Marriage Series: Seeing beyond the Obvious
An important, perhaps the most important, ability to creating a successful marriage, even from one that is not currently going well, is the ability to see beyond the obvious. This is not easy to do. Let us give you an example, in fact the example that inspired our research and the resulting book, The Road to Marital Success is Unpaved: Seven Skills for Making Marriage Work:
Schools have had to address managing and educating children with a mix of academic and behavior problems for many years. A variety of efforts based on a variety of guesses, often critical of the parents of those children, continuously failed to produce good results. For the past decade or two, psychologists and psychiatrists guessed that the problem was that some children have imbalances in their brain, under the general heading of Attention Deficit and Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD). This conclusion at least had a partial solution: medication. However, even with medication, those students continued to lag behind peers in behavior, social and academic development. Those students were at least a little easier to contain and prevent at least some of the disrupting influence of those children on others. However, diagnosing a mental health problem and treating it with medication was not a good solution for those troubled children.
Dr. Ross Green[1] had the ability to see beyond the obvious. He raised a different but not obvious possible explanation for many of those “problem students:” Dr. Green and his research helped us see beyond the obvious, which resulted in a “ahah moment” and possible solution we want to share with our readers in this blog!
Dr. Green wisely observed: “Challenging behavior occurs when the demands and expectations being placed on a child exceed the child’s capacity to respond adaptively…and [when] some children are lacking the skills to handle certain demands and expectations.”
In other words, successful academic development in a classroom setting requires certain skills. Successful students either have or learn to have those skills, probably first in the home and then in early grades. Dr. Greene’s hypothesis suggested a solution: Study successful students and make a list of their skills and then train problem students in those skills. AND, IT WORKED!!!
In sound research, not only did the problem students learn and apply the skills and improve academically, now that they had the skills “to respond adaptively,” their behavior problems diminished dramatically. The students were simply over their heads before learning the skills.
Dr, Greene’s research inspired the research conducted by Ken Waldron and his cohort, Eileen McCarten, on relationship conflict between spouses heading to a divorce.
The “beyond the obvious” thinking of Ken and Eileen was that relationship conflict has its root in the lack, or low level, of disagreement resolution skills.[2]
To borrow Dr, Greene’s language,
Challenging behavior occurs when the demands and expectations being placed on spouses exceed the spouses’ capacity to respond adaptively…and [when] spouses are lacking the skills to handle certain demands and expectations in a marriage: specifically, the task of satisfactorily resolving disagreements.”
A persisting failure to resolve common disagreements between spouses leads to increasing levels of conflict. The cumulative frustration almost always includes blaming one another for the problem, coming to see the other spouse as a disturbed person and then begins the emotional path through anger, blame and apathy to a divorce. Some spouses, for many reasons, remain married and simply accept a disappointing marriage.
Spouses with “good or good enough” disagreement resolution skills spend much less time in conflict, allowing for much more time to enjoy the marriage and have a “successful marriage.” They avoid the frustration of repeatedly arguing about the same issues and attain the satisfaction of solutions that work for both of them.
For people marrying and people already in marriages, therefore, they must have the ability to look beyond the obvious.
This means really stepping outside of what they already think about marital conflict, and their likely negative view of the other spouse, and instead understand the skills needed to make the marriage work well for both of them. The emotional challenge is first to be able to say, “I am wrong about what I think is the problem”. Second, they must step back from the painful emotional patterns that might have developed in a marriage. Only then can spouses start having the fun of learning the skills and resolving most of their disagreements successfully. With so much less time spent in conflict, spouses can then enjoy the benefits of their marriage.
This is what our book (mentioned at the beginning of this blog) is all about. We made a comprehensive list of seven disagreement resolution skills, based on the work of many others and our own independent research. We describe these skills in detail and how to learn them. We also set the stage with information about the basic necessary conditions for a successful marriage.
The key is looking beyond the obvious,overcoming the emotional obstacles and working together to achieve the joy of a successful marriage.
[1] Dr. Ross Greene originated the empirically supported and evidence-based model of care Collaborative and Proactive Solutions (CPS).
[2] Note that this conclusion is vastly different than one that views the spouses as the problem.
