The difference between negativity and positivity in marriage is the difference between a marriage filled with nagging, complaining, and criticism versus a marriage that is filled with affirmation, gratitude, and positive emotions.
Let’s look at how negativity can be damaging to our marriages and then look at some specific strategies for bringing positivity into play.
Negativity Impacts Mood and Marital Satisfaction
We may not even realize how the negativity we are expressing in our marriages is actually hurting our own mood and marital satisfaction.
There is a really neat study that examined the “saying is experiencing effect.” This phenomenon is pretty much just what it sounds like: you experience what you say or hear. They ran four experiments to look at mood before and after complaining or affirmation. While this study wasn’t specifically for marriage, they found it true to human nature that:
Complaining leads to decreases in mood.
Affirmation leads to increases in mood.
The effect on mood was equally strong for both complaining and affirmation.
This effect was found after listening to others affirm or complain. This effect was also found after hearing one’s own affirming or complaining communication.[i]
Another study that looked at marriages over a 13-year period found that negativity in the marriage was directly associated with marital dissatisfaction. As negativity increased, dissatisfaction with the marriage increased.
This makes it pretty clear that when we bring negativity into our marriages it impacts both our mood in the short term but also really begins to erode our marital satisfaction over the long term.
This is critical because negativity doesn’t have to be a huge blatant thing. It can just be subtle or minor or more about a bit of an attitude. It’s like cholesterol that just builds up over time. It’s not as momentous as a broken leg but after a while you find yourself in a crisis.
Expressing Gratitude and Appreciation Will Strengthen your Marriage
Stop and think for a moment. When was the last time you pointed our directly to your spouse, without any sarcasm or joking, but sincerely expressed something to him or her that you appreciated?
We all want more of this, right? You’re maybe hoping that your spouse would give you more. I get that! But, how much are you GIVING? You can only change yourself directly.
We’ve noticed in our marriage that this gratitude and appreciation thing is a cycle – the more you give the more you get. We go in and out of this cycle all the time, but we’re trying to be more in than out. We’re looking for those moments when we can say, “I really appreciate how you handled our daughter in that difficult situation” or “Thanks for doing my laundry – again!”
One of the classic cycles we get into as couples is the demand/withdraw cycle. Probably 80% of the time (or more) it is the wife demanding and the husband withdrawing. It looks like an attacking wife and a husband distancing himself. Because the demand/withdraw cycle usually has a negative effect, a study from last year looked at how gratitude impacted these demand/withdraw patterns. They found that expressing gratitude to your spouse is a practical process that both promotes and protects the quality of your marriage.[ii]
What is really neat about that is that anyone can do gratitude and it will have a positive impact on your marriage.
To take this further, a study from 2012 found that:
People who feel appreciated by their romantic partner report acting more appreciative towards their partner in return. (That’s the positive cycle happening)
People who are more appreciative of their partner report being more responsive to their partner’s needs. (If you give appreciation, yes, you’ll get it back, but your spouse will also become more responsive to your needs!)
Appreciative partners show more responsiveness and commitment in interactions with their partners,
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