Marital Happiness: Surprise Is More Satisfying Than Stability
Positive psychologist Dr. Sonja Lyubomirsky, whom I've referenced in my column and had on my radio show, has a piece in The New York Times on happiness in marriage. She talks about the two-year slump -- the time when newlyweds' happiness at their marriage tends to shift back to baseline:
When married couples reach the two-year mark, many mistake the natural shift from passionate love to companionate love for incompatibility and unhappiness. For many, the possibility that things might be different -- more exciting, more satisfying -- with someone else proves difficult to resist. Injecting variety and surprise into even the most stable, seasoned relationship is a good hedge against such temptation. Key parties -- remember "The Ice Storm"? -- aren't necessarily what the doctor ordered; simpler changes in routine, departures from the expected, go a long way.In a classic experiment conducted by Arthur Aron and his colleagues, researchers gave upper-middle-class middle-aged couples a list of activities that both parties agreed were "pleasant" (like creative cooking, visiting friends or seeing a movie) or "exciting" (skiing, dancing or attending concerts) but that they had enjoyed only infrequently. Researchers instructed each couple to select one of these activities each week and spend 90 minutes doing it together. At the end of 10 weeks, the couples who engaged in the "exciting" activities reported greater satisfaction in their marriage than those who engaged in "pleasant" or enjoyable activities together.
Although variety and surprise seem similar, they are in fact quite distinct. It's easy to vary a sequence of events -- like choosing a restaurant for a weekly date night -- without offering a lot of surprise. In the beginning, relationships are endlessly surprising: Does he like to cook? What is his family like? What embarrasses or delights him? As we come to know our partners better and better, they surprise us less.
Surprise is a potent force. When something novel occurs, we tend to pay attention, to appreciate the experience or circumstance, and to remember it. We are less likely to take our marriage for granted when it continues to deliver strong emotional reactions in us. Also, uncertainty sometimes enhances the pleasure of positive events.
...The realization that your marriage no longer supplies the charge it formerly did is then an invitation: eschew predictability in favor of discovery, novelty and opportunities for unpredictable pleasure. "A relationship," Woody Allen proclaimed in his film "Annie Hall," "is like a shark. It has to constantly move forward or it dies." A marriage is likely to change shape multiple times over the course of its lifetime; it must be continually rebuilt if it is to thrive.
I recently posted a column referencing Lyubomirsky's research with Dr. Kennon Sheldon:
The advice to have "date night" that you probably see everywhere but the bottom of your shoe is right on. Where it misses is in how to do it and why. Researchers have actually quantified where happiness comes from (no, not from stoned leprechauns passing around a bottomless bag of Doritos at the end of the rainbow). According to studies looking at fraternal and identical twins raised together and apart, how happy you are appears to be as much as 50 percent genetic. About 10 percent of your happiness level stems from your life circumstances (stuff like your health, income, and the fact that you are now parents and feel like you haven't had a good night's sleep since John Quincy Adams was president).The good news is, about 40 percent of your happiness is within your control, through how you think and activities you can do (like date night). The bad news on the good news is something called "the hedonic treadmill," which is not a new form of torture at the gym. It's researchers' cute name for how we quickly adapt to both positive and negative changes in our lives and pop right back to our baseline level of happiness or mopeyness. This means it might not be enough to drag your weary, bleary parental cabooses out to dinner every Wednesday night. Sure, that's better than sitting home fretting that your kid won't get early admission to Harvard, but research by positive psychologists Dr. Kennon M. Sheldon and Dr. Sonja Lyubomirsky finds that variety -- "a continual stream of fresh, positive experiences" -- is key in increasing and sustaining happiness.
So, you need to go out on a variety of date nights -- changing up your activity every week and taking turns planning it so one of you will always be surprised. Lyubomirsky talked on my radio show about having Grandma babysit her toddler overnight and taking off with her husband to a hotel just a few miles from their house. (If you can't afford babysitters, or Grandma's six states away, trade babysitting with friends with a kid around the same age.) You don't have to do anything elaborate or expensive. You can borrow a Wii and ski the Swiss Alps from your living room rug, have a picnic dinner and then ride the Ferris wheel, or just go get hot dogs and make out in the car.
And a comment from the NYT:
PJS, Los Altos
Perhaps the moral of the story is: Don't have children. My husband and I opted out. At ten years of marriage we remain smitten. I sometimes wish this alternative approach to marriage had more cultural acceptance. If our lives are any indication, being childless is a valid option that can lead to greater happiness.
The commenter is half right I think. My husband and I don't have children and we clearly avoid many of the marriage stresses that children bring. On the other hand, we both have active, often stressful, careers. This can also lead to settling into the same comfortable activities because we're tired and have spent our mental energy for the day by the time we reunite in the evening. So we have to remember to push our comfort zone too.
Astra at December 3, 2012 6:08 AM
And I would rather have my kids than any man I've ever known. So I can't agree with the commenter, although its great that it works for her.
Every couple years (cause we have 4 kids and little spare money) we go on an adventure together- a cruise, or skydiving, etc. I'm hoping for a ziplining afternoon date sometime soon. It keeps us happy.
momof4 at December 3, 2012 6:15 AM
I think the problem is that too many people - especially women - believe that when you have kids, you're SUPPOSED to put them ahead of your spouse. No, you're not. Of course, during the infancy period, if you're a SAH parent, there's probably not much your spouse can do to lighten the overall burden, since you've both been working hard all day, but AFTER the kid turns three - if not earlier - it should be clear that the marriage needs to come first.
From John Rosemond (his latest book is "Parent-Babble: How Parents Can Recover from Fifty Years of Bad Expert Advice"):
http://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=1290&dat=19900506&id=o_ZTAAAAIBAJ&sjid=_owDAAAAIBAJ&pg=6868,1857378
May of 1990:
".....Last January`s issue of Fortune carried an article advising corporate parents on ways they can maximize quality time with their children. One example given was that of a northeastern executive who goes to work at dawn so he can come home early enough to coach his son`s soccer team.
"I wasn`t impressed. Now, if this same fellow went to work at dawn so he could spend more time with his wife, THEN I`d have been impressed."
(Rosemond has always said: "Want your kids to be truly happy, respectful and independent? Put your marriage first.")
lenona at December 3, 2012 7:16 AM
I tend to agree with the NYT commenter, though I am admittedly biased because I don't especially like little kids. But being child-free definitely makes it much easier for my wife and I to have (and afford) a wide variety of experiences.
Want to see the whole three-game Diamondbacks-Cubs series this weekend? Let's grab a pizza and a pitcher of beer before the first pitch. The symphony has half-price tickets tonight, want to go? Put on a dress and I'll get a sport coat. You want to learn to ride a motorcycle? Happy birthday, here's a Ninja. Want to go to the east coast to visit family? I'll buy some plane tickets, and while we're there let's go to a Nationals game and the Air and Space Museum. There's a beer festival in Flagstaff? Pack a weekend bag and let's go. Want to stay an extra few days in Vegas after a trade show? Fly up and meet me for the weekend. Your favorite local country band is playing on Friday? Let's put on our dancing boots.
No kids, no debt, no problems. All fun all the time.
MikeInRealLife at December 3, 2012 7:43 AM
You could also have one night stands instead of getting married and that would be exciting, too!
I'd say one difficulty with day-long activities like skiing is it is very expensive and sitters make it even more so. We do have a ski vacation coming up, with the inlaws, who are baby sitting!!! Hooray hooray! Diavolezza here we come!!!
NicoleK at December 3, 2012 8:56 AM
The NYT commenter and MIRL both point out the promise and scourge of a successful society.
At some point, people get enough learning, and enough independence, that they no longer feel the need to pass on their genes. Thus suiciding their civilization.
And the conclusion seems logical in itself. As a personal decision.
And yet.
Most first world countries are done. They are not replacing their populations, and so will contract, and get older at an astonishing rate. Some places like us, have enough immigration to counter this for a while, but we too will succumb.
Because we have lost the will to survive. Because our lives are pretty easy, but we just don't realize it. Those ideas seems so far removed for us.
As a culture we are fighting far harder to allow gay marriage, with it's far more difficult path to procreation. We fight using mighty technology to allow barren people to conceive...
And yet as a culture we are checking out in terms of normal human reproduction. The more enlightened among us spit the term "heteronormative" like a curse, as if ALL evolution were not leading up to it. Always looking for better way to stop conception rather than figure out WHEN you want to conceive.
Oddly, 50% of kids are 'accidents' and are called that. Even when it's purposeful.
In short, society beats around the bush, and acts completely scatterbrained about kids. And so, it isn't a directed part of marriage. It isn't a purpose.
I understand this. I used to think that way too. When you look into the natural world, the primary concern is eating, so you can procreate. Any thinking person is going to ask: "Is that all there is?" It's not ALL, but it is the basis for ALL there is. Are you choosing not to pass on your DNA because you think it's worthless? Are you being unintentional about the next generation? Are you presuming what will be will be?
Through a combination of Law and societal changes, the best and brightest are hopping right out of the gene pool. Because it's too much trouble, in a lot of places in the world.
What are we actually SAYING by doing that? Or would we rather not THINK about it?
For well or ill, marital happiness is just a subset of a much larger problem.
SwissArmyD at December 3, 2012 11:00 AM
Are you choosing not to pass on your DNA because you think it's worthless? Are you being unintentional about the next generation? Are you presuming what will be will be?
No, no, and no. I just don't want to have kids, and I live in a time and a place where that's my right. Period.
I don't question anyone else's choices when it comes to reproduction.
Because it's too much trouble, in a lot of places in the world.
From what I've seen, responsible use of contraception is what's too much trouble for too many people.
Kevin at December 3, 2012 4:49 PM
"From what I've seen, responsible use of contraception is what's too much trouble for too many people."
And THEY are the ones to pass on their genes and NOT YOU.
The point I'm making, is have you asked yourself: 'is this a good thing?'
I'm all for personal choice, but I know a lot of people in the aggregate don't think much about the consequence of that choice.
You are the smartest creature on earth, and you are choosing to stop your lineage in this world, you are choosing NOT to survive.
It may be the correct thing for you to do personally, but doesn't it strike you as odd, that it is?
SwissArmyD at December 3, 2012 5:11 PM
"Through a combination of Law and societal changes, the best and brightest are hopping right out of the gene pool."
I don't sweat 'gene pool quality' so much anymore, I think bio-engineering will ultimately make it possible to engineer smarter/better offspring.
Some more recent studies also show that earlier declines in birth rates (seemingly caused mainly by initial adoption of the Pill, and once the Pill becomes universal in a society), actually may reverse somewhat, and seem to level out at around replacement rates. Our society's are not going to die out, population is more likely to stabilize.
"From what I've seen, responsible use of contraception is what's too much trouble for too many people."
This may be true in a relative minority of cases, but the overall statistical evidence seems to speak against this claim; actual stats on population seem to show for example that contraception, in particular the Pill, has a massive (and near-universal) effect on (lowering) birth rates when introduced to any society. In other words, the 'actual numbers' seem to suggest that most people do overall make effective use of contraception, most of the time.
My wife and I had a child for the simple reason that we both really wanted one. I don't think anyone should have a child if they don't really want one. We have (smart, successful) friends who don't want kids. We're happy we had our daughter but I also perfectly understand their decision .. life is more carefree and fun and less stressful without kids. Kids are expensive and a big responsibility, and you lose a lot of effective freedom, not to mention a lot of sleep ... we both enjoy our daughter very much but we also both look and feel like we've aged 10 years in just 2 years.
Lobster at December 3, 2012 9:05 PM
For whatever it's worth (if anything) some studies seem to show (though I haven't looked at the quality of the science) that couples with children are overall happier on average, e.g.:
http://www.vancouversun.com/life/study+shows+parents+happier+than+childless+couples/6640894/story.html
Personally I think there are just a lot of pros and cons either way, and each is a different type of happiness.
Lobster at December 3, 2012 9:15 PM
You are the smartest creature on earth, and you are choosing to stop your lineage in this world, you are choosing NOT to survive.
Intelligence is overrated when it comes to survival. There are numerous survival strategies that are far more effective. When humans have been wiped off the face of the earth, the roach will survive.
We've already busted the natural order of things. People are living way longer than they used to thanks to medical intervention, and this also has some negative consequences. My great-grandmother had 16 children and buried 10 of them before they reached school age. Now, it's pretty uncommon for a child born in America to not make it to adulthood. Population expansion can't go on indefinitely, and eventually a species that begins to run out of resources contracts.
It's important that we survive as a species, and, as with other species, the qualities that make survival most likely will win out. Not having children might very well be a strategy that helps the species as a whole rather than any individual's genetic survival.
For whatever it's worth (if anything) some studies seem to show (though I haven't looked at the quality of the science) that couples with children are overall happier on average, e.g.:
It doesn't say so in the article, but I'm curious whether the study separated people who chose to not have children from people who couldn't have children because of medical reasons or other life circumstances. I imagine wanting children very badly and not having them would reduce a couple's happiness.
MonicaP at December 3, 2012 10:09 PM
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