I equip people to serve God and others in a way that is both fruitful and sustainable. I do this through teaching, writing, and coaching. This newsletter is part of that work.
April 28, 2022
1. Personal Update
2. FEATURE ARTICLE -- Four Marriage Killers, According to Research
3. Article of Interest -- Jonathan Haidt on Why the Past 10 Years Have Been Uniquely Stupid
4. Quote of the Week
1. Personal Update
In this week's issue, I'm sharing a short article I wrote after listening to Esther Perel talk about Marriage. I hope you find it interesting and helpful. If you read it and it makes you concerned
about your own marriage, maybe it's time to do something about it ... before it's too late.
The Renewed Man Pilot program has launched, and I'm really gratified to see the response. We have our first group coaching call tonight. I'll keep you posted about how it's going.
2. FEATURE ARTICLE: Four Marriage Killers, According to Research
For today's article, I'm using the insights of two of today's leading experts on love, marriage, and sex: Esther Perel, and John Gottman. What follows are insights that come from part of a podcast interview with Perel, along with some insights from John
Gottman. (I include a little background on both of them at the end of the article.)
There are four things that kill intimate relationships. If you see these in your partner, you should start to worry, and think about getting help. If you notice yourself displaying them towards your partner, it might be time for some honest reflection.
1. Indifference
This is when you start to feel like the other person doesn't really care about you, what you feel, or what you care about. You get the sense that you don't matter. This is important to us because we are creatures of meaning. It's essential for us to feel that we matter to the other person. This is the central reason why we connect, it's what we need. We want people to feel proud of us, to notice us, to think about us. And when this sense is lost -- when we begin to sense indifference
from our partner -- we don't feel secure about, and start to lose hope for, the relationship.
2. Neglect
This is when we take each other for granted. It's astonishing to think about how this happens in relationships -- people take better care of their cars, the yards, or their pets than their partners. This is closely related to "indifference." When it comes to things that really matter to us, everything get reviewed, evaluated, and attended to. But for some reason, people lose sight of this in their intimate relationships. It's very common for people to put in all kinds of effort
when they are dating. But then, after they "seal the deal" or "tie the knot," then they assume they can just coast. They drift into complacency and laziness, assuming that the relationship is just going to live on its own. It doesn't.
3. Violence (in all its various forms)
Obviously, physical violence is an extreme, and is the death knell of any healthy relationship. But Perel, and others, identify "violence" in a relationship as a multi-faceted issue. The issue is not just extreme physical violence, but also levels of disrespect, micro-aggressions, and "violent" language.
It's sad, but true: Most people talk nicer to almost anyone other than their partner ... the one they supposedly love the most. They say things to their partner, and use a tone of voice with their partner, that they would never use with other friends, acquaintances, or even strangers.
Why? Because we think we can get a way with it.
We know that in other relationships, we most likely won't. If we engage in name-calling, shouting, and other verbal violence at work, we'll get fired. If we talk this way to the police, we'll get arrested. If we talk this way to someone on the street, we might get punched. But we assume that our partner is just going to take it. We assume they'll be there for us, that they'll stay ... no matter
what. So if we like, we can talk to them with a tone and dismissiveness that we'd never take in other relationships.
4. Contempt
This is the most serious issue. This is killer of them all. It's the sense that "you're nothing to me." We can signal this with things as small as just raising one eyebrow ... "who do you think you are?"
John Gottman is one of today's leading thinkers, researchers, and writers about what makes marriages work, and how to fix them when they're broken. He was featured in Malcolm Gladwell's book "Blink," which talks about how some people develop such expertise that they can diagnose something in minutes that most people can't even see or understand. Listen to Gottman's own words about what he sees when he
looks at couples:
"I can predict with great precision whether a couple will stay happily together or lose their way after listening to them interact for as little as fifteen minutes! Over seven separate studies, my accuracy rate in making such predictions has averaged 91 percent. In other words, in 91 percent of the cases where I predicted that a couple’s marriage would eventually either fail or
succeed, time proved me right. I don‘t think my success in foretelling divorce earns me any bragging rights because it isn’t due to some superhuman perception or intuition. Instead, it rests solely on the science: the decades of data my colleagues and I accumulated."
Imagine that ... 15 minutes with a couple, and he's able to predict with 91% accuracy whether they'll get divorced or stay together.
HOW? What's the secret? What does he look for?
Simple: he looks for any signs of CONTEMPT. If he sees evidence that one of the spouses has such a low view of the other that they manifest signs of contempt for them, he doesn't see them staying together long.
In another section of his excellent book "Seven Principles for Making Marriage Work," he talks about this
from a different perspective. Here he writes about the flip side of contempt:
"Fondness and admiration are two of the most crucial elements in a rewarding and long-lasting romance. Although happily married couples may feel driven to distraction at times by their partner’s personality flaws, they still feel that the person they married is worthy of honor and respect. They cherish each other, which is critical to keeping their Sound Relationship House intact
and preventing betrayal. If fondness and admiration are completely missing, reviving the relationship is impossible."
So there you have it. Watch out for these four marriage killers!
Esther Perel is known for her TED talks on Desire in Long Term Relationships, and Rethinking Infidelity. I know I always say this, but need to do it again here: I DO NOT agree with Perel about everything, particularly how she seems to normalize infidelity. However, she has a LOT of good things to say about desire and relationships, especially how things in our world today are so
different than they've been throughout history. If you're into podcasts, I can't recommend this one highly enough ... it contains highlights from several podcast interviews with Perel about marriage, love, sex, and desire.
3. Article of Interest: "Why the Past 10 Years of American Life Have Been Uniquely Stupid" by Jonathan Haidt
You have to read this article from the May 2022 edition of the Atlantic. "Why the Past
10 Years of American Life Have Been Uniquely Stupid." And then there's the ominous subtitle: "It’s not just a phase." This is not easy reading, as it paints a grim picture of our insane social and political landscape. For a variety of reasons the voices -- and power -- of the extremist left and right wings have been amplified, and disinformation is getting worse.
What can we do about it? One thing -- and probably the most important -- is to see clearly and understand what's going on. That way, we're less likely to get sucked into the insanity, and we're better able to prepare for the further unraveling of our social fabric that seems likely.
Jonathan Haidt is a social psychologist at the New York University Stern School of Business. He is the author of The Righteous Mind and the co-author of The Coddling of the American Mind, which started out as an article in the Atlantic. I hope the same thing happens with this article. Haidt could -- and should -- keep working on this, and turn it into a book.
"We live in a system built on illusions and when we put forth our own perceptions, we're told we don't understand reality. When reality is an illusion and illusion is reality, it's no wonder we feel crazy."
