If couples were paying any attention during the past few decades,
they should be able to recite the one critical ingredient for a healthy
relationship — communication. But the latest study shows that other
skills may be almost as important for keeping couples happy.
While expressing your needs and feelings in a positive way to your
significant other is a good foundation for resolving conflicts and
building a healthy relationship, these skills may not be as strong a
predictor of couples’ happiness as experts once thought.
In an Internet-based study involving 2,201 participants referred by
couples counselors, scientists decided to test, head to head, seven
“relationship competencies” that previous researchers and marital
therapists found to be important in promoting happiness in romantic
relationships. The idea was to rank the skills in order of importance to
start building data on which aspects of relationships are most
important to keeping them healthy. In addition to communication and
conflict resolution, the researchers tested for sex or romance, stress
management, life skills, knowledge of partners and self-management to
see which ones were the best predictors of relationship satisfaction.
Couples were asked questions that tested their competency in all of
these areas and then queried about how satisfied they were with their
relationships. The researchers correlated each partner’s strengths and
weaknesses in each area with the person’ relationship satisfaction.
Not surprisingly, those who reported communicating more effectively
showed the highest satisfaction with their relationships. But the next
two factors — which were also the only other ones with strong links to
couple happiness — were knowledge of partner (which included everything
from knowing their pizza-topping preferences to their hopes and dreams)
and life skills (being able to hold a job, manage money, etc.).
Couples counselors, however, rarely address these two areas, as the
focus on strengthening relationships has been on improving communication
to reduce destructive behavior and to build support and comfort for
each other. “For the last 25 years,” says Tom Bradbury, a veteran
couples researcher at the University of California, Los Angeles, “the
prevailing attitude has been that relationships need to meet our
emotional needs.” To be successful, however, he’s also found that
relationships need to function in more practical, and perhaps mundane
ways as well.
And learning more about your partner, says the study’s lead author
Robert Epstein, a professor of psychology at the University of the South
Pacific, in Fiji, could be relatively easy if people (men especially,
since they scored worse in this area) took the trouble to find out,
remember and put to use such relatively simple information as the names
of their partner’s relatives and the dates of birthdays and
anniversaries. Even more important, Epstein says, is knowing such
critical things as whether your partner wants children. While his study
did not separate trivial from such profound knowledge, he says that the
two are strongly linked.
While other marriage
researchers agree that forgetting things like birthdays or food
preferences can be annoying and detrimental to a relationship, they
believe the importance of life skills that was revealed in the study is
telling.
“It’s an old idea, really,” says Bradbury. “In 1900 a woman or man
would think, ‘My partner must be able to provide for me.’ ‘She must be
able to help me plant and dig up the crops.’” If the couple had this
foundation, they’d consider themselves lucky if they also got their
emotional needs met. In Marriage, a History: How Love Conquered Marriage,
historian Stephanie Coontz traces the gradual erosion of this old idea
of marriage back about 200 years in Western society as cultural
expectations about marriage changed from one rooted in kinship, property
and utility to one in which people were expected to get nearly all of
their emotional needs met by one person.
For today’s couples interested in improving their relationships, say
the study’s authors, therapists might consider going back to the basics
and incorporating more practical social skills into their discussions.
And that may include referring those who lack these skills to money
managers or career coaches. “Communication skills are necessary,” says
Lisa Neff, couples researcher at the University of Texas at Austin, “but
they’re not sufficient when couples are under stress.”
It’s important for couples to know how the outside world — whether
they can get a job, whether their kids can play outside safely or go to a
good school — will affect their relationship even if they have good
life skills and good communication skills. Strong relationships, says
Bradbury, recognizes how pressures outside of home and the relationship
can influence, and even break down good communication skills.
“Outside,” Bradbury says, “there is a real world that impinges on
us.” To deal with it takes not only communication, but also an
understanding that even the strongest communication networks among
partners can falter and when they’re under these intense external
pressure. The strategy he suggests for couples he counsels is to join
forces rather than turn away from each other. “It’s not you against each
other; it’s you against the world,” he says.
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