“If you want to change marriages,” Dr. Gottman said, “you have to talk about the ’emotionally intelligent’ husband. Some men are really good at accepting a wife’s influence, at finding something reasonable in a partner’s complaint to agree with. We found that only those newlywed men who are accepting of influence from their wives are ending up in happy, stable marriages.”
Interestingly, the researchers didn’t find much evidence of women failing to listen to their husbands.
The researchers surmised that men who resist their wives influence do so without even knowing it. Accepting influence is equally a mindset and a skill cultivated by paying attention to your spouse every day. And when conflict happens, the important thing to do is to understand where your partner is coming from and to be able to compromise.
The study said that it wasn’t that marriage can’t survive moments of anger, complaints or criticism and other human emotions; they can. Couples may find themselves in a bad place if they match negativity with negativity instead of working to de-escalate the conflict. For many men, the fallback response is to increase negativity during an argument.
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