OF A GOLDEN AGE

john gottman, a ph.d. who studies married couples, accurately predicts a HUGE percentage of couples who will divorce. taken from a 2002 study by his institute:

“derived from post-hoc analyses of the data, we explore the idea that there will be two factors emerging from the data, one factor tapping a volatile affective style, which will be related to early divorcing, and another factor tapping a more neutral affective style, which will be related to later divorcing.”

he uses small populations, but the results are intriguing.

anyway, on the radio show, he also talks about gay and lesbian couples — he did a parallel study with 21 lesbian couples, 21 gay couples, and 42 hetero married couples. people responded on a questionnaire and they were chosen based on what they said was “high relationship satisfaction.” ira glass:

“they found that the homosexual couples were far better than the heterosexual married couples at bringing up an issue in a positive way.”

gottman gave an example where a man asked his partner who initiated sex that morning. his partner said something like, you know you don’t have the kind of body i find most attractive. his partner said, yeah, i know, but who initiated sex this morning? gottman asked ira glass if he could imagine a husband saying something similar to his wife and getting any response at all, let alone the cooperative response of the partner here. gottman:

“so there’s so much less deception, so much more honesty, so much more directness [in the gay couples]. i don’t know if it’s representative, but i was impressed.”

(gottman’s study was published in the family process journal. it’s a long, in-depth analysis of the study’s parameters and findings. here‘s the episode of this american life.)

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