
Masters of Love: Lasting relationships come down to kindness, generosity (2014) - johnny313
https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2014/06/happily-ever-after/372573/?single_page=true
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throwaway713
I'll quote Richard White's answer on Quora to the question "What was the worst
thing your parents ever did to you?"

> Every day from as early as I can remember, they were clearly and obviously
> in love with each other. Even after 50 years of marriage they were still
> acting like two teenagers going steady. They always supported each other in
> everything they did or tried to do. They "had each other's backs" at all
> times.

> I have spent my life trying to find that same kind of relationship - and
> haven't been able to.

> They unknowingly set the bar too high, I guess.

Like Richard, my parents had an essentially perfect marriage for 18 years
until my mother passed away from cancer. They never fought. Ever. They were
truly each other's best friend. I guess as a kid I just assumed that all
marriages were like that since I didn't grow up knowing otherwise.

My biggest dream in life had always been to have a marriage like theirs. My
own marriage just passed the one year mark, and unfortunately it has been a
disaster so far. I'm crushed in so many ways, and it's really just taken the
spirit out of me. I hope we can fix it (with counseling) but I'm not sure if
we can truly ever recover; I have too much resentment over what has been said
and done to me at this point.

~~~
ScottBurson
No marriage is perfect. Every couple fights sometimes, if both people are
being real with each other, and if they're not, that's a huge problem in
itself. (I think everdev is probably right: they didn't let you see them
fighting.)

The goal is _not_ to never fight; it's to always fight _fair_. Sounds like
your parents didn't show you how to do that — which is too bad, if they
themselves knew, because most people don't. In any case, you now need to learn
how, and any relationship you're in is a great place to start.

If you reach a point where you know you're fighting fair but your spouse
isn't, and doesn't seem to care that they're not, that's a reasonable time to
give up on the relationship.

Reread everdev's reply too — it's really good. Good luck!

~~~
logicchains
>No marriage is perfect. Every couple fights sometimes, if both people are
being real with each other, and if they're not, that's a huge problem in
itself.

Buying into this argument that "every couple fight sometimes" is why so many
people never eliminate fights from their relationships, because they think
it's normal and so never put the effort into bettering themselves and
addressing the root causes of problems so that fights don't reoccur. It's much
easier to treat fights as inevitable than work on improving one's own self-
control, compassion and empathy.

~~~
watwut
The root cause of fight is that partners disagree over something that is
important to both (likely related to some core value). The contributing factor
is oftentimes stress, people are not able to be perfect under stress and sleep
deprivation.

Self-control and compassion don't make disagreement or bad feelings over
important things disappear. They are still present. The "never fight"
relationships (not just marriage, but also friendships) are either "we do
things as separately as possible" or one of the two ceased to talk about his
or her issues. The latter are then "I had not idea partner is unhappy and bam
shock divorce" situations.

The easiest way how to keep calm is not to care. It does not have to be
screaming match, but if you never disagree about things like child raising, it
is likely that one did checked out.

~~~
ivm
> The "never fight" relationships (not just marriage, but also friendships)
> are either "we do things as separately as possible" or one of the two ceased
> to talk about his or her issues.

You missed one more option: "we can discuss a problem without involving
emotions or clinging to our opinions too much".

~~~
watwut
Not clinging on our opinions imply that said opinion is not much important to
you. It is easy to make compromise over dinner meal. It is harder to move away
from what you consider right in ethical sense or what is important for your
self respect. Most couples eventually run into something like that. I don't
mean something dramatic here, just personally important.

After all, you are marrying real independent person not a clone.

Also, it is true that when you dont involve emotions in relationship, problem
solving is easier. However, that situation describes more work relationship
then lifetime partner relationship. We are supposed to be emotionally invested
in the whole marriage thing.

~~~
ivm
_> Not clinging on our opinions imply that said opinion is not much important
to you._

On the contrary, it's more important to be able to reconsider your strong
opinions.

 _> It is harder to move away from what you consider right in ethical sense_

Why marry if your ethics are different?

 _> what is important for your self respect_

Unless it's an abusive relationship, I can't imagine a situation where the
self respect can be involved. Usually it's just the ego whining about getting
what it wants and disguising it as "self respect".

 _> We are supposed to be emotionally invested in the whole marriage thing._

There's a wide spectrum of emotions but most of them aren't required in a
relationship. As the OP's article says, focus on kindness and appreciation.

~~~
watwut
> Usually it's just the ego whining about getting what it wants and disguising
> it as "self respect".

Is this meant to be demostration or rational kind non-emotional solution to
dis agreement? Because on the face of it, you simply tried to insult fictional
partner. Sure, partner is less likely to argue if you label his demands this
way. It won't actually solve the problem however and over time he will figure
out what you are doing.

It won't lead to appreciation through, more like resentment and anger.

> There's a wide spectrum of emotions but most of them aren't required in a
> relationship. As the OP's article says, focus on kindness and appreciation.

You partner will not appreciate if you ignore his negative emotions. Or mock
them as above. For one, it is not kind. For the other, he or she will have to
look for support elsewhere.

You can have illusion of kindness if you mock partner for not being perfect
match to you or if you split first time serious real disagreement happen. Or
if you never marry because by the time you know everything about partner to be
absolutely certain you two agree about everything including situations you
have never been through, you two about to retire.

~~~
grasshopperpurp
You can acknowledge the feelings of your partner and yourself without making
those feelings the fuel of the argument. In my own experience, acknowledging
my partner's feelings makes me immediately calmer, more-grounded, and better
able to understand her POV. I imagine it works the same for most people.

If you're with someone you trust, you inherently respect his/her POV. For
some, this causes disagreements to boil into violent outrages. They feel an
attack on that trust. For others, they take a step back and say, 'This is
someone I trust with my life. Either he/she or I am missing something
somewhere.'

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k__
I had multiple relationships over the course of my 15 year dating career. Most
of them only working for maximum of 2 years. I even moved in with one of them,
but it didn't help much. Only when I found out what I wanted, things got
better.

The problem had something to do with missing kindness and generosity, but
those were just the symptoms.

The reasons were unmet expectations.

The problem with expectations is, you just have them and don't necessarily
know how to articulate them. Often you don't even know that you have them.

So you are in a relationship, don't say what you really want, because you
don't know it, or feel shame for it etc., and then you start to lose interest
in your partner because they don't give you the right thing. Then you become
unkind and your partner leaves you.

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ta1234567890
My wife and I have a company together and work from home, so we pretty much
see each other all day every day.

When we first started working together we got in a lot of fights and put our
relationship at risk. We realized that we had to figure it out or our
relationship would break.

Around the same time this happened, we were incredibly lucky to have attended
a free workshop called Founder's Communication (done free by innerspace.org
highly highly recommended for anyone in a long term committed relationship,
not just founders) which opened up our eyes and helped us improve our
communication to the point where we realized that almost without exception,
our arguments and fights were triggered by things that had nothing to do with
what we were arguing about.

We discovered that "99%" of the time, the cause of our fights were that we
were hungry, sleepy, in pain, or worse, a combination of any of those. Then we
first started getting in the habit of trying to pause fights as early as
possible and ask each other/ourselves if we were hungry, sleepy or in pain,
then if either of us was, we would try to address the issue first (get some
rest, food or comfort). Then we realized, why not prevent these things
altogether? We could easily plan to avoid hunger and sleepiness, pain is
harder but also a lot more unusual.

Now we are so aware of this stuff that we hardly ever fight, and whenever we
end up saying something bad/mean in the heat of the moment, we are able to
understand that we didn't really mean it, forgive ourselves quickly and move
on.

As a side note, this is really just an application of the realization
researchers have made, that verbal communication only conveys a small fraction
of what we are trying to say, the rest is all body language. Watch out about
thinking too much of the meaning of what anyone has said to you. Highly
recommend reading the book The Charisma Myth by Olivia Fox.

~~~
JustSomeNobody
This is very good advice and it also goes for children as well. If you want to
prevent most of the fussiness of kids, make sure they stay hydrated and give
them a healthy snack every couple of hours. If they are of napping age, be
consistent with naps. It's not a cure-all for tantrums, but it certainly
minimizes them.

~~~
ta1234567890
This. Just had my first kid. It helps immensely to anticipate when they'll be
cranky and be ready to address it right away (by feeding them, soothing them
or helping them fall asleep).

You also need to be aware of how that overlaps with you being hungry/sleepy
and try to address it in the best way. It's so easy to get angry at your kids
just because they got cranky at an inconvenient time for you.

At the same time, at this stage of their lives, I believe kids should
experience some stress/frustration/pain to know how it feels and learn how to
deal with it. Very important life skill.

~~~
laythea
This. It sometimes tough to be angry at my kids but sometimes it is needed
medicine. And no, not like that.

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telltruth
Ok... I'll bite. This feel good article doesn't do justice to relationship
issues at all. A lot of relationship issues simply arise from compromises that
have been done in past. May be woman is desperate in finding husband and man
is realizing he is getting out of options. Both gets married despite knowing
incompatibilities here and there. People tell them "opposite attracts".
Ummm... no. There is of course honeymoon period and then eventually kids enter
in life. Suddenly woman doesn't feel need to make man happy as much and man is
realizing his role being transformed to essentially a bank account. Things
start falling apart and there is no right thing to fix this. Sure,
kindness/generosity etc helps on both sides but the fundamental root cause is
folks ending up together due to short term biological reproduction needs that
then invariably gets extended as kids enter in their lives. It's not a
coincidence that lot of marriages fall apart when kids are between 8 to 12
years old. That's the time kids are becoming independent, women gets more time
to do job and run household according to her desires all the while man starts
to understand that there is very little left for them to be in. Some better
educated couples would hold off until kids go to college and there is spike in
divorce rate when kids graduate from high school.

~~~
cup-of-tea
All true and don't forget the sex with other people that everyone secretly
wants at all times. Women are ready to "trade up" for another man, men just
want to mate with other women. Couples who have only slept with each other
don't seem to suffer from this. Couples where one or both had a lot of sex
before getting together will suffer and will usually end having affairs.

~~~
mercer
Do you have any links to evidence for this being the case? Honestly curious.

~~~
cup-of-tea
Evidence? Sure, I know many couples. The bit about differences between couples
who have only slept with each other is my own theory based on my observations.
But it seems this has been studied more rigorously, for example:
[https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/j.1741-3737...](https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/j.1741-3737.2003.00444.x)
But this talks about marital dissolution, not simply affairs. Affairs are
happening _way_ more than you think.

~~~
kstenerud
Except that the study cited didn't take into account confounding factors
(cohabitation in earlier decades was associated more strongly with lower
socioeconomic status, for example). The study has since been replicated with
more recent data, and shows a weakening correlation:
[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3000053/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3000053/)

~~~
cup-of-tea
Well, they are still both talking about marriage dissolution. While
dissolution surely implies an unhappy marriage, the reverse implication is
most certainly not true. Many marriages stay official for reasons other than
"love and happiness". Most affairs probably don't even come to light, let
alone actually lead to marriage dissolution.

~~~
kstenerud
Which begs the question: "Why bring up this study at all?"

~~~
cup-of-tea
Because it is still evidence for what I claimed and the best I could find. I
couldn't find anything showing for or against what I claimed. I think that's
because it would be really hard to get good data.

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alanfranzoni
Interesting, in the fact that small acts could define a relationship. Less
interesting from a global perspective of a relationship.

I don't think (but I may be wrong) that a lot of people take fights at random
(the med school example looks very dumb, to me) unless there's a underlying
cause.

And, learning to give _and accept_ criticism is as important as well. It's
very easy IMHO to be positive when everything is fine, the sun shining, and
you've got plenty of free time for yourself and your partner.

What if life/job/kids make you feel "squeezed" and you can't totally and
always fulfill somebody's emotional requirements? The art of compromise, alas,
is the hard part of a relationship.

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_emacsomancer_
Good non-romantic relationships also often come down to kindness & generosity.

~~~
Pica_soO
All relationships boil down to two life-forms trying to pull one another over
the counter to archive goals that are detrimental to the short term interests
of both individuals. For that to work, both sides got to have mental bugs,
exploits and hooks.

Have fun on your next date, finding out what emotional responses are part of
the long term bonding, why they are important and how they act directly/
indirectly against your interests.

~~~
DougN7
I would postulate that is the definition if immaturity, or at least short-
sightedness. Sooner or later people start looking for ways that both can win,
in the short term and in the long term. Sometimes that means giving up
something you want now for something you want even more later. It takes time
to see that though, which is why it’s rare to see in very young people. (I
don’t know you personally, so this isn’t directed at you, just a counter
argument).

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ttul
I can vouch for the futility of remaining in a “disaster” relationship for far
too long...

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TangoTrotFox
Why did they pick 6 years as the measurement for a successful relationship?
Given a perfectly justified skepticism of social science studies, that number
seems very much like sample retrofitting. Beyond that, even their hypothesis
is absurd as it implies that the way a person interacts is a causal factor for
a relationship, yet the way people interact with their partner is quite
obviously caused by how they get along! It's like saying people who enjoy
going to the beach are often tanned, and implying that if you're not tanned
that is a _causal_ relationship with you not going to the beach. It's really
bizarre logic.

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himom
But first one must be able to connect with people... since I can’t do that,
the rest is considered behaviors of an pointless, unrespectable, unworthy
fool, while everyone else is mostly “take, take, take.”

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jadence
This article relies heavily on findings by the Gottman Institute however the
Gottman Institute's findings are suspect because they built their prediction
models _after_ the results are known and they _never_ verified that their
models hold up w/ additional data.

In machine learning parlance, it's equivalent to deriving a formula using
training data and not checking if the formula is accurate w/ a validation
data. I doubt many (anyone?) here would trust an autonomous car built w/ only
training data and never tested w/ validation data. Similarly, I don't
believe/trust the Gottman's prediction rate (94%) for a second.

More info:
[http://www.slate.com/articles/double_x/doublex/2010/03/can_y...](http://www.slate.com/articles/double_x/doublex/2010/03/can_you_really_predict_the_success_of_a_marriage_in_15_minutes.html)
(2010)

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oooooof
For relationship success you must both also be effective at communicating with
each other, able to talk openly.

You also need to be able to discuss challenges and issues without eroding the
value of the relationship.

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biql
Or maybe kindness and generosity is the result of other things going well. If
both are completely satisfied with each other and their personalities match,
it's plausible that they will treat each other well.

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alpineidyll3
This article is so obvious but so right. Worth a read if you're trying to keep
something, just to refocus you on what's real.

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stretchwithme
Yeah. People like that.

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archi42
Hmm, 2014. But a good read.

~~~
wslh
Not sure about what is wrong about an article from 2014. It is not talking
about the last JavaScript implementation or AI achievement.

~~~
5thbootloader
Perhaps the comment was referencing a myriad of different factors which might
affect relationships now that didn't exist in 2014? According to the World
Happiness Report 2017, there is a trend which suggests Americans are growing
less happy each year. So maybe in the interim of 4 years the world has become
drastically less optimistic about intimate relationships... Or not.

~~~
wslh
If we are leveling our critical analysis and skepticism to the extreme I would
say that all these studies are never settled and the World Happiness Report
does not invalidate findings of the other study.

> there is a trend which suggests Americans are growing less happy each year.
> So maybe in the interim of 4 years the world.

So are you saying that Amricans = World? Please (for example) go to Spain and
look about how happiness works differently than America.

~~~
5thbootloader
Ah, I was not intending for my response to be taken literally, sorry. I was
merely trying to show how ridiculous his claim was since there was no rational
argument for it.

I'll have to work on my presentation skills next time.

