There Is No Right Way to Fight

Part III of III

In the 1960s, Harold Raush, a biologist who taught at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst, launched the first-ever study on the transition to parenthood.He recruited ninety-six couples and followed them, using observational research methods, as they became pregnant and had their first baby. He didn’t feel comfortable having them talk about their own conflict—it felt too intimate, perhaps, and this type of study had never been done before. Instead, he had them talk about a simulated conflict. The technique he used was this: Each couple would get a short written vignette of a couple in conflict. The husband (these were all heterosexual couples) received one slanted toward the fictional husband; the wife got one slanted toward the fictional wife. They each read their vignette and then were asked to discuss who was more at fault. Essentially, he was setting them up for conflict by intentionally biasing each toward his or her fictional counterpart. He called it “the Inventory of Marital Conflicts.”

When he broke down the conflict conversations that emerged from this exercise, Raush did something that had never been done before: he analyzed sequences of conversation. He didn’t just look at how frequently people did one particular thing, but how frequently a pattern of two-step sequences would appear. This was before John began his research, and it was the most granular analysis of couples’ behavior that had been done to date. What Raush concluded from the data from his ninety-six couples—and he wrote a book about it—was that validators were the only truly successful models for relationships, where they could both stay together for the long haul and be satisfied with their union. Avoiders were messed up because they never talked about anything. Volatiles were messed up because they were much too emotional. Validators, he decided, were the “Goldilocks” of relationships: just right.

When John began his own research in the same arena, he considered that Raush might be correct. And John did identify the same three profiles of avoidant, validating, and volatile couples—this all tracked. But when John began analyzing their data using the SPAFF coding system—a more sophisticated system than Raush’s groundbreaking two-step pattern identification process—he found that it just wasn’t true that validators were the only successful couples. According to John’s data, any of the three styles had an equal shot at being “masters” of love if they had the 5:1 ratio of positive to negative interactions in conflict. It seemed that success or failure in a relationship had more to do with the ratio than it did with conflict style—in direct opposition to Raush’s finding.

John’s response? He called up Harold Raush. Raush, intrigued, and ever the open-minded scientist, agreed to send over all of his audiotapes from the original study. John reanalyzed Raush’s raw data with the new coding system and found that the finding held for Raush’s couples as well. The coding system used in the earlier study had simply not been finely grained enough to pick up a critical truth buried in the data: it had nothing to do with which “style” you were.

It was all about the ratio.

Lessons from the Museum of Fights: The Ratio Is Real

The Exploratorium, San Francisco’s renowned science museum, sits on the edge of a pier overlooking the bay. Inside, it is a huge warehouse-like space, creatively lit and divided up into separate, rotating exhibits. One popular exhibit was a kind of “museum of fights” based on a study run by John’s research partner Robert Levenson.The exhibit was interactive, with television screens that showed you, the visitor, half a dozen three-minute recordings of married couples, each fighting—or, more accurately, having the beginning of a fight. Your job was to watch each video and then make a prediction: Would this couple go on to divorce or stay together? At baseline, making a blind guess, you had a fifty-fifty chance of being right: exactly half of the couples in the Exploratorium exhibit had split, and the other half had remained together and satisfied with their marriage.

What do you think? Could you tell?

The answer is, probably not—unless you’d recently been divorced yourself.

When Levenson ran the study, we’d already done the Spaff coding. We knew we could predict, with over 90 percent accuracy, the future of these relationships using our coding system. Spaff could easily discern who would get divorced and who wouldn’t. But how did that compare to therapists, researchers, and couples themselves— could they intuit the future of a relationship just as well?

Not even close! Levenson brought in couples therapists and had them predict, and they were at chance—their guesses were no better than flipping a coin. Then he brought in researchers in the field, and they were no better. Then he brought in couples, and it was the same. The only people who had an edge were those who had been recently divorced because they were more attuned to negative interactions. They picked up on even the most subtle ones—ones that everybody else missed. We’re back to the ratio. People who’d just split up were like a divining rod for that 5:1 ratio—highly sensitive to that tilt into negativity, they zoomed right in on it.

We talked briefly about this “magic ratio” in the last chapter, and how so many of our fights that veer in a bad direction usually do so because they’ve ended up on the wrong side of this simple math equation. Let’s take a closer look at what exactly that means.

The Magic Ratio: The Secret to Success for (Almost) Any Conflict Style

The data has shown repeatedly that there is no one “right” conflict style. Any of the types of couples we profiled here can thrive—as long as they have the correct conflict math. If you have that 5:1 ratio of positive to negative interactions, you’re probably going to do great, no matter what type of couple you are. What that means, precisely: for every one negative interaction you and your partner have during a fight (like a biting comment, an eye roll, a raised voice, a dismissive tone or gesture, a scoff, or a mocking laugh), you need five positive interactions to balance out that negativity. And this is within the conflict itself! Outside of conflict, that ratio swells to 20:1—for every single negative interaction or comment, you need twenty positives (appreciation, connection, turning toward, compliments, etc.) to balance out the negativity over time. Of course, positivity is harder during conflict. We’re fighting! But the data from the Love Lab is clear: we have to manage it. Couples that failed to meet that 5:1 ratio consistently did not make it in the long term.
Part III of III

Relationships Essential Reads

Which Is Worse: A Bad Relationship or Being Single?

I Love You, But I’m Leaving: When Relationships Cost Too Much

Add Positivity to Your Fights

Positive interactions include:

An apology A smile

A nod Empathizing

A reassuring physical touch

Validating something your partner has said

Emphasizing what you and your partner have in common Owning responsibility for your part in a problem

Saying “Good point” or “Fair enough” Pointing out what you both do right Recalling your past successes in conflict A joke, laughter

Part III of III
For Part I or Part II