By Douglas LaBier • September 25, 2019
Couples often ask what it takes to build and maintain happiness—whether in daily life together or for the long term. A new study sheds light on that. Its findings reveal one thing that happy couples do differently from other couples.
And the findings are consistent with what we see clinically, in couples who work through their issues in therapy and elevate a sustaining sense of happiness and positive connection with each other. But the research also reveals a downside to that “certain something” that happy couples do; and it is also crucial for sustaining a long-term, positive relationship, especially if ignored or swept under the rug.
To explain, the research, conducted by three universities, started out taking as a given that all couples deal with conflict; all will disagree and argue over a range of issues—for example, parenting behavior, financial matters, intimacy desires, and so forth.
To look beyond that, the study observed couples who were in their 30s, as well as those in their 70s—and who described themselves as happily married. Their years of marriage ranged from an average of nine among the younger couples to 42 years among the older ones. (Caveat: the couples were all heterosexual, mostly white, and educated).
For the research, the couples ranked their most and least serious issues. The findings revealed that the happiest couples argued about their issues in a specific way, across their age differences, and regardless of the length of their marriage years.
It was the way they argue that seems to make a difference: That is, they “tend to take a solution-oriented approach to conflict, and this is clear even in the topics that they choose to discuss,” said the study’s lead author Amy Rauer.
The research, described here, found that the happiest couples focused on issues that enabled clear solutions. For example, how to distribute household labor and how to spend leisure time. For example, “Rebalancing chores may not be easy, but it lends itself to more concrete solutions than other issues,” Rauer said. “One spouse could do more of certain chores to balance the scales.” This suggests that when couples can identify and focus on a specific, possible outcome or solution to a conflict, they seem to feel happier.
But here’s where the findings become more complicated: Such couples rarely chose to argue about issues that are more difficult to resolve. Rauer suggests that this strategic decision may be one of the keys to their marital success: “Focusing on perpetual, more-difficult-to-solve problems may undermine partners’ confidence in the relationship.”
She points out that focusing first on more solvable problems may be an effective way to build up both partners’ sense of security in the relationship. Then, “If couples feel that they can work together to resolve their issues, it may give them the confidence to move on to tackling the more difficult issues.” The study was published in Family Process.
However, in my experience with couples (and their individual partners), those “more difficult” issues are also essential to growing and sustaining a positive, intimate relationship. Those include, as the researchers point out, things like health and physical intimacy. But they also include such issues as life purpose, personal values, whether they feel they’re on the same “wavelength,” and generally, if each partner feels able to reveal his or her inner life, fears, hopes, vulnerabilities—all of which may expose important differences to face and resolve.
Being able to separate out issues that can be resolved through compromise or agreement on what to do, versus those that are more central is an important step—essential, but not sufficient. The challenge is how to go beyond that. I’ve written about these kinds of issues in marriages, and what partners can do to deal with them, in some previous articles here (e.g., what I called the practice of “radical transparency” between partners).
Credit: Pexels
A version of this article also appeared in Psychology Today
