Why did your love lose out to the daily grind? | Love is easy to get along with

A 2014 survey of Americans found that only three out of 10 married couples were happy. The survey also showed that satisfaction in a relationship is most likely to drop, and relationships are most likely to fall apart, within a year or two after they actually start living together.

Fairy tales always end with "they lived happily ever after," but what happens after "Together" is the real puzzle.

Managing and getting along in relationships -- we're going to talk about what might seem like a cliche today, using some of the latest research.

Neuroscience: The essence of love is discontinuous moments

When we think about why romance is defeated by everyday trivialities, it might come back to the question: What is love? Is love continuous or fleeting? Is love what makes a long, intimate relationship work?

Barbara Fredrickson of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill has shed new light on love through research in recent years. She pointed out that there is no such thing as constant love, only split-second love. She defines love as a "micro-moment of positivity."

She has been studying the relationship between love, an emotional and physical relationship, for more than a decade. In the process, she stumbled upon the fact that when we feel the emotion "love", we have neurological and hormonal changes that are short-lived.

This means that when we say "I love you" as a "constant state," the only way we experience that emotion is in a single moment. Even in the best relationships, we don't feel "love" all the time. To some extent, all love is discontinuous, disconnected.

We are bound to love each other more in some moments than in others. At other times, love is not felt (but it is still felt in the faith), and even the most loving couples can feel dislike and hatred for each other for a few moments.

We tend to think too big of love when we talk about it. In fact, just because the feeling of love happens in a moment, it means that it can be worn away in a minute moment.

John Gottman, a social psychologist at the University of Washington, and his wife have spent 40 years studying what makes a long-term relationship good or bad. They found that for couples who initially loved each other very much, it wasn't the big difficulties that caused them to break up the most, but the trivialities of life. Many couples can support each other through tough times and then fail to stay in a relationship when things are going well. Later in a relationship, what determines satisfaction is how each partner handles the relationship in detail.

Master couples vs. Disaster couples

Psychologist John Gottman divides couples into two types: those who are "Master" (later called successful) and those who are "Disaster" (later called Disaster). The way they get along is different in every way.

In 1986, Gottman set up a "love lab" in which they sat different couples together and recounted the relationship -- how they met, how they argued, and what sweet memories they shared -- while using electrodes to record their blood flow, heart rate, and sweat gland production.

After these partner out of the lab, the researchers to 6 years of follow up, they finally found, sweating, heart rate and other physically active, able to accurately forecast their relationship after condition - when they sit together to talk about this affection, physiological active reaction, the faster the speed of the worsening relationship between.

While the 'disaster' partner may appear calm as they sit next to their partner and describe their experiences, the electrodes record a rapid heart rate and blood flow, as well as active sweat glands. Their bodies are in "attack or flight mode," and even when they're talking about something happy or meaningless, their bodies react as if they're facing a saber-toothed tiger -- ready to attack or be attacked.

Successful people, on the other hand, have a steady flow of physical indicators as they talk to their partners and are able to create an atmosphere of trust and intimacy.

The two types of couples also deal with each other's emotional needs differently. In 1990, he invited 130 newlyweds to campus for a day vacation and found that when couples made an emotional need to "connect" with each other, the different ways they responded to the request had a profound impact on couples' happiness.

For example, the husband of a bird enthusiast sees a goldfinch on his lawn and says to his wife, "Look how beautiful that bird is!" -- he thinks the bird is important enough to start a conversation between two people.

At this time, in the face of this question response, will reflect a different pattern of getting along. Although people who are not interested in birds find them small and silly, one type of wife (the successful type) responds by showing interest; Another type of wife (the disaster type) will avoid it. Some will continue to do their own things, such as watching TV. Some may show hostility, such as "Don't bother me, I'm reading."

Six years later, he returned visits with the couples, some of whom were divorced, some of whom were still living together. Only 33 percent of divorced couples were able to respond to each other's emotional needs; Eighty-seven percent of couples who were still living together had responded to each other's emotional needs six years earlier.

After more than ten years of research, Gottman summarized, according to the physiological stress response to couple together, and their response to the way of each other's emotional needs, they can accurately forecast after 6 years of relationship satisfaction, prediction accuracy is as high as 94%, whether these partners are heterosexual or homosexual, rich or poor, whether to have children.

After years of research, he concluded that the most fundamental differences between the two types of couples are: those who are "successful" have a habit of searching for things to admire and be thankful for in their partner, and they consciously and purposefully build this habit of respect and appreciation; "Disaster" couples, on the other hand, notice and look for faults in their partner and tend to express criticism rather than respect and appreciation.

The latter leads to "contempt," the number one breakup killer. Even the smallest act of contempt can trigger resentment.

The former is a form of kindness. In the study, this factor was found to be the most accurate predictor of a satisfying and stable marriage. And here said kindness, is in many details of the moment, you choose to treat each other's attitude and way.

How to make your love not lose to get along?

While kindness is a quality, Gottman says, it's also like a muscle -- and while some people are naturally muscular, it can also be developed through hard work. Successful couples recognize this and practice increasing their kindness.

Sometimes kindness doesn't mean "being nice to them." Sometimes, when you think you are being nice to them, such as buying them a gift, cooking them a nice dinner, they are ungrateful and complain a lot. This is because you may not be giving in the right way. As mentioned above, kindness is rooted in the everyday behavior of the relationship rather than being intentional.

According to Gottman, if you want to show more kindness in your daily life, you can improve it in the following ways:

1. Improve the way you express anger.

The hardest time to show kindness is when you are angry, but it is also the most important time. "Being kind doesn't mean not expressing anger, it means choosing the right way to express anger. You can shoot your partner directly, or you can explain why you're hurt and angry -- the latter is the kinder way." Gottman says.

For example, the two types of couples respond to their partner's lateness in very different ways.

The disaster type would say, "You're late. What the hell is going on? You're just like your mother."

The successful will say, "I feel bad about pointing out your lateness. And I know it wasn't your fault. But it does annoy me that you're late again."

2. Be open to guessing and interpreting your partner's intentions.

Kindness is also about whether you interpret your partner's original intentions in a positive or negative light when confronted with their actions.

Disaster partners tend to interpret everyday actions in a negative light. For example, a wife who sees her husband leave the toilet seat behind might think he is trying to annoy her, even though he may have just forgotten. A husband makes a reservation at a restaurant to arrange dinner with his wife and leaves work early. When his wife is late again, he may think she is not paying attention to him, but in fact, she is late because she went to a store to pick up a gift for him.

The "successful" partner interprets the other person's motives from a benign perspective. Even if the other person does a terrible thing, the "successful" partner appreciates the fact that the other person is trying. This encourages the other person to keep trying.

3. Share the joy.

The two types of couples also showed very different reactions to promotions, raises and job offers. The inability to share good news is one of the key characteristics of disaster couples' communication.

A 2006 experiment by Shelly Gable examined how couples react differently to good news. They found that couples responded in four patterns: passive sabotage, active sabotage, passive construction, and active construction.

For example, one day, one of the two partners came home and said happily, I got into the best medical school! At this point, different people react:

The passive saboteurs ignore their messages and say, "You don't know how lucky I was yesterday, I got a free T-shirt!"

Passive builders are absent-minded, texting someone with a congratulatory, "Nice work, baby."

The active saboteur immediately throws cold water: "Are you sure you can handle all that school work? What about tuition fees? Medical school is expensive."

Only active builders stop what they're doing and say, "Great, congratulations! When did you get the message? Did they call you? What class will you be in the first semester?"

Of the four responses, only the active constructive response is well-intentioned, allows both parties to share happiness, and builds a connection to share good news.

When we're in a marriage or long-term relationship, we have to deal with a mountain of stress that wears away and detracts from your romance. The difference is that some people don't bother to make an effort in a relationship, and those petty complaints build up and eventually tear them apart. While others choose to treat each other with kindness and improve the communication of details.

Those couples who do manage to stay together for a long time are not enduring each other, but truly living happily together. And the reason why they can be firmly connected, is because in every possible choice of suspicion in the small moment, they have chosen to use goodwill to speculate and treat.

I hope you found this article useful