A Marriage Therapist's Blog
Thoughts on Marriage Counseling
Archive for the ‘Theories of Love’ Category
OK, today is our day on the blog tour of Drs. Les and Leslie Parrott to promote their new book Trading Places: The Best Move You’ll Ever Make in Your Marriage. We submitted a question to the Parrotts and are publishing the question here, along with their answer.
Q: Les and Leslie, Are there practical ways to keep the methods of empathy you suggest really front and center in our minds, even when times get tough? It seems as if we always get side-tracked and bogged down in an argument or tense situation and only afterwards does one of us realize that we forgot all about the ways we should have handled the conflict. How can we make sure that we think of the Trading Places steps sooner rather than later?
A: We can tell you what works for us. We have a little code that one of us will, hopefully, utter before a conversation gets too heated. One of us will simple say “90 percent.” Why? Because we know that research says that whatever a couple is fighting about, once they see the issue from each other’s perspective – once they Trade Places – the issue ill completely resolve itself 90 percent of the time. Isn’t that amazing?
Think about that! Forget about all the other bells and whistles that we “marriage experts” teach couples to resolve conflict. If all you did was practice empathy – accurately seeing issues from your partner’s point of view – you would eliminate 90 percent of your arguments. We can tell you this is true not only from research studies, but from our own marriage as well.
Once you see the nearly instant results of trading places during these tense times, you’ll be a believer. That’s why, for us, we do our best to use the trigger phrase of “90 percent” to help one another press the pause button and empathize.
Of course, another strategy that might help you trade places when you feel a conflict emerging is to take a proverbial “time out.” Before one of you gets to a place where you’re beginning to lose it, press the pause button. Agree to take a time out. But – and this is important – also agree on the time you’ll come back together. It may be 5 minutes or 5 hours, but be sure to set a time that you can count on reconnecting. And during your time out, as your gather your wits and become more objective, try to put yourself in your partner’s shoes. If you’re having a tough time doing that, write a list of questions you want to ask him or her to help you see the situation from his or her perspective.
Here’s a fun little test you can take to find out how passionately in love you are. For each of the fifteen items, rate them on a scale of 1 to 9, where 1 means it’s not true for you at all, and 9 means it’s absolutely 100% true for you. Of course you can pick numbers between 1 and 9 to accurately rate your feeling level. For example, 5 would mean it’s moderately true for you.
Obviously, the blank line in each item is reserved for the name of the person you love.
- I would feel deep despair if __________ left me.
- Sometimes I feel I can’t control my thoughts; they are obsessively on __________.
- I feel happy when I am doing something to make __________ happy.
- I would rather be with __________ than anyone else.
- I’d get jealous if I thought __________ were falling in love with someone else.
- I yearn to know all about __________.
- I want __________ —physically, emotionally, mentally.
- I have an endless appetite for affection from __________.
- For me, __________ is the perfect romantic partner.
- I sense my body responding when __________ touches me.
- __________ always seems to be on my mind.
- I want __________ to know me—my thoughts, my fears, and my hopes.
- I eagerly look for signs indicating __________’s desire for me.
- I possess a powerful attraction for __________.
- I get extremely depressed when things don’t go right in my relationship with __________.
All done? Now add up the 15 numbers. The minimum possible is 9, and the maximum possible score is 135. Here’s how to interpret your total score:
- 106-135 points = Extremely passionate. Wildly in love!
- 86-105 points = Passionate, but less intense.
- 66-85 points = Average. There are occasional bursts of passion.
- 45-65 points = Cool. Infrequent passion.
- 15-44 points = Cold. The thrill is gone.
I was thinking about couples who come to me for marital therapy and where they typically fall on this scale. (Of course, the two people may sometimes have wildly different scores.) I think it’s hard to make any generalizations. People with very high scores come to marriage therapy if there is some intense conflict that they want to overcome. Younger couples who come in for pre-marital counseling typically have very high scores. People with low scores come to marriage therapy if, for example, the “spark” is gone.
By the way, I should give credit where credit is due: this test was developed by Elaine Hatfield and Susan Sprecher.
In the January/February issue of Psychology Today magazine, there is a semi-provocative article entitled “Scents and Sensibility” which describes how important the sense of smell is in influencing attraction between men and women. Apparently women depend heavily on a man’s odor in determining whether or not he is attractive. Men also are influenced by a woman’s odor, but apparently not to the same degree.
The article goes on to say that when a woman is on the birth control pill, her sense of smell is inhibited to the point that it no longer influences her feeling of attraction. Also, the pill affects a woman’s own odor to the degree that men will find her less attractive than if she weren’t on the pill.
So far, so good. But I stopped reading mid-article when I came to this nugget: “One of the most common things women tell marriage counselors is, ‘I can’t stand his smell.’” Say what?
I have spent hundreds of hours counseling married couples and the number of times a woman has said that to me is…hmm, let me think…wait for it…oh yeah…zero. I have never heard that statement or anything close to it.
So…real world calling Psychology Today…it is not common for a woman in marriage counseling to complain about how her husband smells.
OK, I’m done ranting now.
Continuing on the discussion about online matchmaking sites, let’s consider the famous 436-question personality test that a person is required to take upon joining eHarmony.com. The company believes so strongly in the test that it won’t let its users just simply browse through all the photos of people in a certain age range and living in a particular area. Instead, the site only allows you to see photos and profiles of potential partners whom it thinks are a good match for you, according to the personality test. In other words, their computer software really is trying to be a matchmaker.
But does this work? The folks at eHarmony.com would like us to believe that the relationships that result from matches made by their software will be happier and longer-lived than relationships that originate…well, randomly, without using matchmaking software. But according to The New York Times, there is no proof of this claim because it has not been scientifically tested. So we really don’t know if eHarmony’s matchmaking software is worthwhile or not. What do you think?
Are you aware of how big the online dating phenomenon has become? Here is one example: eHarmony.com claims that it is responsible for 90 marriages each day! And not only that, the company claims that 100,000 children have been born to couples who met on its website. I’m not sure I believe those numbers - they seem awfully high - but I have no doubt that online dating is huge. Match.com has 1.3 million members paying $35 per month to subscribe.
Both eHarmony.com and Match.com attempt to match people based on the results of personality tests. The eHarmony.com test has 436 questions! Match.com’s test has only 56 questions. (I think that right there is enough information for a lot of people to choose Match.com!)
From a business point of view, online dating is great because it’s recession-proof. Attachment Theory tells us that people don’t like to be alone. It follows that unattached people will tend to put a high priority on finding someone to be in a relationship with, and so a lot of them will consider the monthly subscription fee is worthwhile regardless of what else is going on in their lives.
And when you are attached, but things aren’t well, it affects all aspects of your life. That’s when marital therapy or couples counseling is called for.
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