[Up] | | | | LOVING IN FLOWHow the Happiest Couples Get and Stay That Way by Susan K. Perry, Ph.D.Available wherever books are sold, or BUY BOOKS here. |
[© 2003 by Susan K. Perry - May not be reproduced without permission] from INTRODUCTION: THE GARDEN OF DORIAN GRAY The first thing you notice is the white picket fence. Then the roses: miniature trees in rainbow profusion, red blooms thrusting through the slats, vines climbing to the tip of the Spanish-tiled roof. Neighborhood walkers often stop to admire the garden. With its delicately white-flowered bower and curvy brick walkways, it has a fairy tale quality. I call it the Garden of Dorian Gray. Admittedly, we inside the house aren’t growing increasingly hideous the more the daylilies bloom. At least, not anymore. Right now will someday be the good old days I’ll look back to with fondness. But my husband and I had to make it through relationship hell in our two decades together to reach the happy place we’re in now. It is often that way: further down your own block, or around the corner, there may be a couple who appear joyful in one another’s company, yet who weren’t always that way. All satisfied couples have histories, and some of those histories hide more agony than you might imagine. In this book, I will share with you some of my secrets and the secrets of more than three dozen couples I interviewed. How some couples move from the gloom of their own dark ages to much sunnier times—to loving in flow—is what you’ll discover in the following pages. WHAT IS “LOVING IN FLOW”? Relationships come and go. Some manage to hang in there, if just barely, but so what? Truth be told, what everyone wants is a relationship where, after decades, you can still get goosebumps at the sight of each other. A loving-in-flow relationship rises above the ordinary, beyond tit-for-tat. In this book, I’ll show you how the best marriage is having someone with whom to transcend aloneness in a random chaotic universe. I’ll prove that real couples with real flaws and inadequacies can indeed find exceptional joy together. My husband and I spend a lot of time in flow these days. It happens when Stephen makes one of his trademark bantering comments, many of them salacious, such as when he notices me leaning over the tub to wash my hair and says, “Oh good, chimps at the stream,” and I know he’s referring to the helplessness of a primate bending to get a drink. And I’m aware he’s showing me how delightful and sexy my everyday habits are to him. At such times the bond between us feels timeless and irreplaceable. That’s called flow. It’s the same as being “in the zone,” as athletes have long referred to the mindset. For couples, it means an intense engagement, unlike what either of you has with anyone else. Such flowing interactions are profoundly and endlessly refreshing, keeping us far from bored. If that sounds a bit dull to those who wish the frantic early days of emotional white-water-rapid highs could continue for a lifetime, rest assured: it’s no duller than transcendence itself. Anyone can learn to enter flow. According to the findings of flow pioneer Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, as well as my own nearly decade-long research, flow happens when you’re so engaged in whatever you’re doing that time seems to stop. You want to keep on doing it simply because it pleases you. It’s easy to grasp that reading a compelling novel, playing a spirited game, or composing a song could propel you into such an altered state. But what does it mean for lovers to spend time together in flow? “I think the most intimate time is when we’re both very happy to be with each other,” said one of the happily married men I interviewed. “There’s nothing the matter with our relationship in a major sense, we’re relaxed and calm, and we’re just feeling good being together. It’s a relationship flow.” ... THE PUZZLE OF HAPPY RELATIONSHIPS Words on black leather Made-in-Korea key chain ($1.95) seen at locksmith shop: “Opening the Door to Happy.” Over the past couple of generations, the “door to happy” seems to have moved and left no address. Ever since societies in the more developed countries made divorce a relatively easy option for couples to choose, choose it they do. No longer tied unquestioningly to their first partner, about half of those who marry opt to try another match, often more than once. For some years now, researchers have been trying to decipher what makes some marriages succeed better than others. ... And yet some of us find a mate and transcendent, lasting happiness. When I began looking for very happy couples to interview, almost everyone I spoke with suggested one couple who might qualify, but rarely more. And even a few of these supposedly happy couples confessed that they didn’t view themselves as all that exemplary. ... ABOUT THIS BOOK Relationship and marriage books abound, traditional how-tos that purport to offer a certain number of oversimplified rules for bliss. I see this book as a counter, for instance, to those that advise women to give up their identity in order to get their husbands to buy them trifles and take care of them, as well as to those recommending marriage because it’s healthier, as though coupled life were a prescription. Would we ask people to surrender to winning the lottery? Instead, this book—part of the movement toward a more positive psychology—shows how a superior relationship, one in which you have learned to love in flow, is achievable if you both want it enough. In my research, I delved deeply into the relationship literature, and then interviewed a series of fulfilled couples to find out how they got through the worst parts to the best parts of their joint lives. I sought to distinguish what qualities separate those couples whose relationships survive crisis (infidelity, severely ill child, loss of livelihood) from those that don’t. What makes a resilient marriage? What can you do to be in harmony, stay together, resist the forces that pull you apart, actualize yourself while you support your partner’s self-growth at the same time? How can you learn to love in flow, even when your partner sometimes exasperates you? I did with couples what psychologist Abraham Maslow did with self-actualizing individuals: studied the best. ... I sought out, by a variety of means—what’s called a convenience sample—couples who had been married (or in a committed relationship) for at least ten years (most for many more than that) and who identified themselves as extremely happy, those who would rate their satisfaction near the top of a scale of one to 100. I asked them a lot of personal questions to find out how they got there. This book also contains much personal material. By sharing my own experiences, I hope you’ll be able to identify with some of my shortcomings, and perhaps find resonances to your own relationship struggles. When you realize your concerns are nearly universal, then you can stop the blame and guilt and get on with solving the problems.... ... In the last chapter, I’ll show why a mindful awareness of time’s speedy passage can be the catalyst for the best possible lifelong love. An epilogue summarizes eight insights that have been learned and lived by my group of happiest couples. Now let’s begin at the beginning. |
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[© 2003 by Susan K. Perry - May not be reproduced without permission] from CHAPTER 3: COPING WITH CONFLICTHOW TO STOP FIGHTING “Communication” has become such a buzz word for what couples need to do that it’s lost meaning. What you say and how you say it certainly matters, and I’ll focus on ways to talk more effectively later. First, though, I want to emphasize that you can cut down on headache-causing strife using any number of strategies, most of which don’t involve struggling for the right words. Might some conflicts remain insoluble? Certainly many persistently tricky situations will never be solved as one or both of you would have preferred or could have predicted. But if you’re open to creative solutions, you can stop fighting the same battles interminably. Stephen half-teases me: “The most revelatory insight for me has been that you can actually learn.” So can we all. What you’ll read next is an idiosyncratic blend of methods used by couples who have learned how to curtail their wrangling.
 | CONCENTRATE ON THE CONNECTION. At the heart of many conflicts is the effort to control and change our partners, and that’s because if they continue to act differently from us, we feel less connected to them. It can feel threatening to stretch that seemingly ephemeral bond that holds the two of us together. “The task for us is to learn to witness the flow,” suggests psychologist Linda E. Olds. “We need to be able to be present at the whole array of feelings expressed by loved ones, including irritation and anger, without feeling responsible or guilty or even needing them to be different.” For an example of how this functions in reality, consider Howard. At thirty-eight, he’s been married just over ten years, with two preschoolers, and he says he and his wife have argued much less in the second five years of their marriage than in the prior five. “We’re both very intense, in different ways,” explains Howard, “and when we get wrapped up in an argument we both pursue it to illogical extremes. So whichever one of us realizes first that we’re doing that will back off and say something to the effect of, ‘Hey, I’m on your side, we’re making more out of this than there needs to be, there’s a simple learning point here, let’s focus on that and forget all this other stuff.’ It’s typically whoever consciously recognizes first that we’re running down a rat hole, as we call it. We will go two weeks without any disharmony and then we’ll have an intense argument that will last for forty-five minutes and then it’s over.”
| | BE FUTURE-ORIENTED. It is pointless to spend a lot of time arguing over what one or both of you ought to have done, unless it’s in the service of preventing the same alleged misbehavior in the future. If you reach the point of irreconcilable views over what did happen, stop the bickering and ask each other, “What might we do to ensure this type of conflict doesn’t happen again?”
| | SAVE FACE. Consider when it might be sensible to let a conflict wind down without an overt apology on anyone’s part and without having to agree on a specific action for the future. At times, change will occur, restitution will be made, without anyone having to put their remorse into words. In the process of batting around your various disgruntlements, you will each have heard the other, even if nobody wishes to go on record. Or one of you might have a particularly hard time expressing apologies, no matter how bad you feel. If this describes your partner, be kind and allow him to save face. Perhaps his actions will speak up though his voice holds back.
| | PUT IT INTO PERSPECTIVE. One simple exercise always works for me: when I’m exceptionally angry, I imagine attempting to divide our commingled belongings so we can separate. It doesn’t take long for me to realize what I’d miss about him, what I’d regret, and how trivial this particular conflict is in the face of such dramatic (even melodramatic) thoughts. |
PLUS 19 MORE SUGGESTIONS ... |
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[© 2003 by Susan K. Perry - May not be reproduced without permission] from CHAPTER 7: HOW DO YOU DRIVE ME CRAZY? LET ME COUNT THE WAYSI asked all my interviewees what bothers them about their partners. Nearly all of them seemed amused as they catalogued their few vexations. For instance, Tina Tessina’s husband Richard is meticulous, she says, whereas she’s a “get it done now” person. Because of his perfectionism (her term), he procrastinates. “I will get it done, though it may be slapdash, and then I’ll worry about cleaning it up later,” she explains. And that causes antagonism between this otherwise serene duo. She recognizes how deep such seemingly superficial differences can go: “When I get going fast, I literally frighten him, and he digs his feet in.” Another well-matched couple divides up this way: Jim is a worrier, and Joyce is a glosser, to use their words for each other. “He can see a crack in the foundation of the house and picture it all the way to the whole house falling down,” Joyce explains (which endears him to me). She admits she may be a bit too far the other way, so that unless a piece of plaster hits her on the head, it’s not yet time to call anybody to deal with the (non-)problem. He may hear a barely perceptible rattle in the car and want her to listen to it too, to touch parts of the car to see if the noise will stop. Yet not only will she not hear it, but she won’t even want to turn off the radio long enough to pay attention.. Is Jim overdoing it, as Joyce believes, or is she in deep denial over the reality of physics and entropy, as he might say? “I’ve learned a lot over the years not to do something I don’t want to do, and then get angry over it,” says Joyce, “but to just refuse in the first place. Now we negotiate it pretty well because we trust that somewhere down the middle is the truth.” It’s not so much compromise, but deep down believing that each of them is most comfortable on the extreme end of some continuum of worry, and being willing to hear the other’s side and move toward the center so that disaster is both averted and no one has to spend too much time preparing for the improbable. ... When I asked decades-married Sherry Suib Cohen about her marital pet peeves, she mentioned her husband’s sloppiness, which conflicts with her own craving for organization. Yet, if she knows where an item is that he’s looking for, she helps him. Why not make him search for it himself? “I do whatever I can to take any stress off him,” she says, not entirely altruistically. After all, her goal in life, she explains, “is to make him live another fifty years.” Take a moment to discuss with your partner whether certain of his behaviors that used to be annoying have become more cozily reassuring over the years. If there remain grating behaviors resistant to accommodation, consider whether some of them are more your province than your partner’s, as I’ve shown in this chapter. Also, with your partner, consider how each other’s behaviors may be complementary, helping you be a satisfying fit for each other. So that, if your partner became a tidy freak without any warning, your own level of neatness might not seem up to par, or if he stopped eating sandwiches out to save money, he might then begin to question your own purchases of gourmet coffee. |
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[© 2003 by Susan K. Perry - May not be reproduced without permission] from CHAPTER 9: THE COUPLE’S MANIFESTO OF LOVEME, MYSELF, AND I…OH, AND YOU Buying into the Couple’s Manifesto does not mean that each partner gives up a “self” in the interests of the union. A marriage needn’t be oppressive to your personal growth. I can’t forget my former husband telling me when I wanted to go back to school, “I don’t want you to grow, I want my children to grow.” What a contrast it was, then, when Stephen said to me, “Be who you want to be.” Yet sometimes sacrifices are necessary. Not every marriage will permit each partner to have everything each of them desires, whether due to time or money constraints, or some environmental consideration (he wants to live in the city and she prefers suburban life). What do you do when your goals aren’t the same, when you and your partner are competing for free time, use of funds, sympathy, or some other scarce resource? In the most long-lasting and satisfying marriages, a Dutch social psychologist and his American colleagues found, both partners are willing to sacrifice for each other. Address what you’re each willing to give up for each other or for the unit. See if you agree upon when an action feels like sacrifice and when it doesn’t. Among the couples I talked to, I found that some of them endured stages where an exchange mentality was later replaced with one that was more communal and more contented. Mei-Ling says, “The one thing I did come up with when we were going through therapy was that marriage is never equal. What’s important is that with the two of us together, the life we create is more than just the sum of us.” ...We all prefer when we get what feels like “enough.” Make a point of telling your partner what essential needs are met by your relationship, needs that are not based on actions but on who the other person is. For example, I’ve often told Stephen that he makes me laugh, and that’s enough. But what I mean by that is so much more than finding his jokes ha-ha funny. It’s about his sharing my existential aloneness, joining me mentally and emotionally in the ideas that dominate my life. It’s about being part of a family—in the deepest sense of the word—a family that crosses all the usual borders of birth and background. |
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[© 2003 by Susan K. Perry - May not be reproduced without permission] |
