Equal Partnership in Marriage

I came across an LDS website which uses Gottman's materials extensively to build equal partnership relationships. This is their summary of an equal partnership marriage,

Benefits of Equal Partnership

An equal partnership benefits marriages as a whole and benefits husbands and wives individually.
Happier marriages. Equal partnership fosters closeness between husband and wife, resulting in a stronger and happier marriage. Spouses feel better about themselves and each other, which makes them more likely to share their thoughts and feelings. This greater emotional intimacy leads to greater physical intimacy, an important element of a happy marriage. Couples with an equal partnership also report more stability in their marriage, less conflict, less dependency, and less resentment. Researcher John Gottman found that husbands who accept their wives’ influence are four times less likely to divorce or have an unhappy marriage.

Benefits to men. Men benefit emotionally from equal partnership because there is greater openness and they feel better about their marriage. They also benefit from the greater physical intimacy that comes with equal partnership. Physical intimacy improves physical health and reduces stress. Men in happy marriages also are more productive at work because they are less distracted by concerns at home.

Benefits to women. The closer communication and emotional intimacy in an equal partnership greatly benefit women. Research shows that having an equal say in decision making is the most important contributor to wives’ perception of their marriages as happy and satisfying. Wives are happier when their husbands appreciate them for the work they do in the home and when their husbands are copartners in home matters. They feel better about themselves, are less angry or depressed, feel their relationship is more fair, and are more happy with their marriage.

I am still puzzled at how Gottman's research has been used by Eggerichs to support hierarchy in marriage. If this is the case, then any advice that the wife does not need equal say is deliberately teaching unhappiness in marriage. The husband needs equal say also, BTW.

The Mathematics of Marriage

There has been a spate of posts on Bible translations and Kurk has responded to my last post.

In an event of unusual synchronicity, James Murray, co author with John Gottman et al. of The Mathematics of Marriage, gave an address at the Royal Society on March 26, 2009 which makes it crystal clear that their work on love and respect demonstrated the strictly symmetrical nature of these terms. HT Theophrastus.

This demonstrates that Gottman was misquoted by Emerson Eggerich and that there is no social science or scientific support for the notion that "men need respect and women need love." In fact, Gottman and Murray's detailed longtitudinal study demonstrates that marital success is dependent on love and respect demonstrated in a totally symmetrical fashion.

The exact terms which Gottman and Murray used were "affection and humour" for the most positive affects and contempt as the most negative. They also mentioned that the quality of the friendship between husband and wife was foundational.

In the book, The Mathematics of Marriage, Gottman reports that one woman in particular stated that she felt disrespected, and he saw her difficulty as relating to her perception that she had to be subordinate in her marriage. This was presented as a problem by Gottman.

I am very disappointed when a Christian author misintertprets data presented in an honest fashion and then uses the misinterpretation to attempt to promote the scientific truth of the Bible, or the subordination of woman or what have you. Very disappointing.

When Eggerichs writes,

Interestingly enough, scientific research confirms that love and respect are the foundation of a successful marriage. Dr. John Gottman, professor in the Department of Psychology at the University of Washington, led a research team that spent twenty years studying two thousand couples who had been married twenty to forty years to the same partner. There people came from diverse backgrounds and had widely differing occupations and lifestyles. But one thing was similar - the tone of their conversations. As these couples talked together, almost always there was what Gottman calls "a strong undercurrent of two basic ingredients: Love and Respect.

These are the direct opposite of - and antidote for - contempt, perhaps the most corrosive force in marriage."Gottman's findings confirm what has already been in Scripture for some two thousand years. Chapter 5 of Ephesians is considered by many to be the most significant treatise on marriage in the New Testament. Paul concludes these statements on marriage by getting gender specific in verse 33. He reveals commands from the very heart of God as he tells the husband he must love his wife.

According to James Murray, their study did not differentiate for gender. I should stop being surprised that the truth has no currency for those who wish to demonstrate that science proves the Bible.