The Surprising Trick to Creating a Positive Cycle with Your Spouse

The Big Picture: In marriage, viewing things positively creates a positive cycle—and happier marriages

It appears that we are far more strongly activated and drawn in by our spouse’s positivity. Our brains sort of “discount” negative emotions. As the Canadian researchers put it (in their science-speak way!), the women’s brains (especially among the happy wives) “dampen[ed] neural responsiveness to a spouse’s negative [emotions].”  Further, the women also judged their husband’s emotions much more by “positive, rather than negative, nonverbal cues.” Both of those factors existed for women across the spectrum of marital happiness but were stronger among those with greater marital satisfaction.

Other research has found that this type of “positivity impact” holds true for both men and women. A 2006 UCLA study titled “Will you be there for me when things go right?” examined couples’ reactions to positive and negative events on video. It is perhaps not surprising that the researchers found that “feeling understood, validated and cared for during the positive event discussion was strongly and consistently associated with relationship well-being (satisfaction, commitment and love).” What was surprising was that, for the men, only the responses from the positive event discussion projected the well-being of the relationship! For the women, both positive and negative discussion responses projected the well-being of the relationship, but only the positive event discussions estimated relationship well-being for the future.

What do we do as a result of all this?