Kindness is the answer

            I read an article today about a study that was done by various social scientists at the University of Washington. The article states that SCIENCE has found that lasting marital relationships come down to kindness and generosity. The article caught my attention because of the simplicity of the behavior of being kind. I was expecting perhaps an article about how it is essential to have good chemistry, compatibility, shared interests... Things that I have heard from those around me that are apparently key for a successful marriage… Kindness though? I mean this is just a basic behavior that I try to teach my toddlers. My question at first was, how is kindness supposed to be an answer to a successful marriage? That's when I continued to read... 

The article starts out by repeating the well-known distressing statistic of how the majority of marriages fail, with only 3 in 10 surviving. Statistics that honestly just make you feel like you might as well give up because according to the statistic, most likely than not, your marriage was doomed from the start.  Anyways, the article goes on to talk about a study that was done where a critical discovery was made, one that gets at the heart of why some relationships thrive while others languish. 

Throughout the day, partners would make requests for connection, this article calls these requests “bids”. We can all identify instances when we have made these requests ourselves within our relationships or when our spouses have. For example, let’s say I am a political enthusiast and show my spouse an interesting article that I found. We can assume that this article was important enough to me to have the desire to share it with my spouse and the question is whether my spouse recognizes and respects that.

People who turn toward their partners in the study responded by engaging the bidder, showing interest and support in the bid.  Those who didn’t, who just turned away, would not respond or respond minimally and continued doing whatever they were doing like playing video games, or looking at their phone. Sometimes these individuals would respond with hostility, saying something like, “Stop interrupting me, I’m reading.”

According to the study, these bidding interactions had profound effects on marital well-being. Couples who had divorced after a 6 year follow up had “turn-toward bids” 33 % of the time while couples who were still together 6 years later had “turned-toward bids” 87% of the time.

According to the individuals that did the study, much of it comes down to the spirit couples bring to the relationship. Do they bring kindness and generosity, or contempt, criticism, and hostility?

I could go on and on summarizing the article, but what I wanted to emphasize on is how often our behavior can lack that kindness that is essential for any type of relationship to succeed. How often do we reject a bid from a parent, a friend, our children or our sweetheart? How often does an unkind word come out of our mouths. How often do we act with contempt? People who give their partner or a parent, or a friend or even their children a cold shoulder- deliberately ignoring the partner or responding minimally- damage the relationship making their partner feel worthless and invisible, as if they’re not there, not valued.

We all have a choice. When our partner want’s to connect with us, or when our children want to connect with us what are we choosing to do? People, who treat others with contempt, criticism or demean them, kill the love in a relationship and in reality are slowly killing that person’s confidence as well. Next time someone is contemplating divorce because they claim to not be compatible or have chemistry or same interests let’s ask them have you been kind? Have you been selfless? Have you tried to genuinely validate your partner and communicate and compromise with a loving attitude?

Sometimes as adults, we let science and philosophies over complicate things. Let’s remember that by small and simple things great things come to pass. Let’s remember that marriage is a sacred institution and not something that should be tossed just because all of a sudden you don’t find your spouse’s jokes funny anymore or because all of a sudden after meeting someone more compatible with you, you give up on building compatibility with your spouse. Marriage is something that needs to be built brick by brick on a daily basis. It is something that needs to be worked on daily. "Compatibility is an achievement of love; it must not be its precondition."- Alain de Botton.

So let’s all be kind and remember that we are all going through trials and hardships and that our job as friends, partners, and relatives is to support each other and be KIND no matter what.