Be a friendly observer (DW#551)
Eli Finkel, a researcher at Northwestern University is the one who popularized the term marriage hack in his popular TED talk which is based on his book The All or Nothing Marriage.
Here is a summary of his most significant research finding about happy couples: Over the period of a year, couples in a study were asked to think about their disagreements from a third-person perspective—from the perspective of a neutral party who wanted the best for all involved. So they practiced viewing the conflict from an objective perspective, without their own emotions involved. The study found that these couples were more likely to be satisfied in their marriage than the couples who could only see their own side during conflict.
What can we learn from this?
1) It does not mean that these couples did not disagree or fight.
2) It shows that they practiced some key aspects of emotional intelligence:
b. The ability to still see the issue from another perspective and not just their own
3) The research also showed that these skills were not innate. The couples in the study were asked to be intentional, to learn and to practice these skills. Which means that all of us can learn them.
So the next time you have a disagreement or find yourself in the middle of a fight,
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