and others in the “cowardice” of seeming. But why? What is so scary about who we really are? I’m reminded of the children’s book The Velveteen Rabbit by Margery Wilson. One of the opening passages of the book goes like this:

What is REAL?" asked the Rabbit one day, when they were lying side by side near the nursery fender, before Nana came to tidy the room. "Does it mean having things that buzz inside you and a stick-out handle?"

"Real isn't how you are made," said the Skin Horse. "It's a thing that happens to you. When a child loves you for a long, long time, not just to play with, but REALLY loves you, then you become Real."

"Does it hurt?" asked the Rabbit.
"Sometimes," said the Skin Horse, for he was always truthful. "When you are Real you don't mind being hurt."

"Does it happen all at once, like being wound up," he asked, "or bit by bit?"

"It doesn't happen all at once," said the Skin Horse. "You become. It takes a long time. That's why it doesn't happen often to people who break easily, or have sharp edges, or who have to be carefully kept. Generally, by the time you are Real, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out and you get loose in the joints and very shabby. But these things don't matter at all, because once you are Real you can't be ugly, except to people who don't understand."

That last line of the passage, “Once you are real, you can’t be ugly” hangs on the wall of the entry way of my office. It hangs there as a reminder that who I really am, can't be scary unless it is unknown. I’ve learned through the course of my relationships, that I have some wonderful qualities, but I’ve also learned through those same relationships that I have some really unpleasant qualities. More than that, I have some really abrasive, harsh, scary, abusive, disturbing qualities. But I am not the sum total of my disturbing qualities and I am not the sum total of my wonderful qualities. I am a totally integrated good, bad and ugly human being who transcends good or bad or ugly. To those that I have allowed to understand all of me, they have pointed out that I am lovable, I am enough and I am real.