What Causes Great Loves To Turn Into Terrible Marriages?

It hardly seems possible. You and your partner were in love and couldn't get enough of each other.

Then, you got married. Now, you have that little knot in the pit of your stomach that says, "Maybe this was a mistake."

This article show some of the ways that great loves can turn into unhappy and painful marriages.

The Couple Had Low Positivity Ratios

Have you read the discussion about the magic positivity ratio? It simply means that a successful marriage requires a 5 to 1 ratio of positive to negative interactions.

If your marriage is starting into dangerous grounds, your ratio of positives to negatives has fallen below 5 to 1. More negativity has slipped into your relationship.

Let's see how that happens.

You Stopped Being Friends, Or Never Were

The wonderful people at the Gottman Institute, along with other researchers into marriage and relationships, say that one key to a great marriage is a great friendship.

Friends like being together. You're friends when your partner wants to be with you. How satisfying do you make it for your partner to spend time with you? You need to be friends with your partner.

Think a moment about you and your best friend, and how you are together. Do you listen to one another? Do you pay attention to what your friend says? Do you have a sense of what your friend is feeling? Does your friend listen, pay attention, and have a sense of what you are feeling and thinking? That's what friends do for each other.

When your best friend screws up, do you blame or criticize? No, you empathize. When you're not getting what you want from your friend, do you whine and complain? Not if you want to keep your friend.

Are You Now, Or Have You Ever Been Friends With Your Partner?

Think about how you are with your partner. Do you treat your partner the way you would treat your best friend? And, if not, why not?

You give your best friend respect and admiration. If you didn't, you wouldn't have that friend. That's the least that friends do for each other.

Most people say things like, "I wouldn"t be happy if my partner wasn't more than a friend. I married my lover." Or, "You don't have sex with your friend. A lover is different than a friend."

Of course, your marital partner is different from your friend. But, there's no reason you can't also be friends with your partner. And, you'll spend a whole lot more time being with your partner than you ever will with your friend. So, you want to be friends as well as lovers.

We're talking about how marriages go sour, and the number one reason is that you've stopped being friends with your lover, or you never were friends.

If that fits you, then decide to make friends with your partner. See the article on how you and your spouse can be better friends.

If you want to read that article now, we'll open a new page in your browser so you won't lose your place on this page: (Become Friends)

Another Reason Great Loves Go Sour: Unrealistic Expectations

Maybe you were one of those innocents who put up with your partner's flaws while dating or even living together, with the unspoken thought, "I'll change that once we're married." Good luck!

When you were dating you may have found it easy to resolve conflicts. Maybe you didn't have any. Maybe your partner avoided conflicts by giving you your way all the time. Or, maybe you avoided conflicts by always giving in to your partner.

But now, you've discovered that things change once you've settled down for a while. If either of you were avoiding conflicts by giving way to your partner, you've now discovered that you don't want to do that for the rest of your life.

Unrealistic Expectations About Conflicts

So, conflicts begin to arise. Some of them you'd seen coming. Some of them are pure and total shocks.

"Whoa!," you think. "My partner, my lover, has changed! This isn't the way things used to be." So, you decide to make it clear that surprises aren't okay with you. You'll put your foot down and make things go back to the way they used to be. Good luck with that.

Everybody told you. Your parents warned you. Your friends warned you. Late night comics warned you. They told you that marriage wasn't easy. This is what they meant.

Conflicts will keep happening for the rest of your married life

Research into marriages shows us that about 70% of the conflict issues in your marriage will never get resolved. You'll have those issues for as long as you two are married. If you learn to recognize those irresolvable issues, you can avoid 70% of your fights, and learn to accept them instead.

So, if you've got fights that never get anywhere, and conflicts that aren't resolved, you're wasting your time and energy and hurting your marriage. You need to learn to identify those issues that will be part of your marriage forever, and start learning to laugh more and fight less about those differences. See the article on how to stop fighting over irresolvable issues.

Click here to read about irresolvable issues right now. We'll open a new browser window for you, so you won't lose your way. (Anger in a Relationship)

The Incredibly Important "First Three Minutes"

This will "blow your mind:" The most dangerous risk to marriages — and the single most identifiable sign of a marriage headed for divorce — is the first three minutes of a conflict discussion.

It is poisonous to begin a conflict discussion negatively

Marital researchers have proven that a conflict discussion that starts negatively is likely to end negatively. Conflict discussions that begin on a positive note are likely to end positively.

Don't you wish you'd learned that in school? It's not too late.

If you see conflict coming, take a deep breath, think good thoughts about your partner, and say something positive — even if your partner began with a negative.

A strong positive can turn things around, and get things going positively. If you start with a negative, or respond to your partners negative with a negative, then the conflict can spiral into mutual hurting.

Conflict spirals into mutual hurting

We're all born with the ability to fight or flee. I kick you, you're equipped by nature with the natural reaction to kick me back, or run away. If you decide to fight back, your heart pumps, your arteries constrict, your pupils constrict, and your ability to think and reason is overwhelmed by the reactions of your autonomic nervous system.

That means: just when you need your reasoning ability the most, you don't have it.

When you're locked in a battle with your lover, your partner, your friend, you have less capacity to think.

So, you fight back. If your lover hurts you this much, you'll hurt back that much. So, your partner hurts you more, and you'll hurt back more, and so it goes.

You battle the way that nature equipped you to battle

Nature was equipping you to survive in the jungle. You have to be careful that you don't let nature carry you away when you're are in conflict with someone you treasure, and have promised to love, honor, and cherish.

Four corrosive steps

If you get locked into a spiral of mutual hurting, you can be tempted to use those four negative tactics Dr. John Gottman"s research proves are poisonous to marriage:

• Criticism
• Defensiveness
  
• Contempt, or
• Stonewalling

These four corrosive steps tend to happen in that order.

If one partner begins the conflict discussion with a criticism, the other partner has the opportunity to repair the damage by responding with a positive that takes the transaction in a productive direction. Research proves that one partner can turn the other one around.

If instead of a positive, the partner responds with defensiveness, it escalates the conflict. The attacks get more corrosive, and the defensiveness increases.

The worst and most dangerous of the four major negatives is contempt. Contempt — all by itself — is a leading indicator of a marriage en route to divorce. Contempt belittles the partner and is the absolute opposite of the admiration and respect we owe our partners. Contempt doesn't have to be expressed in words; it can be non-verbal, for example, an "eye roll."

The fourth step, stonewalling, occurs when one party, usually the one being attacked and treated contemptuously, exits the transaction by either leaving or going "inside" and failing to respond any further to the transaction.

When the slippery slope of conflict begins with criticism, the problem doesn"t get solved, and the relationship is damaged.

How Long Will It Take To Destroy The Great Love?

Gottman and Levonson found 2 high risk points in the life of a marriage. The first is in the first 7 years (average 5.2) years, and the second high-risk point is later (averaging 16.2 years). Let's call these "volatile" and "unfriendly" marriages.

The early divorces came to "volatile" marriages, marked by conflicts where the lovers used the negative start and got caught up in the criticism, defensiveness, contempt, and stonewalling cycle.

So, don't do that, or you're dooming you and your marriage to an early demise.

The "unfriendly" marriages lasted longer, but were marked by a lack of positivity. So, if you won't or can't be friends with your lover, and you don't give your lover the respect and admiration that you owe your partner (but reserve for your friends), you might only last around sixteen years.

Failing to be friends, and hurtful fighting mark the slow and fast paths to divorce.

You, with your new relationship or new marriage, can avoid the traps that have ensnared many couples before you. Become friends, and stop hurtful fighting. If you don't know how, read more of the articles on this web site.

If you're curious about what to do with an unwanted infatuation,
read the next article in the Happy Marriage Tips series:
Get Over Infatuation.
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