Marriage Series: Marriage is a Game

Learning about the Rules, Skills and Overconfidence Bias

All types of human interaction can be viewed as a game, including even very serious types of interactions such as war.  Mathematicians have studied human interaction and developed a mathematical approach to increase the chances of successful outcomes.[1] Surprisingly, it is not that complicated.  Games simply have rules and skills.  We are going to use casual (not competitive) tennis as an example in order to show how marriage is a game that can be played well when spouses follow certain rules and have certain skills.

The challenge in this blog is that almost everything that most people think about their marriage, particularly if it is not going well or is just mediocre, is simply wrong. Most people, whose marriages are unsuccessful, have experienced differences between the spouses that repeatedly cause sometimes serious disagreements.  However, this is true of all marriages to varying degrees.  In successful marriages, spouses resolve those disagreements to the general satisfaction of both spouses.  In less than successful marriages, unresolved disagreements get repeated, grow into spousal conflict and the spouses begin to blame each other for their unhappiness.  The interactions that make marriage fun and rewarding happen less and less.  The result is often affairs[2] or a feeling of having “grown apart.”[3]

Understanding the rules and having the skills

are essential for all successful marriages.

The reality is that any marriage that is not successful is simply because the spouses do not understand the rules, or if they do understand them, they break them. Even more important, they do not have, or are weak in the skills to play marriage well.  Those skills are for resolving disagreements and closing the gap caused by normal differences.

Tennis: An Example

A rule in casual tennis is that the receiver of a hit from the other side has the authority to call the shot in or out of bounds. If the receiver cheats and calls in-balls out, on purpose, the tennis is not fun anymore. In addition, the honest player will develop negative attitudes towards, and perhaps even refuse to play tennis with the cheater (i.e., causing a tennis divorce).  In marriage, this is called a divorce.  Likewise, when players have very weak skills, tennis is not a lot of fun.  Most of the time is spent chasing poorly hit tennis balls.  That is why people who want to learn to have fun playing tennis spend so much time at the beginning taking lessons and practicing.  When they are learning and practicing, they are still having fun, but it takes a lot of effort, especially when they are practicing with another beginner.

The social side of learning can also be a great deal of fun.  As the skills are learned and players learn and follow the rules, players get better at the game.  As they get better at playing, they have more and more fun, even though they still make some mistakes and are competing with one another.

The point is that in order for people to have successful marriages, they have to know and follow the rules and have to learn the skills to play marriage well.  When spouses know that they are on the path to playing marriage well, they are having fun, even though they continue to have disagreements at times.

The Rules

So, what are the rules in marriage?  In our book, The Road to Successful Marriage is Unpaved: Seven Skills for Making Marriage Work[4], we detail nine Rules, which are much too involved to detail in this short blog, but let us describe one, as an example:

One Rule Example:

Foster a reputation of honesty and trust

and be impeccable with your word.

It is obvious that spouses cannot have a successful marriage if one or both spouses are liars.  However, this rule means more than simply not telling blatant lies.  It also applies to telling half-truths and even “little white lies” meant to avoid hurting the feelings of the spouse.  It also applies to lies of omission, that is, failing to tell the spouse information important to the marriage.

There are three major reasons why this Rule is essential to a successful marriage:

First, any form of dishonesty distances the relationship.  Spouses begin marriage with a substantial obstacle to success because they live in two different worlds.  Almost all of the information they have is quite different.  Their past experiences, the values that they developed before marrying and even what they pay attention to and what is important to each of them are different.  The “getting to know you” period begins to close that gap, and good communication further closes the gap, giving each spouse a greater amount of information about one another.  Half-truths, lies of omission, “spin” and anything shy of impeccable honesty increases the information gap between spouses.  Little problems grow into big problems when spouses are not impeccably honest with one another.  Like parents often tell their children, “When you’re honest, we just have a problem to solve; when you lie, there are no solutions.”

Second: a person can maybe get away with a lie or two, but never with a pattern of lying.  A pattern of lying, in any form but especially lies of omission, creates a reputation of not being trustworthy.  Spouses who cannot trust each other lose one of the most important benefits of marriage: keeping each other firmly in reality, which creates conditions for self-improvement and marital improvement.  When people make decisions without complete and solid information, they make mistakes.  For example, “We need to clean the kitchen.”  “I did it last time, you do it.”  Versus, “We need to clean the kitchen.” “My ankle really hurts; would you mind doing it?”

Third: you cannot lie to a person and love them at the same moment.  This is the most damaging reason why this Rule is essential to a successful marriage.  Lying is always selfish.  Even a little white lie is really told to avoid being the one to hurt the spouse’s feelings, because a little white lie still hurts the spouse.  There is no kindness in telling a spouse that they look great, when they do not.  A pattern of dishonesty slowly drains mutual love out of the marriage.

Hopefully, you will quickly learn that the Rule of impeccable honesty is a must.  Deliberately making a bad call in tennis ruins the game because it is dishonest.  Doing so once or twice can be a mistake, but a pattern is the poison of lying.  Again, in our book, we detail eight other Rules for playing the game of marriage.  Each rule is as important as impeccable honesty.

The Skills

This brings us to the skills necessary to have a successful marriage.  In tennis, there are basically ten types of tennis shots that can be made.  Each shot requires its own set of skills, that is, a way to hit the shot successfully.  Some people learn these skills easily and others have to work very hard at it. Of course, no one ever gets the skills perfectly.  It is a process of percentages, that is, hitting more and more tennis shots well and fewer poorly.

Our research on marital conflict found that the determination

of whether or not a marriage is successful relies most importantly on

how well people resolve disagreements.

These disagreements arise from the simple fact that everyone is different.  Those differences arise in the form of disagreements.  Disagreements that are resolved successfully take up very little “room” in the marriage, leading to satisfaction and leaving lots of time for spouses to have fun with one another.  Disagreements that are not resolved quickly and successfully cause agony and lingering bad feelings about one another.  This leads to negative judgments about one another that take up more and more time in the marriage. This also means that couples who are in frequent conflict have less fun, ultimately accepting having a poor marriage or choosing a divorce.

Resolving disagreements successfully takes skills.

The list and definitions of the research-based skills are too involved for a short blog. Our research identified seven Skills, but are too involved to be covered in a short blog. However, we can at least introduce part of one skill here.

Humans developed instinctual biases that served us well in the millions of years of our survival on earth in very challenging times.  Being instinctual means that they are actually embedded into our brains.  Like many other instincts that were useful in the past, some instincts no longer serve a positive purpose.  Three of these biases are relevant when we think about marriage as a game and what is relevant to playing this game. One of the three biases relevant to marriage is Overconfidence Bias.

Overconfidence Bias

In a nutshell when people disagree, each person has more confidence in their own point of view than in the other person’s point of view.  In other words, people tend to assume that they are “right,” and, therefore, that the other person is “wrong”.  They are “overconfident.” Instinctively, the natural reaction is to try to convince the other person that you are “right” and they are “wrong”.  In a marriage, this natural tendency is a disaster.  We are not talking about situations in which one of the spouses is actually right and the other one is actually wrong.  If they are mature people, the one who is wrong, after a respectful discussion, can admit it.  However, most marital arguments are really about both spouses being right, but disagreeing.  This brings up the skill that needs to be learned: accept that both spouses can be right, but disagree, and seek a solution that is good for both spouses.  Seeking that solution involves other skills.

The skill required here is simply to overcome the Overconfidence Bias and shift gears to find Win-Win Solutions.  This sounds easy to do, but is not, because it overrides instincts firmly planted in our brains.  In addition, it cannot be an act- simply stating something as a distraction (e.g., “Let’s just agree to disagree.”) The situation is then amplified when each spouse harbors the conviction that they are right and the other spouse is wrong, when trying to move on.  Spouses have to reach the point of accepting that they differ and both are right.  The difference is the result of each spouse wanting, perhaps even needing, to accomplish different outcomes.  If they get stuck both believing that they are right and the other spouse is wrong, there is no way forward to a solution.  When spouses can overcome this bias, they can then apply all of our Seven Disagreement Resolution Skills introduced in our book, The Road to Successful Marriage is Unpaved: Seven Skills for Making Marriage Work [5] and get to a solution that works for both of them.

In Closing

Marriage can be viewed as a game. It is a game that can be won by

both spouses by following the Rules and by having the Seven Skills for resolving disagreements successfully, both of which are identified in our book.

We know this because we know that about twenty percent of all marriages are in fact quite successful because they follow the rules and have the necessary skills.  Our book, The Road to Successful Marriage is Unpaved: Seven Skills for Making Marriage Work, is essentially a “how-to” workbook that details the rules, identifies the skills and provides exercises for learning the skills.  Like tennis, the marriage can then become a process of getting better and better at the marriage game and having more and more fun playing it.  All for about $20.00 (the cost of the book)!

[1] The area of mathematics is called Game Theory.  For an extensive application of Game Theory to divorce, see our book, Game Theory and the Transformation of Family Law. See our website, www.marriageanddivorce.org under the Marriage or Books dropdown tab to order this book.

[2] Having an affair is the number one reason given for divorces.

[3] Growing apart is the number two reason given for divorces.

[4] Again, see our website, www.marriageanddivorce.org under the Marriage or Books dropdown tab to order this book.

 

[5] Available at most major booksellers (e.g., Amazon and Barnes and Noble).