The Manifesto of Marital Love

“Let each of you look not only to his own interests, but also to the interests of others.” (Philippians 2:4 ESV)

Fewer people are getting married and of those many are divorcing. Marital levels of satisfaction tend to drop dramatically within the first few years together. Nevertheless, there are people who defy these odds – they live happily together for years and years. How do they accomplish this? The spirit of kindness and generosity guides them forward.

Thousands of North American couples will tie the knot each year, committing to a unified relationship with the hope that it will be a dream made in heaven, and that the two will spend their days together until “death do us part”. We all know this isn’t happening in the larger statistic. What we often overlook is the smaller statistic of marriages that last. Now let’s examine what makes them last. Thirty percent of marriages do remain healthy and happy.

Psychologist John Gottman, over four decades, studied thousands of couples to determine what makes relationships work. Gottman with his wife Julie of The Gottman Institute in New York City study how to understand marital stability, which helps couples build and maintain loving, healthy relationships.

Measuring interviewed couples’ blood flow, heart rates, and how much they sweat they produced during dialogue, plus following up with them six years later to see if they were still together, offered interesting metrics. Their findings are distilled into two major groups: the masters – still happy after six years; and the disasters – who had either broken up or were very unhappily married.

What made the difference? Though the disasters “looked calm during the interviews, but their physiology, measured by the electrodes, told a different story. Their heart rates were quick, their sweat glands were active, and their blood flow was fast. Following thousands of couples longitudinally, Gottman found that the more physiologically active the couples were in the lab, the quicker their relationships deteriorated over time”. The disasters showed all the signs of being in fight-or-flight mode in their relationships during a conversation sitting next to their spouse as if meeting a bear in the woods. Hidden but revealed by the physiology, “even when they were talking about pleasant or mundane facets of their relationships, they were prepared to attack and be attacked. This sent their heart rates soaring and made them more aggressive toward each other”.

In comparison the masters “felt calm and connected together, which translated into warm and affectionate behavior, even when they fought. It’s not that the masters had, by default, a better physiological make-up than the disasters; it’s that masters had created a climate of trust and intimacy that made both of them more emotionally and thus physically comfortable”. ¹

During a beautiful bed and breakfast retreat, 130 newlywed couples were assessed while cooking, cleaning, listen to music, dining, chatting, and hanging out. And Gottman made a critical discovery in this study:

Partners would make requests for connection, what Gottman calls ‘bids.’ For example, say that the husband is a bird enthusiast and notices a goldfinch fly across the yard. He might say to his wife, ‘Look at that beautiful bird outside!’ He’s not just commenting on the bird here: he’s requesting a response from his wife — a sign of interest or support — hoping they’ll connect, however momentarily, over the bird. The wife now has a choice. She can respond by either ‘turning toward’ or ‘turning away’ from her husband, as Gottman puts it. Though the bird-bid might seem minor and silly, it can actually reveal a lot about the health of the relationship. The husband thought the bird was important enough to bring it up in conversation and the question is whether his wife recognizes and respects that. People who turned toward their partners in the study responded by engaging the bidder, showing interest and support in the bid. Those who didn’t — those who turned away — would not respond or respond minimally and continue doing whatever they were doing, like watching TV or reading the paper. Sometimes they would respond with overt hostility, saying something like, ‘Stop interrupting me, I’m reading’. ¹

When you think about your own relationship, how many times do we understand that our partner is reaching out for connection, to stop and listen to music together, go for a walk, or hit the cafe or the movie, perhaps after dinner. Gottman findings offer remarkable insights:

These bidding interactions had profound effects on marital well-being. Couples who had divorced after a six-year follow-up had ‘turn-toward bids’ 33 percent of the time. Only three in ten of their bids for emotional connection were met with intimacy. The couples who were still together after six years had ‘turn-toward bids’ 87 percent of the time. Nine times out of ten, they were meeting their partner’s emotional needs. ¹

What Gottman and his wife Julie were observing is exactly what Christians need to understand are necessary components in a Christian marriage, based on the New Covenant love principle to “Let each of you look not only to his own interests, but also to the interests of others.” (Philippians 2:4 ESV)

By observing these types of interactions, Gottman can predict with over 90 percent certainty whether couples will make it. Relationships rely on the spirit couples bring to the relationship. Kindness and generosity trumps contempt, criticism, and hostility.

The Gottman’s have got something worth remembering if you are married or considering marriage:

There’s a habit of mind that the masters have…which is this: they are scanning social environment for things they can appreciate and say thank you for. They are building this culture of respect and appreciation very purposefully. Disasters are scanning the social environment for partners’ mistakes…It’s not just scanning environment…It’s scanning the partner for what the partner is doing right or scanning him for what he’s doing wrong and criticizing versus respecting him and expressing appreciation. ¹

A simple heuristic would be “what you look for you will find”. Kindness works in a law of reciprocity, if we are loving and kind, kindness is returned lovingly to us. The circle of love coming back to those who practice the principle of “do unto others as you would have them do unto you” (Jesus)

We can also learn about why we feel loved, displayed by generosity, and kindness from the Shakespearean play Romeo and Juliet: “My bounty is as boundless as the sea,” says Juliet. “My love as deep; the more I give to thee, The more I have, for both are infinite.”

King Solomon wrote the Song of Solomon as a poet. He knew a lot about women. “My beloved is mine, and I am his”. (Song of Solomon 2:16 ESV)

Contempt, anger, inattentiveness, living without forgiveness, are the killjoys of marital love. It’s simple math that the majority of people never learn, or ignore to their peril.

^{1 Science says lasting relationships come down to 2 basic traits, (Business Insider, 2015)}