When positive processes hurt relationships - McNulty J. K. (2010) - Article

Some couples stay satisfied over the course of their long-term relationships and other couples experience declines in satisfaction and even separate. Why is this? Traditional theoretical perspectives have addresses this question by high-lighting the importance of cognitive and behavioural processes that are linked to positive feelings about the relationship. Behavioural perspectives hold that behaviours that make people feel good about their relationships in the moment should promote better relationship functioning over time. Cognitive perspectives hold that perceptions linked to immediate positive evaluations of a partner should promote better relationship functioning over time. This is even the case if those perceptions are inaccurate. According to those perspectives, interventions to treat marital distress tend to promote thoughts and behaviours associated with more-positive emotions and also to discourage thoughts and behaviours associated with more-negative emotions.

However, almost half of all couples who seek such treatments do not experience any long-lasting benefits. Research based on a couple of longitudinal studies of newlywed couples suggests a reason for the limited success of existing treatments: associations demonstrate in research on well-functioning couples may not generalize to couples experiencing distress. The data from those studies also show that although positive processes tend to effectively maintain satisfaction among partners in relationships that are relatively healthy at the outset, the same processes appear to be associated with greater declines in satisfaction among partners who face more frequent and severe problems. Couples who face frequent and severe problems appear to benefit most from more-negative processes even though such processes are associated with lower levels of satisfaction initially.

Expectancies

Old and well-documented findings regarding the evaluative effects of cognition suggest that holding more-positive expectations for various experiences promotes more-positive evaluations of those experiences. Holding more-positive expectations for relationship experiences should lead to more positive evaluations of those experiences and higher levels of relationship satisfaction. One study showed that spouses who expected to be more satisfied with an upcoming problem-solving discussion evaluated that discussion more positively. This and other findings suggest that interventions to treat and prevent relationship distress should recommend that partners avoid holding low expectations for their relationships. However, there are reasons to question whether more positive expectations for the partner and relationship are universally beneficial. Norm theory holds that when positive expectations are disconfirmed, they act as contrasts that make actual outcomes look worse by comparison. It these expectations get disconfirmed, more positive expectations for the partner and relationship may lead intimates to feel less satisfied. One study showed that the effects of spouses’ expectations on changes in their marital satisfaction depend on those spouses’ abilities to confirm them. More positive expectations effectively maintained satisfaction among married couples who possessed the cognitive and behaviour skills necessary to confirm them. Less positive expectations most effectively maintained satisfaction among spouses who lacked those skills.

Attributions

Another theoretical perspective says that people also benefit from making positive interpretations of their experiences. According to that perspective, people should be happier with their relationships to the extent that they make more positive interpretations of their interpersonal experiences. A couple of scientists reviewed a robust literature indicating that happy couples tend to make more external attributions for their partners’ negative behaviours. Cognitive-oriented interventions tend to help distressed partners focus on the external reasons for one another’s negative behaviours. However, some research suggests that focusing on external causes of negative events can lead people to overlook and therefore fail to address important problems. Partners in the happiest relationships will also encounter problems they must resolve. Resolving these problems requires noticing, acknowledging and addressing these problems. Positive perceptions of the partner prevent intimates from noticing the problems that emerge in the relationships, but these thoughts may allow problems to grow worse and satisfaction to decline. Research has shown that the effects of benevolent cognitions on relationships development also depend on qualities of those relationships. That research has shown that the effects of positive attributions on changes in marital satisfaction depend on the severity of the problems partners face in their marriages. The research proposes that more positive attributions most effectively maintained satisfaction among spouses facing relatively minor problems and less positive attributions most effectively maintained satisfaction among spouses who faced more severe problems.

Problem-solving behaviour

How should intimates, who notice and acknowledge their problems, behave while discussing those problems? According to social learning theory, intimates evaluate their relationships based on the nature of their behavioural exchanges with one another. This means that positive exchanges lead to positive evaluations of the relationship and negative exchanges lead to negative evaluations of the relationship. According to this view, intimates should also be happier to the extent that they avoid the urges they may feel to blame or reject one another. Studies have shown that happy couples behave more positively than less happy couples do. Interventions that focus on behaviour, tend to promote more positive problem-solving behaviours over more negative ones. But couples’ behaviours must effectively resolve their relationship problems. New research has shown that negative behaviours can be an effective way to motivate change in the partner and this change may be necessarily to resolve certain problems. Intimates may sometimes benefit by exchanging more negative behaviours during problem-solving discussions. One study reconciled this inconsistency by showing that the effects of negative problem-solving behaviours on changes in relationship satisfaction also depend on characteristics of the relationships in which they are exchanged. The research showed that observations of fewer blames and rejections most effectively maintained satisfaction among spouses facing rather minor problems and observations of more blames and rejections most effectively maintained satisfaction among spouses facing more severe marital problems. The interactive effects of negative behaviour were mediated by changes in the severity of the problems themselves. Tendencies to exhibit indirect negative behaviours (sarcasm) were associated with lower levels of satisfaction and more severe problems regardless of the severity of the problems couples faced in their relationship initially. It seems that confronting problems negatively but directly can motivate change in the partner and provide concrete information regarding what changes need to be made. Confronting problems negatively but indirectly provides ambiguous information regarding the necessary course of action. This is ineffective at resolving problems.

Forgiveness

Only recently has forgiveness received attention. The majority of that research has focused on the likely benefits of forgiveness. Studies show that more forgiving people tend to be happier in their relationships. Because of this, several authors have incorporated forgiveness into existing relationship interventions. However, there is a reason to expect that forgiveness may be detrimental to relationships in some circumstances. According to theories of operant learning, people are less likely to repeat behaviours that are followed by unwanted consequences. Forgiveness may bring about feelings of guilt or remorse in forgiven partners that motivates those partners to avoid transgressing again in the future, but intimates who are quicker to forgive their partners’ transgressions may experience more negativity in those partners over time. According to McNulty, specific qualities of the relationship partners are the cause of either the benefit or harm of forgiveness in a relationship. He showed that the association between spouses’ forgiveness and changes in their marital satisfaction depends on the frequency with which their partners engage in negative behaviours. The tendency to be more forgiving of partners most effectively maintains satisfaction among spouses married to partners who rarely engage in negative behaviours and tendencies to be less forgiving most effectively maintain satisfaction among spouses married to partners who more frequently engaged in negative behaviours. The tendency to be more forgiving to partners who rarely behaved negatively was associated with more stable problems over time and the tendency to be more forgiving to partners who more frequently behaved negatively was associated with growing problems over time.

Implications

The findings mentioned in this text challenge traditional models of relationship maintenance that behaviours and cognitions directly linked to positive emotions should benefit relationships over time. However, according to the researchers discussed above, lower levels of satisfaction initially, less positive attributions and expectancies, less forgiveness and more negative behaviour can all be more effective than more positive processes at helping couples who face more frequent and more severe problems maintain their initial levels of satisfaction over time. The benefits appeared to come from the resolving of the frequent and severe problems. It’s not just which processes lead to positive or negative outcomes over time, but also on how they help couples resolve the challenges that will arise during the course of their relationships. The findings also challenge traditional models of treatment. Therapies using more positive cognitions and behaviours usually fail to benefit couples facing more severe problems. They need treatments that will motivate them to directly address these problems, like behaviours that directly blame and command the partner and also less forgiveness.