What happy couples do differently: the science of staying close after kids
Do happy couples fight? What a lab saw in loud and quiet marriages
A lab filmed 73 married couples while they talked about a problem they kept disagreeing about, then followed them for four years. The couples who lasted did not all argue the same way, and the loud ones were a surprise.
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At every family lunch, Rono and his wife argue loudly, and laugh. You and Miva hardly raise your voices. In the 1980s, John Gottman and his team asked 73 married couples to sit down in a lab and talk about a problem they kept disagreeing about, while a camera filmed them. Then the team kept in touch with the couples for four years.
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Some couples argued calmly. Each one listened, showed they understood how the other felt, then gave their own view. These were the validating couples.
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Other couples were loud. They tried to win each other over from the first minute, argued with passion, and laughed a lot too. These were the volatile couples. Many people would bet on them to split.
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A third kind hardly argued at all. They named the problem, agreed to disagree, and moved on: conflict-avoiding couples, in Gottman's words.
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Four years later, all three kinds turned out to be stable. The shouting had not doomed the loud couples, so Rono's noisy lunches are no sign of trouble on their own.
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The couples at risk of splitting were of two other kinds, which Gottman called hostile and hostile-detached.
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One evening, you and Miva will argue about the dishes, loudly or quietly. The lab says the volume will not decide what happens to you. Something else will, inside the fight. What do the couples who last do in the middle of an argument?
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