Category: Relationships

This personality type is more confident in dealing with the inevitable conflicts that marriage throws up.

Extraverts have happier marriages: they tend to have fewer marital problems as newlyweds and are more satisfied with their marriages over time.

The reason may be that extraverts are more confident in dealing with the inevitable conflicts that marriage throws up.

In contrast, shy people tended to have the most problems in their marriage.

Shy people reported more issues with jealousy, money, household management and trust.

Shy people likely find it more difficult to enter relationships so they feel more anxiety about their partner.

The conclusions come from a study of 112 couples who were asked about their shyness and marital satisfaction.

Some of the couples were tracked over six months to see if shyness predicted changes in marital satisfaction.

While shyness was linked to worse relationships, shy people can adjust, the study’s authors write:

“There is hope even though shyness itself might be resistant to change.

People can be taught to have more efficacy in how to resolve the specific marital problems they face.

As a consequence, any marital difficulties prompted by personality can be prevented by explicit training on dealing with marital problems.”

A note on shyness

The study asked people about ‘shyness’, which is linked with introversion, but not the same.

The words shy and introverted are often used interchangeably.

Although there is certainly an overlap, shyness is fear and anxiety about social interactions whereas an introvert may be ambivalent towards them.

So, non-shy people are not necessarily extraverts — although they are likely to be.

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The study was published in the journal Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin (Baker & McNulty, 2010).

How much do you appreciate your partner?

Simply being appreciative of your partner’s good points, however modest, improves the relationship.

People who recognised their partner’s efforts to be more patient and loving have a happier and more secure relationship, psychologists have discovered.

On the other hand, those who believed their partner could not change have worse relationships, even if their partner is making a real effort to do better.

The trick is to convince yourself that change is possible and to appreciate any steps in the right direction, however small.

Dr Daniel C. Molden, a study co-author, said:

“A secret to building a happy relationship is to embrace the idea that your partner can change, to give him or her credit for making these types of efforts and to resist blaming him or her for not trying hard enough all of the time.”

The conclusions come from a study in which couples rated how much their partner was trying to improve the relationship.

Did they, for example, make an effort to be a better listener or try and show more understanding?

After three months they rated their relationships again.

The results showed that people who appreciated their partner’s efforts to change were happier with their relationship.

Even sincere efforts to improve the relationship are wasted, the study found, if they are not appreciated.

Dr Molden said:

“If you don’t believe that your partner is capable of changing his or her fundamental characteristics, even when he or she is working hard to try to improve your relationship, you can actually end up discounting these efforts.”

It is common for people in relationships to be sceptical about their partner’s efforts, however hard they are trying.

Don’t let that happen to you, said Dr Chin Ming Hui, the study’s first author:

“Many of us tend to under appreciate our partner’s efforts to improve the relationship, simply because we do not have enough faith in those attempts.

When we see those efforts in a positive light, we can enjoy our relationship much more.”

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The study was published in the journal Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin (Hui et al., 2011).

Hugs reduce negative emotions that day and the following one.

A simple hug is one of the easiest ways to reduce the stress caused by arguments.

People who received a hug on a day when they had an argument felt less bad about it, psychologists have found.

The research included 404 people who were asked about their daily conflicts and whether they had received any hugs.

The results showed that receiving a hug when a person had an argument helped reduce negative emotions that day and the following one.

The authors write:

“Receiving a hug on the day of conflict was associated with improved concurrent negative and positive affect and improved next day negative affect compared to days when conflict occurred but no hug was received.”

Dr Michael Murphy, the study’s first author, said:

“This research is in its early stages.

We still have questions about when, how, and for whom hugs are most helpful.

However, our study suggests that consensual hugs might be useful for showing support to somebody enduring relationship conflict.”

Other studies have shown the considerable benefits of interpersonal touch, including that with a romantic partner:

“…individuals assigned to various interpersonal touch manipulations with romantic partners report less distress and show reduced cardiovascular reactivity, cortisol secretion, and activation of brain regions associated with emotional and behavioral threat  compared to those who did not engage in interpersonal touch with their partners.”

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The study was published in the journal PLOS ONE (Murphy et al., 2018).

The trait is linked higher relationship satisfaction in both partners.

People who enjoy making others laugh at them have happier relationships.

Not minding being the ‘butt of the joke’ mainly has positive effects on relationships.

However, people who don’t like to be laughed at tend to be less happy in their relationship.

It is down to the fact that people have different styles of humour.

For example, some people enjoy ridiculing others, but don’t like to be laughed at themselves.

Some like being the centre of humorous attention, others less so.

Professor René Proyer, who led the study, said:

“These […] are personality traits that can occur at the same time, to varying degrees and in different combinations.

They can range, for example, from making harmless jokes to ridiculing others.

All of these characteristics are normal, up to a certain point — including being afraid of being laughed at.”

The study included 154 couples who separately answered questions about their relationship and their sense of humour.

The results showed that couples whose sense of humour was similar were happier.

They also found that making other people laugh at you primarily has positive effects.

Dr Kay Brauer, study co-author, said:

“Women reported more often that they tended to be satisfied with their relationship and felt more attracted to their partner.

They and their partners also tended to be equally satisfied with their sex life.”

Being afraid of being laughed at, though, generally had negative effects on relationships.

It led to mistrust and lower relationship satisfaction.

Those who primarily preferred to laugh at others were no more or less happy in their relationship, although these couples tended to have more arguments.

Dr Brauer said:

“That is hardly surprising, considering that these people often go too far and make derisive comments which can then lead to an argument.”

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The study was published in the Journal of Research in Personality (Brauer & Proyer, 2018).

The pattern is highly damaging to some relationships, but not all.

The worst relationship pattern is where one partner wants change, and the other responds by giving them the ‘silent treatment’.

For wealthier couples, this pattern is damaging to their relationship satisfaction.

However, for lower-income couples, the silent treatment can actually benefit the relationship.

Ms Jaclyn M. Ross, the study’s first author, explains:

“Consider this example: A wife requests that her husband ask for a raise at work.

For a husband in a low-wage job with less job security, that is a risky proposition.

By showing reluctance to ask for the raise, he can preserve his self-esteem and lessen emphasis on the couple’s vulnerable financial situation.

For a wealthier couple in the same situation, the wife may perceive that the husband is unwilling to make a sacrifice for his family and that can cause friction in the relationship.”

For the study, hundreds of couples with a wide range of incomes were recruited.

Around 40 percent of couples’ income was below the federal poverty line.

The results showed that for wealthier couples the demand-withdraw pattern was linked to lower relationship satisfaction over 18 months.

However, poorer couples were more satisfied with their relationship when the husband withdrew when asked to change by his wife.

Dr Thomas N. Bradbury, study co-author, said:

“Even though it is easier for wealthier couples to access resources to address their relationship problems, it can also create higher expectations that partners will make accommodations for one another’s demands and needs that underlie their problems.

But if those expectations are not met, rifts can occur in the relationship and exacerbate the existing problems.”

Ms Ross said:

“Life circumstances may matter for relationships far more than we think — so much so that these circumstances appear to moderate the effects of communication on how happy we are in our partnerships.

Creating safe and secure environments helps to allow partners to relate well to each other and to their children, giving more people the kinds of relationships and families that will keep them healthy and happy.”

The study was published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology (Ross et al., 2018).

The skill that improves both romantic relationships and parenting skills.

Being tuned in to the other person’s needs is the simple skill that improves relationships.

Psychologists call it ‘responsive caregiving’ and it means being aware of your partner’s mood and how to respond to it.

For example, sometimes people want cheering up, other times they prefer to be left alone.

Responsive caregiving not only improves relationships between parents, but is also good for children.

The study revealed that a common set of skills improved all family relationships.

Dr Abigail Millings, who led the study, said:

“It might be the case that practicing being sensitive and responsive — for example, by really listening and by really thinking about the other person’s perspective — to our partners will also help us to improve these skills with our kids.

But we need to do more research to see whether the association can actually be used in this way.”

The study involved 125 couples and their children.

The results revealed that responsive caregiving was the key to being a good partner and was also linked to good relationships with children.

Dr Millings said:

“If you can do responsive caregiving, it seems that you can do it across different relationships.

[It is the] capacity to be ‘tuned in’ to what the other person needs.

In romantic relationships and in parenting, this might mean noticing when the other person has had a bad day, knowing how to cheer them up, and whether they even want cheering up.

[And it’s not] just about picking you up when you’re down, it’s also about being able to respond appropriately to the good stuff in life.”

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The study was published in the journal Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin (Millings et al., 2013).

A 20-year study reveals how emotions in marriage shape the body itself.

How people react to marital disagreements has a strong relationship with their health.

Dealing with relationship conflict by getting angry predicts blood pressure problems.

Stonewalling — that is, shutting down emotionally — is linked to stiff muscles and a bad back.

Professor Robert Levenson, one of the study’s authors, said:

“Our findings reveal a new level of precision in how emotions are linked to health, and how our behaviors over time can predict the development of negative health outcomes.”

Dr Claudia Haase, the study’s first author, said:

“We looked at marital-conflict conversations that lasted just 15 minutes and could predict the development of health problems over 20 years for husbands based on the emotional behaviors that they showed during these 15 minutes.”

The results — which come from 20 years of data — might encourage some people to consider anger management, the researchers think.

Dr Claudia Haase said:

“Conflict happens in every marriage, but people deal with it in different ways.

Some of us explode with anger; some of us shut down.

Our study shows that these different emotional behaviors can predict the development of different health problems in the long run.”

The study has followed 156 middle-aged couples since 1989.

The couples, who are all from San Francisco, are heterosexual and have been together for many years.

Every year they undergo a battery of tests, including being videotaped interacting in the lab.

They found that displays of anger and stonewalling were linked to high blood pressure and back problems respectively.

Professor Levenson said:

“For years, we’ve known that negative emotions are associated with negative health outcomes, but this study dug deeper to find that specific emotions are linked to specific health problems.

This is one of the many ways that our emotions provide a window for glimpsing important qualities of our future lives.”

The study was published in the journal Emotion (Haase et al., 2016).