Although we often encounter unhappy marriages, we do not talk much about happy marriages. We talk and think a lot about the reasons for the unhappiness of unhappy couples; However, we focus less on how happy couples maintain their happiness and how they manage to be happy and make people happy.
As a result of his detailed research on married couples, Gottman revealed 9 common characteristics of happy marriages:
1-In happy couples, spouses make a healthy distance from the family they came from. That is, they manage to separate from their own parents and siblings without breaking their ties with them. In this way, they form a new unit with their spouses and accept that they are now members of a new nuclear family other than their parents.
2-Happy couples 'we' Just as they learn to be, they also manage to protect their 'I'. Although they have to act together with their spouses on many issues, decide together and think together, they can think and act differently from their spouses when necessary. Spouses can sometimes manage to spend time apart from each other due to an activity they enjoy.
3-They manage to adapt in terms of quantity and quality regarding sexuality. Spouses clearly express their expectations to each other. They are also willing to meet these expectations.
4-An agreement has been reached between the spouses regarding parenting. They have reached a consensus on how to treat their children and what attitude they should take on which issues.
5-Happy couples face the difficulties of life together. They manage to support each other in difficult times.
6-There are also arguments in happy marriages. However, in these couples, partners accept their individual differences. They manage to control their anger during arguments. Discussion is not destructive, on the contrary, it is constructive. After this, a conclusion is made about what to do or not to do about the issue under discussion. In this way, after each argument, partners feel that they know each other better and that they have improved their relationship. r.
7-Laughter is thought to be an important element in the relationship. It has been observed that couples who laugh together are happier.
8-When one of the spouses has a problem or a problem, the other supports him. Spouses know how to comfort each other and succeed in doing so.
9-Happy couples manage to keep alive the romantic dreams they created about each other at the beginning of their relationship. Their idealized image of what their partner is like is still more or less the same. They still keep alive somewhere what they thought about their spouses in the first days.
Gottman's research is also supported by the clinical experiences of couple therapists. In addition to these 9 items, there are also priorities and sources of happiness that are different for each couple. But above all, the effort that couples want to make for their relationship is the determining factor in the relationship.
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