When Linda and I were much younger we had a very large circle of friends who we would consider to be “good” or “close” friends. Each of us had friends that we could confide in and talk about things that were important to us.
That has changed very much over the years for a variety of reasons. Usually it’s because we just don’t see these people that much anymore as our interests have changed or evolved and have taken us into different social circles. Typically these circles were dictated by our kid’s social and athletic endeavors.
Though we have lots of friends, we don’t really have as many “true” close friends as we used to. Consequently, Linda and I rely heavily on each other as intimate confidants.
According to Eli Finkel, a professor of psychology at Northwestern University, studies have shown that this is apparently a trend that has changed the fabric of American society over the last few decades. We depend on our spouses or partners now more than ever to supply us with our emotional and social needs.
That makes the quality of our marriages (or intimate partner relationships) to be more important than ever before. Our health and happiness actually depends on it.
Unfortunately, it’s probably no shock to any of you that studies and surveys show that marital satisfaction – so critical to overall health and happiness – generally declines over time.
So how can we stop the downward trend in marital satisfaction as the years fly by?
Through Finkel’s research he has determined that there is a “hack” that takes just 21-minutes a year, that can help prevent couples from losing that loving feeling.
Finkel says,
“I don’t want it to sound like magic, but you can get pretty impressive results with minimal intervention.”
This so-called “hack” involves a slight change in how couples navigate through conflict. And the key is that we shouldn’t wait for marital problems to crop up before we do it.
Here is an 18-minute video where Finkel describes his research, his findings and the all-important “hack” that tells us how to have a happy marriage.
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v8fe0IkGnUk
Finkel says, “Marriage tends to be healthy for people, but the quality of the marriage is much more important than its mere existence. Having a high-quality marriage is one of the strongest predictors of happiness and health. From that perspective, participating in a seven-minute writing exercise three times a year has to be one of the best investments married people can make.”
Watch the video and let us know what you think in the comment section below!
We’re here to show you the right way to survive infidelity so that your marriage doesn’t become some sort of statistic.
We’ve been in your shoes and are in a unique position to put all of our experiences – both good and bad, successes and failures – and use them to help lead you out of the pain and into a better place.
18 replies to "How to Have a Happy Marriage in Just 21-Minutes a Year"
Great video Linda and Doug. Thank you. This is exactly where my h and I are now. Each believing that the other needs to come round to the other’s way of thinking and not knowing how to achieve it without intervention. I am going to give this a try today. The friendship circle observation is interesting too. Instead of chatting to the neighbour – we come to EAJ – it’s so true…
Thanks EO, I’m glad you liked the video. I thought the stats he shared from the studies were very interesting. Let us know how your “try” works out.
This is so true. As I look back on our very long relationship I can certainly see how things slip and I believe it happens in most marriages. I tried so hard in the beginning to “get his attention” and wanting him to do things with me and I with him. Not just meet up at the end of the day. We became so busy right away building careers, raising families and just generally dealing with life. I tried to put demands on him but they fell on deaf ears. I got tired of beating my head against the brick wall. I decided that this was how my marriage was going to be. So I built many friendships that fulfilled me needs. Some were good for me, but many were detrimental to my marriage. I became too dependent on these friends for emotional support and never depended on my H for that. He did not and still somewhat does not deal very well with emotional issues. I made new friendships, we made new friendships as a couple. The one thing we have noticed since the affair is how we put WAYYY too much importance on our outside friendships and not enough on our own friendship. We even talked about our friendships (past tense) last night and how we thought they were friends, but looking back see that they really weren’t. They are/were acquaintances. We talk a lot about this part of our life, this whole friendship part. We also have seen how some of those friendships we were totally used and ignorant to that. And of course the epitome and culmination of being used by a “friendship” was his affair with the OW because of course that’s how it started out.
Coincidentally too, I have decided just last week to end a very long term friendship with a woman that I have known for almost 30 years now. Our lives have just gone in different directions and having her friendship just isn’t important to me any more. She and I bonded raising our children. We were also friends as a couple but her H is a real bird so that didn’t last too long. She said something to me last week (with regards to my H and his affair) and although I haven’t spoken much to her about it for at least 18 months it was a pretty heartless statement and probably more directed at me than him. She hurt me a lot with her words and it wasn’t the first time. I don’t think I need to forgive her, or chalk it up to her being ignorant, I just need to let her go. I guess really I just don’t need the friendship anymore.
My husband and I are re-becoming each others best friends. I think my “girl friends” filled a need that my H wasn’t filling and didn’t for most of our married life. I truly do feel like I have a new life and I need to let those old friendships go in order to grow with my H.
For the last two years we have depended on each other as partners, team mates, and mostly friends and I like it. It is the relationship I’ve always wanted. Crap it only took 37 years and an affair to get here!!! This new friendship didn’t happen overnight and certainly the heartfelt talks we have had contributed to our friendship and it is still evolving. Sounds like a lot of work and it is. I really believe it will be worth it in the end.
TH – your comment about the long standing friendship having to go was very interesting. My sister has continued to be weird with me this year to the extent that she now doesn’t contact me. I have tried a few times to contact her but it’s always a brief response and then nothing.
The job reloaction is now going to happen but thankfully my H got his job in the same place too – so we’re going together (which is just fab!) and when we announced this my sis immediately contacted me. Not with congratulations but with thinly veiled, nasty comments about how I was doing it to please my H and his family. It’s true that the reloaction will place us within 1.5h of my in-laws. that was a massive negative to the move. but how my sis can consider that I’d give up a well paid secure job in a team I really like just on a whim to please my H is just unreal. I have tried to explain that it was for career development and work life balance reasons (new jobs mean zero commuting down from 6 hours commuting currently) but she still persists in her weird reasoning. The most recent salvo from her was to send me a link to a company, which was entirely made up, offering ‘brown nose’ services. the link was only sent to me and my H. I am tempted to give my own sister up as I can’t see anyway through her behaviour. It’s sad that the very people who helped you during the post D day horror can turn around and be your worst enemy within 2 years. I don’t get it.
Congrats on the new job Chiff – and for the fact that your worries about your husband staying put are no longer relevant. Unfortunate to hear about your sister’s attitude about the whole thing. Any ideas why she is acting so strangely? (You’ve probably mentioned it somewhere before so forgive me for my poor memory)
she got a bit funny in the run up to my dad’s wedding earlier this year. My dad had asked me to make their wedding rings (I have a jewellery business) and asked my sis to make their wedding invitations (she makes cards). She didn’t want to do it and said no. She tried to persuade me to say no but I didn’t and did them. On a stay with her before the wedding she got very drunk and said she was tired of me being the prodigal daughter and everything going right for me. She couldn’t understand why I wasn’t still an emotional wreck after what my H did to us, all that. I wrote it off as drink-talk. she got noticeably colder after that. the wedding happened and we had talked before about enjoying being in a hotel and relaxing. yet she and her family skipped off home without telling anyone first thing in the morning, which was a shock. I went round to see them before going home and it was clear we weren’t welcome. since then it’s been cold. the clincher seemed to be when I posted a FB picture from my holidays where I’d seen a shop name that my neice would find funny ‘bimboland’. I was accused of calling my neice stupid and driving her to despair. I apologised but didn’t accept that it was reasonable to see it like that. took the image down. since then it’s been silence despite me trying to make contact. until I posted that we were moving and had got the job. she was then instantly in touch about the ‘real reason’ we were moving etc. which I mentioned above. My H thinks it’s childishness and jealousy. I have always been an over achiever. My sis seems to think she’s a failure by comparison, yet I’ve never compared myself to her in either direction, she’s my sister. It hurts but has also made me very angry.
Well, jealousy was the first word that came to my mind as well. Perhaps things are not very rosy in your sister’s world at the moment and she is just lashing out.
Yep, I’d say jealousy as well. None of us know what goes on behind the closed doors in other people’s lives. Sounds like she may have issues as well.
I have experienced a lot of jealousy from my two sisters in my 50+ years on this earth. I have never been really close to them and certainly don’t see them as friends. It’s easy to only have a perfunctory relationship with them. I’d given up on them a lonnnnngggg time ago. Don’t get me wrong, I love them and their families BUT I make sure I keep them at arm’s length. Oh yeah they were there the evening of DDay but not to support or listen to me BUT to try to control me. Yeah, that really helped 🙂
You need to be more like a man…Go beat each other up and then drink a few beers and pretend it never happened and all is good! 😉
good idea!
LOL Doug!!! UGH— BOYS!!! Actually beating the hell out of someone sounds pretty good right now 🙂 BTW am loving being a member of Higher Healing. Have listened to almost all the recordings and they are VERY helpful. Thanks, you and Linda have done a great job. Listening to you recordings and what Jeff Murrah had to say made me realize I needed to start seeing a therapist again. Thanks. Hugs to you and Lovely Linda!
PS-My H and I are now on Season 3 of Breaking Bad!!! We are obsessed with it. What an awesome show. You and LInda still watching it?
Glad you’re liking the HH membership. There’s a lot there that’s for sure.
We actually stopped watching the past seasons of Breaking Bad. We got through season 3 and then screwed up as we couldn’t help ourselves and watched the final season on regular TV. So we kind of put the cart before the horse and wound up ruining the rest of it for ourselves.
We need to find another addictive show to get us through the cold winter months that are fast approaching. I’ve heard “Homeland” is good. Too bad there isn’t a lost season of “24” we can get addicted to!
Chiff I think your sister isn’t a very happy person and liked it much better when you weren’t happy either. It’s hard when it’s your own sister no matter what we say. I hope you work it out.
TH, we had all of that – the deep friendship that you two are building – and I am still grieving very deeply for the loss of it. I didn’t have loads of girlfriends, I grew up with guys as my best mates, I found many girls just too bitchy, gossipy and self-centred. I also have had to pretty much end a thirty-five year friendship recently – with my very best friend in the world, also because she made some extremely thoughtless comments, not just once or twice, and gave no support, which seemed a bit rich after I have supported her through mental health problems, childbirth (I was her support person for two of her five births) and marital hiccups, etc. She was the sister I never had, but without further ado, I have backed right away, and keep out of her firing line 🙂 You gotta know when to fold ’em, huh?
So nice to hear you two doing well, TH.
Hi Chiff and Paula,
Congrats Chiff on the new job and congrats too on the Hubby being able to go with you. It must be Karma :)–KIDDING, or not. It’s wonderful you two get to go to a new place, new job, new beginnings. Sometimes I wish my H and I can blow this town too and start over. Matter of fact when I told him about the comment my “former” BFF made he said “maybe we should just move”. It’s sad all the fallout from his affair. It really has affected everyone around us too.
The thing is, I have always been a “girls, girl/ womans/woman”. I like women. I’ve always preferred being around women than men. I like talking to men at parties etc but I’ve always preferred my relationships with women. So that being said, I’ve always felt like I was a good friend to the women in my life. Yep Paula I was always the one to be there too when they needed me. I listened with sympathetic/emphatic ears and offered advice when asked. I always took their side! That’s what good girlfriends do. If your pissed at someone they are the ones who help you buy the tar and feathers, or at least pretend they will!!! You know what I mean. With this particular friend maybe the “friendship” has been on the decline anyway. We don’t really see much of each other and both of us have busy lives. I’m really ok with it BUT I do not have any “good, BFF’s” anymore. And I think I’m ok with that too. It’s just weird. I’m going to talk to my therapist about it tomorrow. The funny thing is, BEFORE, I would have forgotten about an insensitive comment and moved on because our friendship was very important to me. Now that I’ve decided it isn’t, it is very easy for me to let it go. I am figuring out I am definitely NOT the same person today that I was yesterday so part of this is accepting the new “me”.
I also need to say this, and I hate to say it, but I really think somehow I have let my women friends/acquaintances/ and my sisters down. I think they have lost respect for me for staying with my husband. I’m only saying this because I know I have been judgmental in that respect of other women. I’m working on that and maybe that is my Karma lesson in life, I don’t know. I’m sure these women have looked at me as a strong, independent woman who would never accept what my H did to me and now regard me as someone who has compromised herself and her values just to keep my marriage and him in my life. You know, the old, “well if MY H did something like that, I’d kick his sorry ass to the curb” attitude. Which in and of itself is essentially a lack of respect for me. What do you guys think? I may be all wet, just my thoughts.
Thanks Paula for the well wishes. LOL though because my “doing well” is CONSTANTLY, evolving but I think(?) I’m getting there ;/
Chiffchaff, your sister sounds just like mine. All I can day is thank god she lives 500 miles away. I have one adopted brother, and three “half” siblings. The halfs all met for a reunion in california in 2005. First time I’d met my half sister, had known the other two as cousins all my life. Half sister I had known all my life immediately started acting WEIRD. Drinking all the time, esp when asked not to in the car. Making comments about our jobs, cars, lives, etc. my other two sibs paid for her trip, I paid my own, and she was ruining it. Finally culminated in her having a screaming fit at me, then my brother. It was awful. We were on eggshells the whole time. It was incredible the way she acted, I guess she thought she was entitled cause we’re Family. I have very limited contact with her now.
The half sister also said some bad things about my adoptive mother, and was mad because I called my birth mother by her name instead of Mom. This was also the trip where I find out my birth mother committed adultery, which resulted in my sister’s birth and the suicide of her affair partner’s wife. Not exactly a time I want to call this lady Mom.
thanks for your comments. I know she has issues of her own and would like to listen but she’s obviously not making that easy.
she broke up with a long term (2 years – but when you’re 19/20 that’s a long time) boyfriend at 21. she’s 46 now. he started seeing someone else towards the end and this started after my sister got pregnant. he paid for her termination as he didn’t want it. she was a mess at that time understandably. he was a shit. she’s never really got over that as even now she knows where he lives, his kids’ names and where he works. details noone in their right mind should know about someone who hasn’t been in contact with her for so long.
my recovery brought all of this to the surface I think and the reconciliation that we’ve achieved (my H and me) is I think taken as some sort of criticism or a slap in the face.
I’m very tempted to just doorstep her one day and get it out. it can’t be worse than it is now.