Marriage Booklet: Saving a Marriage

By Kenneth R. Waldron, PhD and Allan R. Koritzinsky, JD[1]

Introduction

If you are reading this, you might be a married person whose marriage is causing you to suffer, not only making you doubt whether you should remain married but also hoping that somehow your marriage can be turned around.  You might have children and want to avoid putting them through a divorce.  You might have parts of your marriage that you like, such as having mutual friend couples, that you fear you would lose if you divorce.  You very likely blame your spouse, all the while knowing in the back of your mind that you are a part of the problem.  There might be little or no affection left in your marriage.  You might blame your spouse for your suffering, knowing full well that your spouse blames you, seemingly unfairly.  You might wish you could turn the marriage around, but you tell yourself that you tried and feel hopeless.  You might be angry much of the time, but really, underneath it all, you are sad and wish that you could save your marriage.  You might feel hopeless, but we are telling you:

You might be able to save your marriage. Read on!

This is a lengthy blog, but full of helpful information on how to save a marriage.  It is time to step back and take a different perspective on marriage in general and your marriage in particular.

For one thing, your spouse is likely in the same boat with the same feelings and the same hope.  Can your marriage be saved?  That is what this booklet is about.

The answer is: Probably, yes.

You need to start with the right mindset.  You also need to recognize that what you have been doing has not worked, so, you cannot do more of the same and expect a different result.  Saving a marriage cannot be done if driven by emotions. It must be driven by having a Plan and following our Four Step Planning Process:

Our Four Step Planning Process

1. Get a thorough understanding of the current situation.
2. Identify the goals that both spouses have for the marriage.Many of those goals will be identical, but some of these goals might be different.  To have a successful marriage, both spouses must be striving to meet the goals of both spouses.
3. List the steps that need to be taken to get from the current situation to the goals.
4. Identify the obstacles to reaching the goals and make a plan for overcoming those obstacles, when they come up

Memorize this four step planning approach,

because you will be using in repeatedly in your effort to save your marriage.

One more point, perhaps the most important point: Saving a marriage is not work.  Any advice to “work on” your marriage is bad advice.  Saving a marriage is fun.  A way to think of it is that marriage is a “game”.  Much of the time in a successful marriage is spent having fun playing the marriage game.  However, it is not all fun.  No human activity is all fun.  But, it should be mostly fun.  Think of good parenting.  There are problems that come up, sometimes scary problems.  There is work at times and suffering at times.  However, it is mostly fun.  That is the way a successful marriage works.

Now, we present the biggest caveat.  This is a short booklet.  It is based on our lengthier book, The Road to Marital Success is Unpaved: Seven Skills for Making Marriage Work.  If you find this booklet helpful and want to “play” at saving your marriage, you really must go all the way and buy our book.  It is available on line from Amazon, Barnes & Noble and a number of other booksellers, including international book sellers.

Between them, Ken and Allan have 96 years of successful marriage to the same two women and 94 years as professionals working with marriage and divorce.  Our book brings together those experiences and extensive research on marriage.  Our book also has much more detail and specific exercises to learn the skills necessary to have a successful marriage.

With that in mind, let’s get started.

ACT ONE: UNDERSTANDING YOUR CHOICE TO MARRY

Let’s begin by understanding how you got to the point at which your marriage is at stake.  Of course, it begins when you chose to marry.  You might not, however, have fully understood that choice at the time.  Most people narrowly focus most on the person whom they are considering marrying.  The couple likely has talked about some other factors. e.g., whether or not they would like to have children, where they might like to live, long-term plans like buying a house and so on.  However, a marriage is not just a union of two people. It is a union of two lives and everything that goes along with that.  They are choosing each other’s extended families, each other’s friends, each other’s lifestyles, each other’s choices of careers/jobs, each other’s future choices, and, often the most challenging, each other’s daily habits, levels of cleanliness, tidiness, and sleep patterns.  And, on and on it goes.  They are also choosing to be a certain kind of person.  Most marrying people have an expectation of loyalty, an expectation of all of the various expressions of love, an expectation of help when needed, and so on.

While two people might have much in common, there are inevitably differences.  Unfortunately, some of those differences might be problems that have no solutions.  Some are obvious, such as whether or not to have children and how many.  Others are subtler, but can be extremely problematic.  A common problem with no solution is when one or both of the spouses fail to give up some of the benefits of being single.  Most marriages expect the spouses to no longer seek sexual relationships with other people.  In most marriages, the spouses can no longer handle their money any way they want.  That aspect of their life usually means that both spouses have say-so in how money is handled, regardless of who earned it.  A spouse might still be able to get together with friends to play on-line games, but certainly not every night.

A common difference that becomes a marital problem is the handling of relationships that each of the spouses has, or fosters during the marriage.  When Ken’s best friend was dying from cancer, he once said, “Everything important in life are relationships.”  Marrying spouses already have relationships with family and friends, on every level of closeness.  Additionally, once married, the couple will develop couple-friends and other new personal friends.  Spouses might not like some of the relationships of their spouse.  That can present a problem with no solution.  The only solution is to honor each other’s relationships.

Another must for a successful marriage, and for saving a marriage, is being able to communicate honestly about the marriage.  This might sound simple, but spouses usually have insecurities, hidden fears, unresolved sadness, guilty secrets and shame.  When honestly communicating about the marriage, it can be very easy to respond with defensive anger and blame.  Defensive anger and blame is a dead end to effective communication.  Overcoming those insecurities, and so on, is accomplished with open honesty.

Our book details five groups of problems with no solution.  When a marriage has a problem with no solution, a divorce can be the best solution.  No one likes to face what seems like a giant step in life – a divorce, but spending life in agony in a marriage that has problems with no solutions is not wise.  Assuming that you do not have any problems with no solutions, then what you have are disagreements that you have not resolved successfully.

Differences lead to disagreements.  People generally understand that this is the case, and many people even celebrate their first argument as a sign that they really are married now.  However, this can be the beginning of the end for some spouses.  Historically, disagreements were resolved by rules, for example by family rules, where one of the spouses is designated as the final decision-maker (usually the husband) or by religious rules, designating solutions to common marital problems (e.g., how often to have sex).

Marriage became a union in which spouses had highly defined designated roles.  That began in the 19^thcentury and became a rigid model up to the middle of the 20^th century.  Marriage broke those constraints beginning in the 1960’s and continuing to the present day.  The model for a marriage is now “egalitarian,” meaning that there is no designated final decision- maker.  Research has shown that an egalitarian model to be much superior for spouses and for children compared to the prior model of rigid roles.  That development created a new challenge.

If there is no final decision-maker or rule,

how are spouses to resolve disagreements?

For some people, the answer was to develop skills specifically for the purpose of resolving marital disagreements.  These spouses were just lucky enough to have learned those skills, perhaps in their families, or in school or by reading books on how to make decisions when in disagreement.  However, a much larger number of spouses limped along, perhaps with insufficient skill or even sometimes destructive patterns, such as one of the spouses being a bully.

Here is the problem that most married people who are thinking about or heading to a divorce.  One unresolved disagreement is not going to undo a marriage but a pattern of unresolved disagreement can.  A famous researcher, John Gottman (and his fellow researchers) showed that there is even a very clear pattern to the undoing of a marriage.  The frustration of numerous unresolved disagreements leads to spouses no longer arguing about the disagreement but rather blaming each other for the problem.  They develop increasingly negative thoughts and feelings about one another that morph into seeing the spouse in an increasingly negative way, even as pathological.  Unfortunately, this can even become somewhat true as spouses become increasingly negative with one another.  By that we mean that spouses in the later stages of marital conflict become pathological, even though they did not start out that way.  The spouses often no longer remember the things that they liked and loved about one another.  Another researcher, Janet Johnston, even found that spouses reconstruct their histories in their minds to see their spouse in a negative light, all the way back to when they were dating.  That is, they make things up to justify seeing their spouse as an awful person.

The marriage starts going downhill fast.  Eventually, one of the spouses, or perhaps both, begin to think about getting a divorce.  Apathy sets in, and they no longer care about how the other spouse is doing.  They might start drinking; they might have an affair; they might begin to get violent with one another; or they might just file for a divorce.  Sadly, the negativity that built up in the marriage usually leads to a negative “messy” divorce.

Usually right before this final painful stage, one or both spouses wonder if it is possible to turn things around.  This can be a turning point IF they both decide to really take action.  Many people think that they can do it on their own, and many others decide to seek marriage counseling.  However, if your marriage is in trouble, you likely have tried everything you know how to do to turn it around.  Whether with a counselor or with our book, or both, you need guidance.

There are books that can help, although many books that have the goal of helping change a marriage for the better rely on religious formulas, poorly defined ideas (“You need to communicate”).  Some marriage counselors try to help couples do what they are doing “better,” like taking turns talking instead of interrupting.  But, believe us: only when spouses decide to learn the skills for successfully resolving disagreement and begin playing the game of marriage and have fun, will books and counselors help.

ACT TWO: SKILL BUILDING IS KEY TO SAVING A MARRIAGE

Ken and Allan  in order to understand both marriage and divorce, have studied the existing research and literature. Ken even did independent research with a professional in another state on what it takes to have low levels of spousal conflict and a successful marriage. [2] Ken and Allan wanted to offer an evidence-based approach to achieving marital success.

Interestingly, what their research found was that the basic cause of marital conflict was a weakness in resolving disagreements.  People with good disagreement resolution skills, have low conflict, and people weak in those skills have high conflict.  Likewise, people who have moderate skills levels have moderate levels of conflict.  Those might even be people who have generally unsatisfying marriages but do not divorce.

Fortunately, Ken and Allan sought to determine if those skills could be learned.  Of course, it seemed likely, since some people learned them, but that was no guarantee that they could be taught to people already married with bad habits.  A look at research found that at least most of the skills can be learned by an adult.  This raises the main point of this booklet, and in much more detail, the main points of our book, The Road to Marital Success is Unpaved: Seven Skills for Making Marriage Work. 

Can a marriage be saved?  In most cases, yes.  However, if the destruction has simply gone too far, with perhaps alcohol or drug use, violence, affairs and so on, it might be too late.  This is the very first discussion to have with your spouse.  Answer this question together:

Is it too late for us?

Roadmap to Saving the Marriage

If the answer is that it is not too late, then get ready for the basic roadmap on how to do it.[3]  Before starting, there are a few issues to consider:

1. If part of the problem has been that one or both spouses has failed to give up the benefits of being single, it is time to put up or shut up.This is the first discussion to have: identify “single” behaviors that cannot continue if you stay married.  Ken remembers a marital counseling case that he had in which the wife told the man that for the marriage to work, she wanted him to stop drinking.  He got angry and said that part of the problem in the marriage was that his wife “is always trying to control me.” Ken said, “I am holding a bottle of beer in this hand, and your marriage in the other hand.  Which do you choose?”  It is time to eliminate problems with no solutions, or get a divorce.
2. Tell each other what you thought about each other and how you felt about each other when you first met and as you got to know each other.Include things that you might not have liked along with the things that you did like.  The point is that if you are thinking about divorce, you are not seeing the whole picture.  You have talked yourselves into a delusion, a negative delusion at that, about one another.  No one is all bad or all good.  What you do not like can be true, but if you decided to marry, you must have thought much more positively about one another more than negatively.
3. Treat your marriage as a game that you have been playing poorly, but would like to play it well.Ken is reminded of a tennis lesson he had with an accomplished coach.  Ken had played tennis moderately well for years, but his game just did not seem to improve much.  He went for lessons.  The coach asked him to serve a few balls, and then to return some backhands, some forehands, make some lobs and aim at targets.  After about a half hour of this, the coach smiled and said, “You are doing everything wrong pretty well.”  Ken then had to start learning to play tennis well from scratch.

Making your marriage better can only be accomplished if you forget everything you know about marriage and each other and start from scratch.  The entire program for improvement is learning disagreement resolution skills that work.  Do not try to fix the ways that you address disagreements; throw them out and learn new research- proven skills.

4. Every marriage has problems.Resolving some disagreements can be pretty easy, but some disagreements are extremely challenging.  However, the point of getting married is to have fun.  Think of parenting.  Many aspects of parenting are extremely challenging and even frightening and discouraging, but if done well, it is also about the most fun you can ever have.  Marriage should be like that; marriage can be like that.  So, don’t work at improving your marriage, have fun playing marriage and learning the skills to make it fun more often.

When Ken has done marriage counseling, if he cannot get the spouses laughing together by the end of the first session, he considers himself a failure.  When they see each other laughing, often because Ken said something sarcastic about one of them in fun, their eyes light up.  They have been very thirsty for fun in their marriage.

Remember my mentioning a researcher named John Gottman? He found that it takes about five positive experiences in the marriage to absorb the emotions of one negative experience.  That formula actually has other research to show how important it is to have positive experiences.  In gambling, for example, research has shown that one loss has about the same level of emotion (negative) as five wins (positive).

Your marriage will not improve unless you start having fun. Let’ get strated!

Nine Essential Ingredients to a Successful Marriage

You might be anxious to get to the seven skills, but we need to take a short detour first. The path to saving a marriage has some minefields along the way that can explode and throw you way off.  You might think of them as pitfalls that you must be prepared for.

PREPARATION means a commitment to our nine essential ingredients to a successful marriage:

• Honesty
• Overcoming inferential thinking
• Two worlds
• Mixed feelings
• Physical love
• Fidelity
• Good-enough
• Undertstanding the personality of a marriage
• Being humble and recognizing the importance of commitment

1. Honesty. You won’t be surprised at this one, but you might be underestimating what we mean by honesty.  We mean being impeccable with your word.  No hiding insecurities with excuses.  No giving stories a dishonest spin to hide something.  No half-truths.  You want to develop in the marriage a reputation of being completely honest.  Lying is never good and certainly not kind.  There is nothing stopping you from being honest in a kind and tactful manner.

There are four reasons for being completely honest.  First, you cannot get away with a pattern of dishonesty.  You can get away with a lie or two, but never a pattern of being dishonest.  Thus, soon you will develop the reputation in your marriage of being a liar and will not be trusted.  Second, only by being honest can you and your spouse take steps to improve your marriage.  Honesty exposes issues and problems when they are still small and can be addressed more easily.  Third, you cannot lie and care about someone at the same time.  When you lie, you are being completely selfish, and although your spouse might not consciously catch you lying, unconsciously he or she will feel your selfishness.  Fourth, being rigorously honest builds confidence and overcomes insecurities.

2. Overcoming inferential thinking. Throughout life, we all get a certain amount of information, but it is rarely that complete.  We fill in the gaps with inferential thinking, that is, guessing what the missing information is.  This serves us extremely well, because we are often correct in our guesses, which makes figuring out what to do easier.

Sometimes our guesses are wrong.  If we act on them, we might do a good deal of harm.  Therefore, in a marriage, when we are guessing something, we should stop and ask.  For example, “You look angry.  Are you mad at me?”  The answer might be “Yes,” leading to a good discussion, or it might be “No, my stomach is hurting me.”  By the time a marriage is in trouble, a great deal of what the spouses think about one another is based on inferences, and might well be completely wrong- and risky to rely on any further.

3. Two worlds. Most of us think that we live in the same world, especially with a spouse, since we share so much time together.  However, in two words, “We don’t”.  We all have experiences that our spouse does not share, but even more importantly, we all have things that we pay attention to, and those that we do not. We all have different values, interests, experiences and – well, we just all live in our own world, different from even our spouses and different even when we are both at the same place at the same time.

In a nutshell, this means that a lot of time in a marriage is spent just finding out about the world of our spouse.  In other words, successful marriage partners ask each other a lot of questions. Differences can be very surprising.  Some might be funny.  Some might bring up a very important marital discussion.

4. Mixed feelings. A surprising research project on marital happiness found that successful spouses have mixed feelings about being married and talk about them.  Some of this is obvious.  For example, having sex for the twentieth year with a spouse is usually less exciting than the third time.  Some of this is subtle.  There really are substantial benefits to being single, and it might be important to discuss those differences in a marriage and look for solutions, other than divorcing.
5. Physical love. Of course, this can mean sex, but more importantly, at least over time, it means forms of physical affection.  A quick neck rub, a hand on the back in passing, a hug when accompanying some bad news.  This can be a particular      challenge for people in a marriage gone bad.  The feelings might just not be there.  So, start small.  Hold hands in the grocery store.  But, have a plan to grow these positive feelings in the marriage
6. There are a small number of couples who openly have sexual liaisons with other people.  At least publicly, those couples report that doing so works for them.  However, most spouses expect fidelity and might even have trouble if they develop a “spark” for another partner, at least emotionally.  There is nothing wrong with getting crushes on other people, as long as there are clear limits and rigorous honesty with the spouse.

7. Good-enough. Nothing human is perfect, marriage included.  A counselor that was in a consulting group that Ken attended made a comment that stuck with him.  He said, “If there are five things that you really must have in your marriage and you get three of them, you are doing pretty well.”  Being a bit more optimistic, I would say “four” rather than “three,” but the point is a good one.  No one gets everything they feel like they must have in a marriage.

No marriage, after the honeymoon period, is completely fantastic, just like no child is perfect, no job completely good and so on.  A successful marriage is not great, however, it is at least “good enough.”  Both Allan and Ken are enjoying on the “older side” and realize that what was good enough (or better) through most of their marriages, was actually great!

8. Understanding the personality of a marriage. Relationships have a personality of their own, often very different from the personalities of each of the people in the relationship.  They bring out characteristics in the people involved, but become unique from each of the people in the way that they combine.  In a marriage going bad, the personality of the relationship is unlikable.  People who have no difficulty with a temper, might find themselves having temper tantrums with their spouse.  Kind people might find themselves being unkind to the spouse.

The reason that this is crucial to saving a marriage is because we know how to change a personality.  Say, for example, that Shirley is painfully shy, and hates it.  She watches other people easily meet new people, having fun in social groups and so on, and wishes she could be like that.  She reads a book about how to change your personality and commits to doing it.  Swallowing her shyness, she forces herself to go up to new people and meet them.  She is shocked at how many people are really open to that.  She starts organizing get-togethers with the people she is meeting, thinking about activities that they both might enjoy.  Most of those encounters turn out to be successful.  After a year of forcing herself into these new behaviors, she realizes that she is no longer painfully shy.

To change the personality of a marriage, people simply need to decide what they would like it to look like and then start “acting” that way, even though they might not “feel” it at first.  Eventually, they will feel it.  The key is to apply the skills that we will describe later in this booklet.

9. Being humble and recognizing the importance of commitment. After four years of losing money, Jeff Bezos, the former owner of Amazon, just shrugged when the banks wanted him to change his business model or close down.  He just kept going.  That is a commitment to a plan.  What this means for saving a marriage is the only route to success is with commitment: first to understanding what needs to be done, then to developing the plan for your marriage, to learning the disagreement resolution skills we are about to introduce, to one by one resolving existing and future disagreements and more important than all of this, to having fun with one another.  Instead of yelling criticisms, tease each other for your weaknesses.

Even spouses in successful marriages are just human, with strengths and weaknesses, often just muddling through.

Now that you have examined whether or not you have problems with no solution and learned the necessary nine ingredients to a successful marriage, it is time to learn the Our Seven Disagreement Resolution Skills for resolving the disagreements that naturally arise from differences between spouses.

Our Seven Disagreement Resolution Skills

(Plus two more, when the other Seven Skills don’t work)[4]

The remaining information presented in this booklet (i.e., our Seven Skills, Three Biases, Purpose of Communication in Marriage, and our Four Step Problem Solving Model) can be dense benefiting from a brief but important summary overview:

Skill One.  Overcoming Three Biases :  (1) Overconfidence Bias, (2) Tribal Warfare Bias and

(3) Judgment Bias

Skill Two: Managing Deep Feelings and Defensive Emotions

Skill Three: Learning to be Vulnerable in Relationships

Skill Four: Hearing Criticism in a Healthy Manner

Skill Five: Understanding Different Points of View

Skill Six: Understanding the Purpose of Communication in Marriage  (1) The first purpose is for information-sharing. (2 The second purpose is for making decisions, including decisions that resolve a disagreement.

Our Four Step Problem Solving Model:

The first step is to describe the current situation.  In doing so, define the disagreement in a way that can lead to a solution.  The second step is to get both spouses perspective, without judging whether those are right or wrong. Here you identify the long-term goals of both spouses. The third step is to accept that both spouses are right, but their goals are what they are trying to accomplish different. Here you get from the current situation to achieving the goals of both parties The third step is to accept that both spouses are right, but agree that their goals are what they are each trying to accomplish them differently.

Skill Seven: Managing Disagreement and Conflict in a Healthy Way. 

            Our Seven Disagreement Resolution Skills all have a certain mindset, a way of looking at situations, and then specific skills.  While each skill is distinct, you will come to see that they all blend together.  In tennis, there is a correct placement of the feet, a particular way of holding the tennis racket, a way to turn for a forehand that is different from the way to turn for a backhand, a shape to the stroke of the racket onto the ball and a way to prepare for the next shot.  These are individual skills, but they blend into one smooth action.

Skill One.  Overcoming Bias

Evolution favored people who developed biases.  These biases are embedded into our minds.  They have been historically very useful, but like almost every human trait, they have a downside.  In marriage, the biases presented here are almost all downside.  We will consider three biases:

1. Overconfidence bias
2. Tribal warfare bias
3. Judgment bias

Overconfidence Bias is just what it sounds like.  People tend to give their opinions more weight than they objectively deserve.  When people disagree, they tend to think that they are right, and, of course, that makes the other person wrong.  The natural tendency when facing a disagreement is to convince the other person that you are right and that they are wrong.  Of course, the other person is also likely biased and believes that they are right and you are wrong.  The escalation of the argument can lead to harsh words, outrageous anger and even war.  Remember, overconfidence bias is built into the equipment – i.e., your brain.  You cannot cut it out of your brain, so it will be your reality, like it or not.

Overcoming overconfidence bias is accomplished by stepping back and realizing that while you might have very legitimate reasons for your opinions, so does your spouse.  You can literally both have a different opinion and both be right.  You simply have two different ways of looking at what you are discussing, which might reflect experience the other spouse has not had, or valuing different outcomes, or thinking about things where the other spouse is just not on your page. This is not a problem; just a fact.

Tribal Warfare Bias was fundamental to survival for the millions of years humans were hunter-gatherers competing with other animals, including other humans, for food and water.  In a disagreement between spouses, the temptation is to get a tribe behind you.  You look for friends, family, even experts to back up your opinions and end up saying stupid hurtful things like, “I am not the only one who thinks that about you.”

Remember, you will feel tribal warfare bias and the task is to overcome it, by reminding yourself that you are not at war with your spouse, trying to get your way. You just have a disagreement that needs a solution.

Judgment Bias is really subtle and can be very nasty.  Judgment bias is judging your spouse for his or her actions but judging yourself for your motives.  For example, John calls Jill “a bitch,” in anger, which Jill considers hugely demeaning and “just to show him what it feels like” (a good motive), she calls him an “asshole” and adds, “How does that feel?” again a good motive, to get him to be more compassionate. However, there is a better antidote. (1) Overcoming Judgment Bias is accomplished by both spouses judging themselves by their behavior, not their motives.  If calling a spouse, a “bitch” is wrong, then so is calling a spouse an “asshole.”

Training in order to overcome these three biases is intellectually very easy but emotionally can be very challenging:

• Overcoming Overconfidence bias (intellectually) is simply stopping the discussion when it becomes clear that you are both right, although you disagree.It is useful to argue a little bit because one of you might be right and the other spouse might be wrong.  One spouse might have more information that convinces the other spouse, for example.  If this does not work, next it is time to use the other skills to resolve the disagreement when both of you are right. The reason this is so emotionally challenging is because the power and influence of two biases that are built into the human equipment. i.e., the feeling of being right, or perhaps even more challenging, the feeling that the other spouse is wrong
• Overcoming Tribal Warfare Bias is as simple as keeping the discussion between the two spouses, again easy intellectually but challenging emotionally.Both spouses really want to win the argument and pulling out some big guns (e.g., “Let’s ask our son what he thinks of the idea!”).
• Overcoming Judgement Bias is, as we have said, accomplished by judging both spouses by their behavior, not their intentions.

Skill Two: Managing Deep Feelings and Defensive Emotions

Marriage, as a famous psychologist once wrote, is a second chance to grow up.

Adulthood does not demand that those leftovers from childhood be resolved, but marriage does. 

Most people reach adulthood with some insecurities, fears, unresolved sadness, guilt, fear of shame and anxiety.  In order to cover these up, people develop defensive emotions, mostly anger, avoidance and blame.  In a nutshell, resolving those deep feelings makes for marital success and sticking with the defensive emotions leads at least to marital conflict and often to divorce.

Anger and blame might seem justified, but like a magician’s trick, you are looking in the wrong place for resolution.  It is the deep feelings underlying those defensive emotions that are the key to solving disagreements.

Compare the following:

Arnold: “What the F*** were you doing flirting with Jeff last night.  You make yourself look cheap.  Don’t ever let me catch you doing that again.”

-vs-

Arnold: “I know you were just having some fun flirting with Jeff last night, but boy it make me upset.  Can we talk about that?  I don’t want to control you and tell you not to have that kind of fun, but I sure need to figure out why I got upset and how to fix myself.”

This leads us right into the next skill.

Skill Three: Learning to be Vulnerable in Relationships

Most of the weaknesses that we have from childhood lead us to feel vulnerable and scared.  People learn behaviors that are meant to be protective.  Being vulnerable in a relationship simply means willing to give control to others.  As a simple example, remember what if felt like to ask someone for a date, when you were young.  You gave control to the other person because they could reward you with a “yes” and hurt you with a “no.”  In order to avoid being vulnerable, people can develop a lot of manipulative behaviors meant to keep control of situations.  The problem with this is that if you do not do what you are afraid to do, you never develop confidence.  You only develop confidence if you make yourself vulnerable by being open and honest.  In a marriage, this means working hard at getting rid of all the manipulation, dishonesty and attempts to control your spouse, and being vulnerable.

This does not mean that you will always get your way.  Think of it this way.  A great baseball player, unafraid to go to bat, might have a hit percentage of 400.  This means that he hits well enough to reach base, four out of ten times.  Given that there is an average of five pitches per player, this means that on average our great baseball player only hits four out of 50 pitches.  Every time he goes to the plate to hit, and every pitch that comes, he is very vulnerable most of the time, but also is confident.

What you do gain by being vulnerable is the resolution of those insecurities, anxiety and fears, and you make yourself a pleasure for your spouse to deal with.

Skill Four: Hearing Criticism in a Healthy Manner

The most important point about this skill is to understand that criticisms are not personal.  We do not even mean or pretend they are personal.  We mean that they really are not personal.  Criticisms say something about the person doing the criticizing, not the person being criticized.  A criticism might reveal the other person’s values, expectations or wishes.  Sometimes it is a proposal, but in a terrible form (e.g., “You are so cold,” while subtly proposing more warmth and affection).

Because a criticism is not personal, or is a back-handed proposal, you should not take it personally.   Our instincts (because of our biases) are to fight back and throw out some criticisms and blame. However, because criticisms are not personal, there is no need for doing that.  It takes a little practice, but the goal is to be unaffected by criticisms.  In fact, a fun exercise in the marriage is to sit down and take turns criticizing one another and practice not taking it personally.  In fact, you might get a few laughs doing this.

However, listen closely to the criticism because some criticisms have useful information.  For example, “You are always late, and even the kids are complaining about that to me.”  The “always late” part is about your spouse not you.  It says that your spouse wants you to be on time, all of the time.  That is not your problem; it is his or hers.  That being late is a potential problem for your children, who complain about it to your spouse, rather than you (if true), is useful information.  You might respond, “Thank you for telling me that.  I will talk to the kids about it.”

Few skills will reduce the amount of friction in a marriage more than not taking criticisms personally.  A side benefit is that instead of lobbing criticisms at one another, this skill forces spouses to, instead of criticizing, identify problems (differences that lead to disagreements) that need a solution.

Skill Five: Understanding Different Points of View

Many spouses waste their time trying to get the other spouse to see their point of view when they disagree.  This skill requires the absolute opposite- spending the time trying to understand the other spouse’s point of view.  Rather than “talking at” one another, when a disagreement arises, both spouses should be asking questions.  Getting both perspectives about the disagreement makes resolving the disagreement much easier, because only by getting both perspectives can the disagreement be really understood.  For example:

“I disagree with you but I really want to understand why you think that.

What are you trying to accomplish?”

An additional benefit to this approach is that, rather than getting frustrated trying to get their own perspectives across, they see the value in both perspectives and now can resolve the disagreement in a manner that works for both of them.  By answering questions from one another, their perspective feels valued, and is valued, rather than feeling that each other are only interested in themselves and getting their own way.

Skill Six: Understanding the Role of Communication in Marriage

Communication isn’t just talking a lot.  Talking a lot is a fun part of marriage, but communication has a purpose; actually, two purposes.

1. The first purpose is for information-sharing. Spouses live in two different worlds, even when they are together.  This is because everyone has different points of view about the same situation, different values and ways of looking at things, independent experiences when the other spouse is not there and different feelings about what they experience- even when together.  A husband and wife can be on a walk and the wife says, “Isn’t that a beautiful tree.”  The husband could just say “yes,” because he thinks it is beautiful too, but they could be talking about two different trees.  Instead, the husband says, “What about it is beautiful to you?”  The wife might say, “Look at all the shades of green in the leaves.”  He laughs and says, “I really think all the gnarly branches are beautiful.”  Now they have the complete picture.

Active information sharing must become an important daily activity for spouses to understand both of their worlds, especially when a disagreement comes up.  The only way to resolve (successfully) certain disagreements is when both spouses understand each other’s world, and that is accomplished through information-sharing.

1. The second purpose of communication is for making decisions, including decisions that resolve adisagreement. There many good models for making decisions. Let’s look at the operational aspects of our Four Step Problem Solving Model, and see that it works:
2. The first step is to define the disagreement in a way that can lead to a solution.Let’s stick with an easy example:

“You are so selfish. 

You make us late for everything and that includes the kids.”

This is a definition that has no solution.

“Sometimes there is no problem when you take longer to do something that I would, but sometimes it creates a problem, when it prevents my  being able to do something,

or when the kids get to activities later than the other kids.”

This is a definition that has a solution.

The second step is to get both spouse’s perspective, without judging whether those are right or wrong.

The third step is to accept that both spouses are right, but their goals or what they are trying to accomplish differ.

The fourth step is to seek solutions that accomplish the goals, or at least as much of their goals as possible.A big mistake many people make is that they assume that there is only one solution to a problem.  There are almost always several, if not more, solutions.

For example, the “being late” disagreement might seem like either the late spouse has to learn to be on time or the on time spouse has to learn to tolerate the late spouse.  One solution might be an agreement that the on time spouse will take the kids to activities and the late spouse will join as soon as he or she can.

2. Four Step Problem Solving Model:

1. The first step is to Thoroughly describe the current situation.In doing so, define the disagreement in a way that can lead to a solution.
2. The second step is to get both spouse’s perspective, without judging whether those are right or wrong. In doing so, thoroughly identify the long term goals of both spouses.

• The third step is to accept that both spouses are right, but their goals or what they are trying to accomplish differ. In doing so, define the steps to take to get from the current situation to achieving the goals of both spouses.

1. The fourth step is to seek solutions that accomplish the goals, or at least as much of their goals as possible.In doing so, predict the obstacles that are likely to arise and plan steps to overcome those obstacles. A big mistake many people make is that they assume that there is only one solution to a problem.  There are almost always several, if not more, available solutions.

We would like you to note that nowhere in this plan are you asked to argue about the past, especially blame one another for how you got to where you are.  It is a waste of psychological energy to focus on the past, because it has nothing to do with making a decision to resolve a disagreement about something in the future. The one exception is that when exploring possible obstacles, the past might help.  For example, one spouse might say, “In the past, when we have made an agreement, you have forgotten parts of the agreement.  That could be an obstacle to reaching our goals in this case.”  This is an appropriate use of the past, to bring up an obstacle that needs a solution in the plan.

Skill Seven: Managing Disagreement and Conflict in a Healthy Way.  Now here is a big one: We mentioned the researcher, John Gottman, earlier. His research found that successful marital partners do three things when they have a disagreement:

1. They keep the discussion clean, without criticisms and blaming; they stay on topic.
2. They keep it short: they get to solutions fairly quickly.
3. After a “heated” discussion, they repair any damage done to the relationship.

Disagreements, even in successful marriages, can become quite heated.  Staying on topic and avoiding saying hurtful things helps, as does getting an agreement that includes the goals of both spouses.  Nevertheless, a heated discussion can include some “slips”- like criticisms and blame. Closure comes from repairing any damage to one another during the discussion.  Apologies, complimenting one another on resolving “a tough one,” and even giving hugs or going out to dinner can erase any hurt feelings.

Remember from the beginning of this booklet, the ratio of one negative experience equaling the emotional strength of five positive experiences!!  Keeping a disagreement discussion as clean as possible, resolving the disagreement in a way that reflects the goals of both spouses, keeping it short and repairing any relationship damage opens the door for a lot of positive experiences.

Two Additional Skills When the Other Seven Disagreement Resolution Skills Don’t Work

There is no magic when it comes to human relationships.  Here, that means that sometimes you will run into a disagreement that applying our Seven Skills do not end with a solution.  The most common situation in which this is the case is when the two spouses have goals that are incompatible, that is, no solution will reach both spouse’s goals.

For example, one spouse wants their three-year-old to go to daycare and the other spouse wants to wait until Kindergarten.  Both spouses have really good information, both are right that their preference will reach their goals, but those goals are incompatible.  Nevertheless, the child will either go to daycare or she won’t.  They have to choose.

There are only two skills of which we are aware that can resolve these types of disagreements satisfactorily: Trade-off and Rating. 

1. Trade-off is the preferred skill, because even though one of the spouses “loses” the disagreement, they still feel pretty good. When a discussion of a difference reaches impasse, meaning that the spouses have applied all the skills but the two positions are incompatible, and no success comes up with any other solutions, each of the spouses asks themselves and each other, “If I (you) give in, is there something else that I (you) could have that is of equal or better value of what I (you) got?”

• Spouse A wins this disagreement but Spouse B is compensated with something of equal value.Ken can offer an example from his life.
• He and his wife had a serious disagreement about how much to support their oldest son in college.  No amount of discussion could close the gap, and both Ken and his wife agreed that they each had really good points to support their positions.  Also, neither was positive which position would actually work out the best.  Ken “gave in”, but asked that he gets to make the decision with their second son, two years hence.  Ken felt that this was even more valuable than with the oldest son because he will be able to see the results of his wife’s plan before making a decision for their second son.

2. Rating is slightly inferior to Trade-off, because one of the spouses just gives in. Rating relies heavily on rigorous honesty.  Again, at impasse, the spouses ask each other, “On a scale of 1 to 10, how important is getting your way on this?”  The spouse with the higher number wins the disagreement.  In a sense, the “loser” is giving the “winner” a gift, because the issue is more important to him or her.

• The hitch in this skill is whether or not there is reciprocity, that is, over time, both spouses must give in about the same amount of the times.Humans are very sensitive to whether or not a relationship is fair and balanced.
• For some spouses, there might need to be a rule, such as, neither spouse can “get their way” more than two times in a row.

Summary:

Can a Marriage be Saved?

We have answered the question that in many, if not most cases, a marriage can be saved.  However, it means starting over with a new plan and learning the skills to make that plan work.  We have seen (1) that there are necessary ingredients to which spouses need to commit and       (2) that an honest discussion of any problems with no solutions be had.  We have defined the problem as one in which spouses have some differences that lead to disagreements.  Those differences and disagreements can be pretty lightweight, but some can be very intense.

The way to save a marriage is to resolve most of the disagreements in a way that meets the goals of both spouses.

This almost means starting completely fresh in the process.  It can be good practice to take one of your current unresolved disagreements one-by-one and apply our Seven Disagreement Resolution Skills.

Our marriage book (cited earlier) goes into much more depth about each of the topics in this Booklet and details practice methods for learning the skills.  The book also adds a great deal of information, cartoons, famous quotes and suggestions for saving a marriage to be fun.  Remember, if you are not having fun, you are not doing it right.

We cannot emphasize enough how important it is to “play” at marriage, meaning having fun while saving the marriage.  If you think that you have to “work” at communication and marriage, you are highly unlikely to be successful.

You might want to include in the plan, activities and behaviors that used to be fun for you to do together.  It took a while for the bad feelings to morph into an unsuccessful marriage. Therefore, it might take a while for your efforts to have fun to take hold too.

Having a fun marriage and being successful at resolving most of your disagreements is something well worth looking forward to, and it starts by having fun the first day you commit to saving it!

 

[1] Your authors have published extensively in the marriage and divorce space.  Among other books, they recently published The Road to Marital Success is Unpaved: Seven Skills for Making Marriage Work. This book is available for purchase at Amazon, Barnes & Noble and other bookstores. For information about our other books and other free resources, feel free to check out our Website: https://marriageanddivorce.org.

[2] Eileen McCarten, M.S., Director of Family Matters in Rockford, Illinois.

[3] We remind you that this short booklet is not sufficient to save a marriage.  Our book goes into much more detail and even provides exercises to learn the necessary skills.

[4] Once again, we provide much more information about these skills and practical ways to learn them in our book.  Here, we just list and briefly define them.  Don’t shortchange your marriage and go buy the book!