Secrets of couples that last
the good practices observed by psychologists among the champions of marital happiness.
Perhaps you are spinning the perfect love with your spouse. Or do you think that you have found the right person, but that everyday life is still difficult to manage: household chores are sources of conflict, you never agree on the evening’s program, it gets stuck with your in-laws… So how can you maximize the chances that your couple will hold out and thrive anyway?
In this area, the statistics are not very clear. They reveal that almost everyone has the hope of lasting love: according to INSEE, there were around 190,000 PACs in France and 230,000 marriages — one every 2.3 minutes — for 2016 alone. But they also show that almost 47% of marriages end in divorce.
Given the central importance of the couple in our lives, researchers in psychology could not help but be interested. They, therefore, sifted through the loves that last … and the others. By sometimes putting lovers in an MRI to observe the functioning of their brain.
The force of routine, or that of love?
Their first observation will delight the most romantic. We could fear that if the couples last, it is because a routine is established: after years of common life, we have adopted its small habits and it is difficult to change it… But the results obtained by Daniel O ‘Leary and his colleagues at Stony Brook University in New York State paint a completely different picture. Using a survey of several hundred individuals, the researchers showed that 84% of people married for more than 10 years declared themselves to be very in love, or even more — that is to say, they checked one of the first three boxes of the measurement scale used (“intensely in love”, “very very in love” or “very in love”). More than 40% of them choose the maximum value.
This feeling remains intense, even after 30 years of marriage. In the vast majority of cases, therefore, people do not stay together without a strong love — at least in societies where divorce is widely accepted, such as in the United States, where this study was conducted.
The brain in love observed on MRI
So much so that the mere sight of the other provides pleasure detectable by brain imagery. Bianca Acevedo, also of Stony Brook University, and her colleagues performed an MRI on 17 people married for an average of 21 years, while they looked at photographs showing sometimes the face of their spouse, sometimes that of another person. The researchers also assessed their feelings and various aspects of their married life using questionnaires. The more the participants felt an intense love for their spouse, the more the brain’s centers of reward and motivation (which produce dopamine) were activated when they looked at his photograph. In addition, the more frequent they had physical intercourse, the more the sight increased activity in the posterior region of their hypothalamus — an area associated with sexual arousal.
But precisely, how to make that his partner vibrates with love even in an MRI machine, even after 20 years of marriage? Is it a question of people or good practice?
Both, of course. First, of course, you have to find someone who suits you. To determine the key factors, American psychologists Patrick Bentler and Michaël Newcomb looked into the case of 77 couples, of whom 24 had divorced 4 years after their marriage. Their results show that the chances of lasting are higher if the partners are alike on a certain number of aspects: the level of physical beauty, age, cultural and artistic interests… When one is the same age — with his procession of associated references — that we both have a taste for concerts or museums, it is easier to discuss and share various activities and emotions. In short, to keep the flame alive every day.
Religious aspects, on the other hand, would be less important. With however variations according to the culture: the results obtained by Mohammad Asoodeh, of the University of Tehran, and his colleagues thus suggest that in Iran the spouses are more satisfied with their couple when they share the same beliefs.
Other factors, such as a taste for travel, do not seem to be decisive either. Surprisingly, if you have always dreamed of surveying Latin America but your spouse is a hard-nosed whipper, this should not penalize your couple too much.
The importance of timesharing
The small shared moments are essential. For example, the study of Daniel O’Leary and his colleagues found that the intensity of love for a spouse varies with the time spent in common activities — more pronounced among women. Be careful, therefore, not to be separated by everyday life. Between work, children, and personal passions, you can quickly forget to reserve a little time for your partner…
In general, psychologists have highlighted several levers on which it is possible to act. Always good to know, whether to preserve your relationship or to… prepare for the next one!
The 4 pillars of lasting love
The sense of responsibilities
The tendency to take responsibility, without discarding others, chance or circumstances, promotes the stability of the couple. This is shown by research on the Place of Control (or LOC, for Locus of Control). It is a psychometric measure aimed at determining whether we attribute the events that happen to us rather to internal (“I succeeded because I am hardworking”) or external (“I succeeded because I was lucky to have had a good education and quality teachers ”). John Constantine and Stephen Bahr, of Brigham Young University, in Utah, for example, showed that the more men have a “Place of Internal Control” in the dimension of leadership — believing for example that their influence on others depends on their ability to listen — the less likely they are to divorce. According to the researchers, they would then be more likely to take responsibility and seek dialogue when a problem arises in the couple. Other work on women suggests that the couple wins when they also have a place of internal control.
Love-friendship
In some ways, the essentials for the couple to flourish resemble the ingredients of a beautiful friendship. In a study by Iranian psychologist Mohammad Asoodeh and his colleagues, for example, participants found their marriage to be all the happier because they often talked to their spouse and considered him a friend. A finding shared by Balaraj Nayama, of Christ University, in Bangalore, India, which also showed that the more people receive support from their partner on a daily basis, the more they are satisfied with their marriage. One of the keys to success, therefore, seems to consider the other as a close and faithful friend, capable of listening to us and helping us — and behaving in this way with him.
Expressions of gratitude
Frequent thanking your partner increases the chances of lasting if the work of Cameron Gordon and his colleagues at the University of North Carolina is to be believed. These researchers conducted a study of 50 couples approaching their fifties and married for 20 years on average. Every day for two weeks, everyone should note whether they have received a thank you or a token of gratitude from the partner. The results showed that this factor was closely linked to marital satisfaction.
Sexual activity
Many studies illustrate the importance of sex. In general, the more frequent they are, the more intense the love, and the more stable and satisfying is the marriage. Of course, the influence goes both ways: the happier you are with your couple, the more you want to make love. But sex can also be one of the foundations on which to build a whole relationship, as shown by the work of Carolyn Wenner at the University of Tennessee. By interviewing couples every 6 months for 5 years, she found that we can partly predict the level of future marital satisfaction from the initial quality of intercourse, in both men and women. For her, it is a sign that a bottom-up process (that is to say from bottom to top) is at work: the richness of our sexual relationships colors our overall vision of the relationship. This ascending influence is complemented by a top-down process, from top to bottom, where our general fulfillment in the couple improves sexual intimacy.
