KEEPING IT TOGETHER
By Shirley Barnes Special to the Tribune August 2, 1998 SEATTLE
--
Most couples bent on beating the divorce odds have never heard
of John Gottman.
His nine-page list of accomplishments, tracking his weighty
impact on the growing marriage education field, tells some of the
story.
So does an article in Psychology Today, which stacked Gottman's
academic credentials up against those of John Gray, the oft-quoted
author of "Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus." Gottman has
formally studied 760 couples, some for as long as 20 years, Gray
none. Gottman has written 109 articles in marriage and family
journals, Gray none.
A visit to Gottman's "love lab" on the University of Washington
campus, where he's professor of psychology, sheds even more light
on why he's worth knowing.
Forget the X rating. The love lab is a small, dark room with a
pair of high-backed, upholstered chairs about eight feet apart, a
video camera trained on each. Here volunteer couples, hooked up to
a rack of sensors registering everything from their sweat output to
how much their chairs jiggle, discuss a hot-button issue in their
marriage. A jumble of computers across the hall collects the
data.
The lab is Gottman's pride, the only one of its kind in the
country, he claims.
Gottman and his graduate assistants massage the data, a
painstaking process, and examine the videos for as many as 2,000
facial expressions, each sending a message. The love lab project is
one of scores of scientific studies he has completed, tracking
couples and families for more than two decades.
Other researchers, most notably Howard Markman and Scott Stanley
of the University of Denver, deserve equal credit for identifying
what makes good marriages work and bad marriages fail. Their
research has exploded many of the myths. It's not sex, money or how
many fights you have that make for a happy union. Marriage-wise
couples aren't afraid to accept influence from each other. They
connect on a daily basis in many small ways, think about their
partner periodically when they're apart, take time-outs to soothe
tempers, use humor as a coolant in arguments and have softer
start-ups when fighting. Even in conflict, their ratio of positive
to negative actions -- from a simple "mmmmh" or "yeah" to a pat on
the arm -- are 5 to 1 as opposed to 0.8 to 1 for unstable
marriages.
The best news is that couples -- from pre-marrieds to over 60s
-- can learn to be happily married by practicing the skills that
come naturally to stable couples.
The result is a whole new industry: skills-based marriage
education courses. Advocates hope such courses will become as
commonplace as birthing classes are for prospective parents.
They're beginning to make a dent. The Florida state legislature
passed a law in May mandating such courses for all 9th and 10th
graders, the first state to do so.
Adult adaptations of the divorce prevention courses are designed
to help couples at all stages -- stable or distressed -- including
stepfamilies, newlyweds, new parents, retired or dual-career
couples and pairs dealing with such issues as sexual dysfunction or
substance abuse.
Traditional marital therapy is "the culture of nailing people,"
says Gottman, whose office blackboard tracks the seminars, clinics
and media appearances he makes around the country.
"People go and get nailed by their therapist. It's a very
adversarial experience. All that has to be turned around," he says,
while emphasizing the need for continuing research to determine
which marriage-education courses or marriage therapy work the best.
He proposes a national $50 million study to do just that.
"What we have to develop is a culture where the Hell's Angel
viper walks out of marital therapy feeling respected and honored
and so does the accountant and the scientist and the bricklayer and
reporter," he says.
"Marriage therapy should be as big an industry as exercise and
dieting in this country, but it isn't," says Gottman, who started a
skills-based "Marriage Survival Weekend" with his therapist wife,
Julie, last year at the Seattle Marital and Family Institute. He'll
have a book out next year with the same title.
"We want couples (at the end of the weekend) to walk out holding
hands, talking about having the best lovemaking that night that
they've had in 10 years," says Gottman, explaining that one of the
purposes of the weekend is to help pairs realize that they have a
lot of strengths in their relationship.
As to why traditional marriage therapy has failed to curb the
divorce rate, Gottman says: "The psychological community has done a
very bad job of marketing, especially to men. Men want to see
options. They want a very clear statement of how much it's going to
cost and how much time it's going to take, sort of like when you
bring your car in to a good mechanic. He says right up front, `I
can replace the transmission for $1,200 or rebuild it for $800.'
That's what guys want to hear.
"Whereas right now marital therapy is kind of like going into a
restaurant where the waiter brings you a menu that says FOOD and
there's no price. You don't know how much it's going to cost, and
you don't know what you're going to get," says Gottman.
"Most people going through a divorce won't go to a therapist
because they say, `I'm not crazy. I don't need a therapist,' " says
Diane Sollee, founder of the Coalition for Marriage, Family and
Couples Education, whose mission is to spur support among policy
makers, educators, judges and the public for more skills-based
marriage education courses.
Sollee explains that couples seeking help typically wait six
years from the time storm clouds surface in their marriage before
asking for any kind of professional advice. By then it's often too
late. Even more likely, they don't seek help at all, not even from
their clergy, according to studies that show from 5 to 25 percent
of divorcing couples have never had counseling of any kind.
Marriage-education courses make exercises out of stable couples'
typical behaviors. Even intangibles such as passion and commitment
-- what to do if a good-looking secretary quickens your pulse --
have been broken down into "skills," says Sollee.
She calls Gottman's research "fundamental" in the field but
laments the fact that too few people have heard about the many
marriage education courses now available. Prevention and
Relationship Enhancement Program, Relationship Enhancement and
Practical Application of Intimate Relationship Skills and Couple
Communications are among the most widely known.
Sollee, who has taken the most popular courses to find how they
differ, is heartened that the skills taught "are pretty much the
same."
Sollee hopes more people will take notice of research proving
that such courses can save marriages. She and Gottman describe the
high costs of divorve: heart attacks, depression, teen suicides,
substance abuse, $9 billion in lost work time.
"Throw out everything about marriage therapy, marriage
counseling, group therapy or premarital counseling you've ever
thought of," says Sollee. "That's not what we're talking about.
Marriage education is more like parenting education."
The skills-based courses are far more affordable than
traditional therapy: from free for courses taught in a church
basement to an average of $350 for the most populuar courses.
They're most frequently taught in a classroom, a less
intimidating environment than a therapist's couch, says Sollee, who
finds teaching the skills to individual couples doesn't work as
well. "Every example I use, they assume I've sized them up. Their
defenses get in the way. But in a classroom with 40 people with all
the women laughing at the same point and all the men grunting at
the same point, you don't take it personally. You learn better,"
says Sollee. Participants give only their first name, she says, and
are not asked to reveal any relationship horror stories.
"If you're living with someone, sharing everything -- from the
bathroom to the babies to the money to the bank account -- you're
going to have disagreements," she says, pointing out that was one
of the most important discoveries of long-term marriage research.
All couples fight. In marriage-education courses, they're taught to
welcome conflict as a healthy part of love.
"If someone stops disagreeing with you, check their pulse. Or
check to see if they're having an affair. They're disagreeing with
their mistress," warns Sollee. The core to marriage education is
developing effective methods for resolving conflicts.
Sollee says she'll know her work is done when she can ask a
seatmate on a plane going to her son or daughter's wedding, `Which
marriage education course did they take?' and "She won't look at me
as if I were nuts."
----------
For information about marriage-education courses in your
community, contact Coalition for Marriage, Family and Couples
Education, 5310 Belt Rd. NW, Washington, DC 20015-1961; Web site:
www.smartmarriages.com.
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