How to Make Relationship Happiness Last

You’ve probably heard the saying “happy wife, happy life” or “happy spouse, happy home”. But are these popular sayings actually backed by research?

The short answer is probably yes. Several studies link the quality of a couple’s marriage to each partner’s individual happiness. In fact, psychologist Eli Finkel shared poll results showing that 57 percent of people who say they are “very happy” in their marriage also say they are very happy with their life overall. While only 10 percent of people who say they are only “fairly happy” in their marriage say they are very satisfied with their life overall.

Studies also suggest that a happy marriage can be good for your health. Researchers Kathleen King and Harry Reis followed the recovery of patients who had undergone coronary artery bypass grafts. They found that married patients were 2.5 times more likely to be alive 15 years after their surgery than unmarried. And patients who reported being happily married were 3.2 times more likely to be alive 15 years after surgery.

The quality of one’s marriage depends on being happy and healthy. The bad news, however, is that the quality of marriage tends to decline over time.

It’s possible that some couples remain as happy as they were on their wedding day, or become even happier over time. But on average, the quality of the marriage decreases as the marriage progresses. Many large-scale longitudinal studies that have followed married couples over the years show a clear and consistent downward trend in marriage quality over time.

But before you swear marriage or deliver the most depressing wedding speech ever, a research study by Eli Finkel, Erica Slotter, Laura Luchies, Gregory Walton, and James Gross found a way to preserve relationship quality. When couples fight or experience conflict, which they inevitably will, they can stop the downward spiral by looking at the conflict from a third party’s perspective.

How to think differently about conflict

One reason relationship quality declines over time is because of the reciprocity of negative affect. When a partner is upset or in a bad mood, their partner tends to respond in an equally bad or even worse mood, escalating the conflict. For example, responding to a partner’s criticism with criticism or contempt sets off a downward spiral of negativity that is difficult for couples to break.

One tip to stop the slippage of declining relationship quality is for couples emotional reappraisal, or reinterpret the conflict in a way that makes them feel less angry and distressed. Rather than looking at the conflict from the first-person perspective, emotional reappraisal requires couples to look at the conflict from a third-party perspective, as an outsider would. How was I wronged by my partner?

To determine whether emotional reappraisal can preserve relationship quality over time, researchers Eli Finkel and colleagues followed 120 heterosexual couples for two years. Every four months, the researchers measured a couple’s relationship quality by asking about their relationship satisfaction and their feelings of love, intimacy, trust, passion, and commitment.

After one year, married couples experienced a sharp decline in relationship quality on average. This replicates previous research showing a decrease in married couples’ happiness over time.

The researchers then implemented an emotional reappraisal intervention. Over the next year, half of the couples were asked to write about any conflicts they experienced in their marriage from the perspective of a neutral third party who wants the best for everyone involved. In particular, they wrote how that person might feel about the disagreement and how they might find something good that might result from it. Participants in this state were also asked to do their best over the next year to always have this third-party perspective, especially when experiencing conflicts with their partner.

The other half of the participants were in the control state. They were regularly examined by the researchers but were not asked to think differently about the conflict they were experiencing in their marriage.

After the second year, married couples in the control condition continued to show the same significant decreases in relationship quality over time. However, married couples in the state of emotional reevaluation stopped declining in relationship quality. Thinking about conflict from a third party’s perspective didn’t make them happier in their relationship, but it did halt the normative decline in relationship quality that most married couples experience.

These results are promising because an emotional reappraisal intervention is relatively easy for couples to implement. Simply looking at conflict from the perspective of a neutral third party seems to make a significant difference in couple marriages. It may not improve the quality of their relationship, but when couples reevaluate conflicts early and often, their marital bliss can last long after the honeymoon.