Decoding Love (29 page)
Authors: Andrew Trees
None of these are necessarily large changes, and that is one of the heartening findings of Gottman’s research. Turning a marriage around doesn’t require whole-scale reinvention. It requires lots of small things done on a regular basis. What causes trouble is the very dailyness of marriage. The petty squabbles and minor annoyances that act like a form of Chinese water torture. Any one individual incident is not necessarily that significant, but when you add them all up, they can become overwhelming. If you can turn those routine interactions around—so that, for example, a couple learns to laugh a little bit when they argue—then those daily interaction start working to reinforce, rather than undermine, the marriage.
The funny thing is that happy couples don’t just succeed because they have mastered these techniques—they also succeed because they cling to an inaccurately rosy view of their partner and of their married life. That’s right. Happy couples seem to engage in a certain amount of what could be called healthy self-deception. This is so common that psychologists have even coined a term for it, “marital aggrandizement.” For example, one study revealed that some spouses assume a greater level of similarity than actually exists and that the assumed level of similarity is a better indicator for marital satisfaction than the actual level of similarity. So, happy couples aren’t necessarily more similar than unhappy couples, but the more that couples perceive themselves to be similar, the happier they are likely to be.
Offering some confirmation that husbands may be more like Homer Simpson than any of us want to imagine, wives are particularly adept at this mental trick. In one study, wives used a kind of perceptual filter to evaluate their husband’s behavior. In a happy marriage, wives judged an interaction with their husbands as pleasurable when an objective observer only saw it as neutral. This kind of consistent perceptual shift can go a long way to keeping a wife satisfied with her husband. It can also work the opposite way in an unhappy marriage so that wives judge everything more harshly.
Self-deception is a useful trick when it comes to any nagging doubts about the relationship. In a study on marital conviction, the researchers found that a strong sense of conviction in the marriage depended on having no significant doubts, and that avoiding those doubts involved self-deception. The more satisfied couples tend to be with each other, the more they tend to idealize one another, although you can’t simply lie to yourself. The study showed that there has to be an element of truth to the claim. That said, there are a variety of strategies couples use to inflate their views of each other. One is simply to convince yourself that the qualities your partner has are the qualities you always wanted. Another strategy is to downplay faults by tying them to virtues (my husband may work more than I want, but that is because he is a good provider). A key part of the equation turns out to be a healthy amount of self-esteem. Without it, the researchers found that people have more difficulty idealizing their partners and also underestimate how their partners feel about them, so your doubts about your relationship may in fact be doubts about yourself. Regardless, when it comes to marriage, the research suggests that rose-colored glasses are a necessary accessory.
And if you love your spouse but wish you could change one thing about them, I have some paradoxical advice: You should treat them as if they already embody the quality you wish they had. That may seem a strange way to get what you want, but studies show that people want to live up to the positive image that other people have of them, while complaining generally only results in defensiveness.
Beyond that, I’m afraid there are no simple answers. To misquote Tolstoy, I used to believe that all happy marriages were happy in the same way. But I was wrong. It turns out that there are many successful variations, and a relationship can never be reduced to a formula. Even if it could, no marriage remains static over a lifetime. If you hang in there long enough, though, you may even outlast some of the problems endemic to relationships. For example, as men age, studies show that they care less about sexual variety, and other studies have found that “old” love is even more satisfying than “young” love. If all of this is vague and unsatisfying, I can offer one quick and easy tip for staying together: have a boy. Studies show that having a son decreases the likelihood of divorce. Beyond that, all I can say is learn to fight fair.
I will end with one final study that I find strangely comforting. Married couples really do grow to look more alike over time, apparently because they tend to mirror each other’s facial expressions and, thus, make similar use of the underlying facial muscles. If we can share enough happy moments as a couple, that sounds like an appealing fate.
Epilogue
AFTER ALL MY RESEARCH, MY FAVORITE PIECE OF WISDOM comes not from science but from the last lines of
Annie Hall.
I’ll let Woody Allen tell his own joke:
Annie Hall.
I’ll let Woody Allen tell his own joke:
After that it got pretty late, and we both had to go, but it was great seeing Annie again. I realized what a terrific person she was, and how much fun it was just knowing her; and I thought of that old joke, you know, this guy goes to a psychiatrist and says, “Doc, my brother’s crazy. He thinks he’s a chicken.” And the doctor says, “Well, why don’t you turn him in?” The guy says, “I would, but I need the eggs.” Well, I guess that’s pretty much now how I feel about relationships. You know, they’re totally irrational, and crazy, and absurd, but I guess we keep going through it because most of us need the eggs.Even with the latest research, there remains something unknowable about love. Why do you choose one person rather than another? Why do two people fall out of love? Or remain happily married? Scientists’ incomplete answers to the fundamental questions of attraction teach us an important lesson about our own love lives. Love is endlessly elusive, not a final result but an achievement, one that requires a daily attempt to throw a rope across the chasm that separates us from each other. Perhaps the most that all of this scientific research can do is help us understand our experiences in ways that will improve our chances of finding love and give us the equanimity to bear the inevitable disappointments that will come along the way.Although I have tried to knock the romantic story line off its pedestal, I never wanted to suggest that we remove it entirely from our lives, because the best lives, the happiest lives, are those that approach life not as a tragedy or as a farce but as a romance. Even with all the difficulties of romance in the modern world, each of us can name inspiring stories of love that really did conquer all. Childhood sweethearts who are as in love at eighty as they were at eighteen. Long-lost love that burns just as brightly when the lovers are finally reunited. I even spoke to one couple who went through a painful divorce only to fall in love again years later and remarry, a testament to the possibility of finding love in the most unlikely places. As E. M. Forster wrote in the epigraph to
Howard’s End
, “Only connect,” which serves as useful advice not just in our search for love but in the most basic expression of our humanity.
Acknowledgments
WRITING A BOOK IS A LITTLE LIKE A LONG-TERM RELATION- ship that comes to an end. It begins with great enthusiasm. There are periods in the middle when you find yourself wondering what you are doing and worrying that you have made a terrible mistake. It usually goes on far too long. And when it’s finally over, you look back and try to remember what happened.
With that said, I owe a debt to many people who helped me hang in there and see the relationship through to its end. I want to thank Judith Riven, my agent, for reacting with excitement to my initial idea, even though the more usual response might have been an attempt to dissuade me from ranging so far afield. I also want to thank my editor, Lucia Watson, and my publisher, Megan Newman, who were enthusiastic about this project right from the start. In addition, I want to express my gratitude to the rest of the team at Avery who all did an outstanding job.
I am enormously grateful to the New York Public Library, particularly for librarian extraordinaire David Smith. The library’s collections and its generosity in providing work space made this book possible. I also am indebted to the many men and women who were kind enough to share their experiences with me.
And since our parents play a key role in shaping most of our ideas about relationships, I would like to thank my own for planting the seeds, directly and indirectly, for
Decoding Love
. My mother passed along her interest in relationships, and my father taught me to question the things we assume we know. He deserves an extra thanks for providing the inspiration for
Decoding Love
by giving me a book about economics. It gives me great pleasure to think that this is probably the first book on attraction ever inspired by the dismal science.
Decoding Love
. My mother passed along her interest in relationships, and my father taught me to question the things we assume we know. He deserves an extra thanks for providing the inspiration for
Decoding Love
by giving me a book about economics. It gives me great pleasure to think that this is probably the first book on attraction ever inspired by the dismal science.
Most of all, I want to thank my wife, Heesun, for being so supportive throughout the inevitable vicissitudes of writing a book, despite her being busy with the trials of pregnancy. She was too kind to point out which gestation was more difficult.
Bibliographical Essay
DECODING LOVE
COULD NEVER HAVE BEEN WRITTEN WITHOUT all the outstanding work done by scholars in a variety of fields. To make this book more reader friendly, I have avoided the usual scholarly apparatus of footnotes and bibliography, but I would like to acknowledge some of the excellent work I have relied on and point the interested reader in the right direction.
COULD NEVER HAVE BEEN WRITTEN WITHOUT all the outstanding work done by scholars in a variety of fields. To make this book more reader friendly, I have avoided the usual scholarly apparatus of footnotes and bibliography, but I would like to acknowledge some of the excellent work I have relied on and point the interested reader in the right direction.
For those looking for the material found in
The Dating Mind
, a good place to start would be Timothy D. Wilson’s
Strangers to Ourselves: Discovering the Adaptive Unconscious
(Cambridge: Belknap Press, 2002), which is a fascinating exploration of the various ways our minds play tricks on us. Ayala Malach Pines’s
Falling in Love: Why We Choose the Lovers We Choose
(New York: Routledge, 1999) also offers many absorbing insights. And I would recommend dipping into the outstanding works in the field of happiness studies, particularly Daniel Gilbert’s
Stumbling on Happiness
(New York: Knopf, 2006) and Stefan Klein’s
The Science of Happiness: How Our Brains Make Us Happy—and What We Can Do to Get Happier
(New York: Marlowe and Company, 2006). To find out how the fear of shock or a scary walk across a bridge can boost attraction, see D. G. Dutton and A. P. Aron, “Some evidence for heightened sexual attraction under conditions of high anxiety,”
Journal of Personality and Social Psychology
30:4 (October, 1974): 510-517. For the power of (perceived) excessive masturbation to change one’s feelings about a relationship, see N. Schwartz and B. Scheuring, “Judgments of relationship satisfaction: Inter- and intra-individual comparison strategies as a function of questionnaire structure,”
European Journal of Social Psychology
18:6 (December, 1988): 485-496. For the problems caused by thinking too much about which painting to choose, see T. D. Wilson, et al., “Introspecting about reasons can reduce post-choice satisfaction,”
Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin
19:3 (June, 1993): 331-339. For the difficulties of too many jams, see T. D. Wilson and J. W. Schooler, “Thinking too much: Introspection can reduce the quality of preferences and decisions,”
Journal of Personality and Social Psychology
60:2 (February, 1991): 181-192. For the power of introspection to change our views about our romantic relationships, see T. D. Wilson and D. Kraft, “Why do I love thee?: Effects of repeated introspections about dating relationships on attitudes toward the relationship,”
Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin
19:4 (August, 1993): 409-418. For the ability of teacher expectations to transform student achievement, see R. Rosenthal and L. Jacobson,
Pygmalion in the Classroom: Teacher expectation and pupil’s intellectual development
(Williston, VT: Crown House Publishing, 2003). For the probing study of colonoscopies and Kahneman’s peak-end rule, see D. A. Redelmeier and D. Kahneman, “Patients’ memories of painful medical treatments: real-time and retrospective evaluations of two minimally invasive procedures” in
Pain
66:1 (1996): 3-8. For the study on “North Dakotan” wine, see Brian Wansink, et al., “Fine as North Dakota wine: Sensory experiences and food intake,” in
Physiology and Behavior
90:5 (2007): 712-716. For the power of an attractive woman’s picture to change the nature of a telephone conversation, see M. Snyder, et al., “Social perception and impersonal behavior: On the self-fulfilling nature of social stereotypes,”
Journal of Social Psychiatry
35 (1977): 656-666. For one of the many studies on lottery winners and accident victims, see P. Brickman, D. Coates, and R. Janoff-Bulman, “Lottery winners and accident victims: Is happiness relative?”
Journal of Personality and Social Psychology
36:8 (August, 1978): 917-928.
The Dating Mind
, a good place to start would be Timothy D. Wilson’s
Strangers to Ourselves: Discovering the Adaptive Unconscious
(Cambridge: Belknap Press, 2002), which is a fascinating exploration of the various ways our minds play tricks on us. Ayala Malach Pines’s
Falling in Love: Why We Choose the Lovers We Choose
(New York: Routledge, 1999) also offers many absorbing insights. And I would recommend dipping into the outstanding works in the field of happiness studies, particularly Daniel Gilbert’s
Stumbling on Happiness
(New York: Knopf, 2006) and Stefan Klein’s
The Science of Happiness: How Our Brains Make Us Happy—and What We Can Do to Get Happier
(New York: Marlowe and Company, 2006). To find out how the fear of shock or a scary walk across a bridge can boost attraction, see D. G. Dutton and A. P. Aron, “Some evidence for heightened sexual attraction under conditions of high anxiety,”
Journal of Personality and Social Psychology
30:4 (October, 1974): 510-517. For the power of (perceived) excessive masturbation to change one’s feelings about a relationship, see N. Schwartz and B. Scheuring, “Judgments of relationship satisfaction: Inter- and intra-individual comparison strategies as a function of questionnaire structure,”
European Journal of Social Psychology
18:6 (December, 1988): 485-496. For the problems caused by thinking too much about which painting to choose, see T. D. Wilson, et al., “Introspecting about reasons can reduce post-choice satisfaction,”
Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin
19:3 (June, 1993): 331-339. For the difficulties of too many jams, see T. D. Wilson and J. W. Schooler, “Thinking too much: Introspection can reduce the quality of preferences and decisions,”
Journal of Personality and Social Psychology
60:2 (February, 1991): 181-192. For the power of introspection to change our views about our romantic relationships, see T. D. Wilson and D. Kraft, “Why do I love thee?: Effects of repeated introspections about dating relationships on attitudes toward the relationship,”
Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin
19:4 (August, 1993): 409-418. For the ability of teacher expectations to transform student achievement, see R. Rosenthal and L. Jacobson,
Pygmalion in the Classroom: Teacher expectation and pupil’s intellectual development
(Williston, VT: Crown House Publishing, 2003). For the probing study of colonoscopies and Kahneman’s peak-end rule, see D. A. Redelmeier and D. Kahneman, “Patients’ memories of painful medical treatments: real-time and retrospective evaluations of two minimally invasive procedures” in
Pain
66:1 (1996): 3-8. For the study on “North Dakotan” wine, see Brian Wansink, et al., “Fine as North Dakota wine: Sensory experiences and food intake,” in
Physiology and Behavior
90:5 (2007): 712-716. For the power of an attractive woman’s picture to change the nature of a telephone conversation, see M. Snyder, et al., “Social perception and impersonal behavior: On the self-fulfilling nature of social stereotypes,”
Journal of Social Psychiatry
35 (1977): 656-666. For one of the many studies on lottery winners and accident victims, see P. Brickman, D. Coates, and R. Janoff-Bulman, “Lottery winners and accident victims: Is happiness relative?”
Journal of Personality and Social Psychology
36:8 (August, 1978): 917-928.
For those interested in the Darwinian perspective, David Buss’s
The Evolution of Desire: Strategies of Human Mating
(New York: Basic Books, 2003) is a fascinating account of evolutionary psychology and relationships (in fact, all of his books make excellent reading). Matt Ridley’s
The Red Queen: Sex and the Evolution of Human Nature
(New York: Harper Perennial, 2003) is an insightful look at the never-ending battle simply to stay in place, and Donald Symons’s
The Evolution of Human Sexuality
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1979), though sadly out of print, will astound the most jaded reader. For discussions of chimps, bonobos, and humans, see the collection of essays,
Tree of Origin: What primate behavior can tell us about human social evolution
(Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2001). For a comparison of the speed of primate coitus, see Desmond Morris’s
The Naked Ape
(New York: McGraw-Hill, 1967). For an extended study of the evolution of pair-bonding, see Helen Fisher’s
The Sex Contract
(New York: William Morrow Publishing, 1982). R. L. Trivers’s famous essay can be found in
Sexual Selection and the Descent of Man: The Darwinian Pivot
(Piscataway, NJ: Transaction Publishers, 2006) edited by B. Campbell. For the willingness of men to have sex with strangers (and vice versa for women), see R. D. Clark and E. Hatfield, “Gender differences in receptivity to sexual offers,”
Journal of Psychiatry and Human Sexuality
2:1 (1989): 39-55. For the differences between male and female fantasies, see D. Symons and B. Ellis, “Sex differences in sexual fantasy: An evolutionary psychology approach,”
Journal of Sex Research
27:4 (November, 1990): 527-555. For men’s interest in their female friends, see A. Bleske and D. Buss, “Can men and women be just friends?”
Personal Relationships
7:2 (June, 2000): 131-151. For the study on toxic fruit fly sperm, see William Rice, “Sexually antagonistic male adaptation triggered by experimental arrest of female evolution” in
Nature
381 (May 16, 1996): 232-234. For female orgasm and sperm retention, see R. R. Baker and M. A. Ellis’s “Human sperm competition: Ejaculate manipulation by females and a function for the female orgasm,”
Animal Behavior
46 (1993): 887-909. For one of the many studies about our addiction to deception, see Bella M. DePaulo, et al., “Lying in everyday life,”
Journal of Personality and Social Psychology
70:5 (May, 1996): 979-995. For the theory that mating is the driving force in the development of our brains, see Geoffrey Miller’s
The Mating Mind: How sexual choice shaped the evolution of human nature
(New York: Doubleday, 2000). For the differences between male and female brains, see Louann Brizendine,
The Female Brain
(New York: Broadway Publishing, 2006). For the many-faceted effect of human attractiveness, see Nancy Ectoff’s
Survival of the Prettiest: The science of beauty
(New York: Doubleday, 1999). And for a study on the importance of the waist-to-hip ratio, see D. Singh’s “Body Shape and Women’s Attractiveness,”
Human Nature
4:3 (September, 1993): 297-321.
The Evolution of Desire: Strategies of Human Mating
(New York: Basic Books, 2003) is a fascinating account of evolutionary psychology and relationships (in fact, all of his books make excellent reading). Matt Ridley’s
The Red Queen: Sex and the Evolution of Human Nature
(New York: Harper Perennial, 2003) is an insightful look at the never-ending battle simply to stay in place, and Donald Symons’s
The Evolution of Human Sexuality
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1979), though sadly out of print, will astound the most jaded reader. For discussions of chimps, bonobos, and humans, see the collection of essays,
Tree of Origin: What primate behavior can tell us about human social evolution
(Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2001). For a comparison of the speed of primate coitus, see Desmond Morris’s
The Naked Ape
(New York: McGraw-Hill, 1967). For an extended study of the evolution of pair-bonding, see Helen Fisher’s
The Sex Contract
(New York: William Morrow Publishing, 1982). R. L. Trivers’s famous essay can be found in
Sexual Selection and the Descent of Man: The Darwinian Pivot
(Piscataway, NJ: Transaction Publishers, 2006) edited by B. Campbell. For the willingness of men to have sex with strangers (and vice versa for women), see R. D. Clark and E. Hatfield, “Gender differences in receptivity to sexual offers,”
Journal of Psychiatry and Human Sexuality
2:1 (1989): 39-55. For the differences between male and female fantasies, see D. Symons and B. Ellis, “Sex differences in sexual fantasy: An evolutionary psychology approach,”
Journal of Sex Research
27:4 (November, 1990): 527-555. For men’s interest in their female friends, see A. Bleske and D. Buss, “Can men and women be just friends?”
Personal Relationships
7:2 (June, 2000): 131-151. For the study on toxic fruit fly sperm, see William Rice, “Sexually antagonistic male adaptation triggered by experimental arrest of female evolution” in
Nature
381 (May 16, 1996): 232-234. For female orgasm and sperm retention, see R. R. Baker and M. A. Ellis’s “Human sperm competition: Ejaculate manipulation by females and a function for the female orgasm,”
Animal Behavior
46 (1993): 887-909. For one of the many studies about our addiction to deception, see Bella M. DePaulo, et al., “Lying in everyday life,”
Journal of Personality and Social Psychology
70:5 (May, 1996): 979-995. For the theory that mating is the driving force in the development of our brains, see Geoffrey Miller’s
The Mating Mind: How sexual choice shaped the evolution of human nature
(New York: Doubleday, 2000). For the differences between male and female brains, see Louann Brizendine,
The Female Brain
(New York: Broadway Publishing, 2006). For the many-faceted effect of human attractiveness, see Nancy Ectoff’s
Survival of the Prettiest: The science of beauty
(New York: Doubleday, 1999). And for a study on the importance of the waist-to-hip ratio, see D. Singh’s “Body Shape and Women’s Attractiveness,”
Human Nature
4:3 (September, 1993): 297-321.
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