The Surprising Trick to Creating a Positive Cycle with Your Spouse

The Research: What do we respond to more strongly?

In an intriguing 2015 study out of Canada, researchers assessed the marital satisfaction of older couples (married 40 years on average). They then measured the neural brain activity of the wives as they watched their husbands on a video, showing emotion about a shared marital experience—either a negative memory or a positive one. But the researchers were sneaky. The video was intentionally mismarked so that it was opposite to the men’s non-verbal signals. For instance, a husband might be positive and smiling about a happy memory, but the label on the video said he was talking about a negative memory or experience.

Essentially, the women were watching emotional responses that were designed to not match their own feelings.

The researchers wanted to see if these long-married wives demonstrated more neural responses (more impact) of a positive emotion when remembering a negative experience, or vice versa, and whether that related to marriage quality. Ultimately, they were looking for whether responses to emotional disconnect are in any way impacted by a couple’s relationship satisfaction.

And boy did they find it. The greatest neural activity arose when a woman watched her husband showing positive emotion. And this was the case even when she thought he was recalling a difficult marriage experience! Furthermore, these reactions were even stronger in the happier marriages.

So what does this mean for us? There is a clear big-picture reality, and a clear push toward a very practical action step.