Apparently empirical research has not been very successful at predicting which married couples are likely to separate/divorce and which married couples will stay together so far and only few researches have resulted in finding some indicators which could help with describing couples seeming to be at the greatest risk for martial dissolution.
Accordingly to Gottman and colleagues (Gottman, 1994; Gottman & Levenson, 1992) the way couples behave in conflict situations is more diagnostic of couple success than behavior in either pleasant or neutral interactions.
As I understand, this suggests that it is difficult to make up for negative interactions (in which speaker slopes isn’t significantly positive) in conflict situations between spouses, even if there are positive and pleasant interactions between partners occurring as well.
What to think about lyrics of the song below then? ;-p
Source:
Gottman, J. M. (1994). Why marriages succeed or fail. New York: Simon & Schuster.
Gottman, J. M., & Levenson, R. W. (1992). Marital processes predictive of later dissolution: Behavior,
physiology, and health. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 63, 221–233.
In his book Blink, Malcom Gladwell cites an expert (whose name escapes me) who suggests a working rule of thumb for whether a marriage will last. He said that when there is contempt, from either partner toward the other, it will end in divorce. Maybe not scientifically conclusive, but my marriage reflected this.
Actually I have lately found a “scientific conclusion” about sense of superiority over another person lately (mostly in the context of abuse) and I’ll post it some time soon (there will be a video). It might not be the same, but i think some of accurate sayings are reflected in research :)
And:) Congratulations (thanks!) on being the very first person who posted a content-related post on lovetheorist.com ;-p
Ah, what an honor! Cheers. Also: it was John Gottman I was thinking of.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contempt#Marriage