Is life all about passion or logic? This reached a fever pitch between the seventeenth and nineteenth centuries. In the 1700s we had the era of the Enlightenment. Rationality. Reason. Cogito, ergo sum. Newton’s laws. But that gave way to the Romantic era in the 1800s. It didn’t exactly mean “romantic” like hearts and Valentine’s Day; it was about the ideas that feelings, inspiration, and the unconscious were more important. The age of Enlightenment was all rules; the Romantic era hated rules and was all emotions.
And no one embodied Romanticism more than Edgar Allan Poe. Poe was like somebody took a list of dark tropes and just checked all the boxes. Melancholy childhood? Check. Father abandoned the family before he turned two. Mother died of tuberculosis by the time he was three. Starving artist? Check. Poe was the first American author to make a living solely from writing, which was a terrible idea at the time (and, lemme tell you, has not changed much since). Difficult, misunderstood genius? Check. His characters were all neurotic, delusional, sad, and vengeful. They were also autobiographical. Life full of tragedy followed by a mysterious death? Check. Wife dies of tuberculosis just like his mother. He’s later found wandering the streets delirious, dies of an unknown cause, all records including his death certificate unable to be found. Bonus points: he was also an alcoholic with a gambling problem.
But his work left a staggering legacy. Everyone from Mary Shelley to Alfred Hitchcock to Stephen King would say he influenced them. Poe’s work is more Goth than black eyeliner. A master of the macabre, Poe wrote fiction and poetry that deal with vengeance, premature burial, and other things that just don’t get discussed enough at the family dinner table. We all read him in high school because, frankly, what could be more appropriate for the sullen, attention-poor years of adolescence than morbid stories that are rather short. And nothing would be more emblematic of the Romantic era than his masterwork, “The Raven.”
It was published to immediate acclaim in 1845 (even though Poe got only nine bucks for it). Abraham Lincoln reportedly memorized the poem. The Baltimore Ravens football team is named after it. It was even satirized in a Halloween episode of The Simpsons. In so many ways it embodies the values of the Romantic era. Tackling love, loss, death and madness, it’s a thrilling read, an emotional journey, and a terrible bedtime story for children. Its stylized, musical language weaves a web of grim emotional mystery referencing the occult, the Bible, and even ancient Greek and Roman classics. One can easily imagine it being written in an inspired frenzy or an opium haze like Coleridge’s “Kubla Khan.”
So we have our winner. Passionate brilliance overcomes cold, clinical logic, right?
Um, actually . . . no. In 1846, Poe published an essay, “The Philosophy of Composition,” which describes how he wrote “The Raven,” and it’s the exact opposite of what you probably expected: “It is my design to render it manifest that no one point in its composition is referrible either to accident or intuition—that the work proceeded, step by step, to its completion with the precision and rigid consequence of a mathematical problem.”
He explains a process that is as mechanistic and clinical as the assembly diagram that comes with IKEA furniture. Every word, every punctuation mark, was deliberately and rationally chosen, systematically, to achieve an effect in the reader’s mind. Far from ineffable inspiration, it’s logical problem solving. In discussing the verse’s rhyme, it literally sounds like he’s describing a math equation: “The former is trochaic—the latter is octametre acatalectic, alternating with heptameter catalectic repeated in the refrain of the fifth verse, and terminating with tetrameter catalectic.”
Sounds crazy? Don’t forget, Poe was a critic. He analyzed and clinically broke down stories for a living. He also basically invented the detective novel, a rationalist genre if there ever was one. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle credits Poe’s work with inspiring the less-than-emotional character of Sherlock Holmes.
So there you have it: underneath Romanticism often lies the logic of Enlightenment thinking. Impulsive emotion must give way to rationality!
Um, actually . . . no. Poe said that he used logic and assembled “The Raven” like a fine Swiss watch. But some people—including none other than T. S. Eliot—questioned whether it was true. It’s the opinion of many, including some literature experts today, that “The Philosophy of Composition” was written satirically.
And this theory isn’t much of a stretch. In his time, Poe was quite the prankster. His first published story was a satire. And he absolutely loved to use pseudonyms to mess with people. He did this not only to dodge creditors but also to accuse people of plagiarism. Whom did he accuse? Himself. A writer going by the name “Outis” proposed that “The Raven” had clearly lifted ideas from another poem, “The Bird of the Dream.” Many believe Outis was actually Poe. Know what Outis means in Greek? “Nobody.” (Poe Troll Level: Expert.)
In our relationships we all struggle with the issue of passion versus logic, especially in the area of communication. When ardor fades, do we focus on reigniting the flame or building a conscientious system that can sustain a busy household and life? It’s hard to know the path, to find a balance between scientific skills and feelings of the heart.
So in Poe’s case, which was the true answer? Passionate, inspired notions or rigorous logic and systematic practicality? Sadly, we’ll never know. But we do know the name of the era that came after the systemization of the Enlightenment and the passions of Romanticism. And what was that period called?
“Realism.”
* * *
Marriage counseling was created by the Nazis. Seriously. It was a eugenics movement initiative created in 1920s Germany. And if it makes you feel any better, it doesn’t work. Only 11–18 percent of couples achieve notable improvements. As the New York Times reports, two years after therapy, a quarter of marriages that sought help are in rockier shape than ever, and after four years, 38 percent go splitsville.
But why doesn’t it work? Most couples wait too long to go. There’s an average six-year delay between the first cracks in a marriage and actually getting help. But it should still be able to help somewhat even at that point, right? Nope, and that’s because of the greatest enemy a couple can face: NSO.
While entropy decays the happiness of a marriage over time, it’s not just a linear downward progression for everyone. Often, there’s a phase change. Water gets colder, and then colder and then colder—and then it becomes ice. Something completely different. In marriage this goes by the appropriately intimidating term negative sentiment override. NSO is a polyp in the colon of love.
You’re no longer “somewhat less happy” with your union, you’re as excited about your marriage as Henry VIII’s later wives were about theirs. You suspect your partner is secretly a lizard-person wrapped in a human skinsuit. You accumulate grievances the way hoarders keep mementos. Your partner is the source of all your problems, sent here by a malevolent force to ruin your life.
Idealization hasn’t faded—it has flipped. If love is positive delusion, NSO is utter disillusionment. You are biased against, not toward, your partner. The facts haven’t necessarily changed, just your interpretation of them. Rather than attributing problems to context, attributions now lie in someone’s poor character traits. You forgot to take out the trash today, but instead of me assuming it was because you were busy, my go-to assumption will now be it’s because you’re a horrible person bent on slowly driving me insane.
Famed psychologist Albert Ellis calls it “devilizing.” It’s a flip from dealing with someone you assume has good intentions but occasionally makes errors, to someone you assume was forged in the darkest pits of Hades but occasionally does something nice. And now that the default has flipped, our old buddy confirmation bias clicks in, and you become a truffle pig for your spouse’s mistakes, greasing the skid on an already downward spiral. A study by Robinson and Price showed unhappy couples don’t notice half the positivity in their marriage. Your spouse does something nice, trying to dig themselves out of the hole, but now 50 percent of the time you can’t even see it.
And this leads to more screaming that ends the marriage, right? Probably not. Escalating shouting matches lead to divorce only 40 percent of the time. More often than not, marriages end with a whimper, not a bang. You scream because you care. And once NSO has seriously set in, you stop caring. People stop negotiating with the demonspawn at all and start living parallel lives. And that’s what usually precedes divorce.
How does this spiral start? It begins with a secret. You have an issue with something, but you don’t say it. Maybe you think you know what they’d say. An assumption. And as we discussed in section 1, we’re terrible at reading minds, even our partner’s. As George Bernard Shaw said, “The single biggest problem in communication is the illusion that it has taken place.” And with time you talk less and assume more. “He’s quiet so he must be angry” or “She said no to sex so she must not love me.” Unspoken assumptions start to multiply until you’re not having conversations with your partner, you’re just having them with yourself because you “know” what they would say. Sometimes we don’t ask for clarification or say something because “he/she should know.” But here on Planet Earth people can’t hear what you don’t say. The emotional landfill grows. You collect compound interest of marital doom. And your marriage sails toward the future like a bird toward a sliding glass door.
You have to communicate. It’s a cliché, but it’s true. Communication is so vital that shyness is actually correlated with lower marital satisfaction. Meanwhile, the average dual career couple spends under two hours a week in discussion. You gotta talk.
Yeah, that means you’re gonna fight more. But guess what? Fighting doesn’t end marriages; avoiding conflict does. A study of newlyweds showed that, early on, couples who rarely fought were initially more satisfied with their marriages. But those same couples turned out to be on their way to divorce when researchers checked back in after three years. And a 1994 paper showed after thirty-five years it was actually the passionate bickering couples who were the only ones to still have a happy marriage. Oddly enough, a lower threshold for negativity is good for a marriage. Something bothers you, you’re more likely to bring it up, and then it’s more likely to get dealt with. Top relationship researcher John Gottman says: “If they don’t or can’t or won’t argue, that’s a major red flag. If you’re in a ‘committed’ relationship and you haven’t yet had a big argument, please do that as soon as possible.” You. Gotta. Talk.
Sixty-nine percent of ongoing problems never get resolved. No, I’m not saying that to depress you. The point is that it’s not what you talk about, it’s how you talk about it. Everybody thinks the issue is clarity, but studies show that most couples (if they do talk) are actually pretty clear. And it’s not about problem solving because more than two-thirds of the time it’s not going to get solved. As Gottman notes, it’s the affect with which you don’t solve the problem that matters.
It’s about regulation, not resolution, of the conflict. War is inevitable, but you have to obey Geneva Convention rules. No chemical warfare. No torturing prisoners. Maya Angelou once said, “I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.” And she’s right. Survey couples about their most recent disagreements and 25 percent of the time they can’t even remember what the argument was about—but they remember how they felt. And that’s what affects your marriage. When you ask divorced people what they would change about their previous marriage, the numero uno answer is “communication style.”
So we’re going to do a crash course in marital communication skills guided by Gottman’s work. His research allows him to predict which couples will be divorced three years later with 94 percent accuracy, a number nobody else even comes close to. This guy’s face should be on the Mount Rushmore of Marriage. Gottman knows we need Enlightenment era logic to diagnose problems but that Romanticism era feelings are the end goal.
What Gottman realized is that the amount of negativity in a marriage doesn’t predict divorce, it’s the type of negativity. We’re calling this “the Tolstoy effect.” In Anna Karenina Tolstoy wrote, “All happy families are alike but an unhappy family is unhappy after its own fashion.” And lucky for us, he was dead wrong. For marriages, it’s the opposite. Happy couples create a unique culture of two, like folie à deux. But, as Gottman found, unhappy couples all make the same four mistakes. And if we learn them, we can avoid them.
He calls these problems the Four Horsemen, and they predict divorce 83.3 percent of the time.
Complaining is actually healthy for a marriage. Again, this prevents those “secrets” that fester, breed assumptions, and lead to NSO. It’s criticism that’s the deadly problem. Complaining is when I say you did not take the trash out. Criticism is when I say you did not take the trash out because you’re a horrible person. The first is about an event, the second is about your fundamental personality. We can fix events. Attacking someone’s personality does not tend to go very well. Complaints often begin with “I” and criticisms often begin with “you.” If a sentence starts with “you always” and doesn’t end with “make me so happy,” it’s probably a criticism, and you can expect your spouse to respond with both barrels.
So turn your criticisms into complaints. Address the event, not the person. Or better yet, see your complaints as “goals” to be reached or problems to be solved. Criticism is something women do a lot more than men, but don’t worry, we’ll get to the problems the guys usually cause soon enough.
And here we have the thing men do in arguments that powerfully predicts divorce. Stonewalling is when you shut down or tune out in response to issues your partner brings up. Yes, there are many times in life when you just don’t want to miss a good chance to shut up, but stonewalling conveys “you or your concerns are not important enough for me to deal with.” It doesn’t reduce conflict: in most cases it dials it up. For many men, Gottman has found the issue actually operates at the physiological level. When guys’ adrenaline levels soar, they just don’t return to baseline as quickly as women’s do. The solution is to take long breaks. If the argument gets too heated, ask to return to the discussion in twenty minutes when fight-or-flight hormones have dropped back down.
Gottman defines defensiveness as anything that conveys, “No, the problem isn’t me, it’s you.” This, by its very nature, escalates conflict. You’re inviting pyromaniacs to put out the fire. Denying responsibility, making excuses, repeating yourself, or using the dreaded “Yes, but . . .” are all examples of defensiveness. Don’t counterattack or dodge. Listen, acknowledge your partner’s issues (no matter how ridiculous they might seem to you), and wait your turn to prevent escalation.
And then we have number 4, which is in a category all its own . . .
Contempt is the single biggest predictor of divorce that Gottman found. Contempt is anything that implies your partner is inferior to you. Calling them names, ridiculing or putting them down are all examples. (Yes, eye-rolling is one of the worst things you can do in a marriage, and that’s backed by data.) Contempt is almost never seen in happy marriages. Gottman refers to it as “sulfuric acid for love.” Simply put, it is the path to NSO. Do not do it.
I’m going to be very realistic here. You’re not going to remember everything in this chapter. So if you forget everything else, remember this: how you start an argument is double-super-extra important. Just by listening to the first three minutes of an argument, Gottman could predict the result 96 percent of the time. Plain and simple: if it starts harsh, it’s going to end harsh. And harsh startup not only predicted the outcome of the conversation, it predicted divorce. If you know you’re raising an issue with your partner that might lead to a fight, take a deep breath first. Complain, don’t criticize. Describe it neutrally. Start positive. You may be right, but you don’t need to make this harder than necessary by starting it as an attack.
This is a lot of stuff to remember, I know. And, in the shrieking confusion of the moment, it will be even harder to do properly. But that’s okay. The first three horsemen are present even in happy marriages. Nobody’s perfect. Remember how I said the Four Horsemen predict divorce 83.3 percent of the time? Yeah, 83.3 is not 100. And the reason it’s not 100 is what Gottman calls “repair”: soothing and supporting each other, laughing or showing affection in the midst of an argument. Take their hand. Make a joke. This dials back escalation. Even couples with lots of horsemen riding around can have happy stable marriages if they repair. And one reason NSO is so deadly is that it prevents you from seeing those repair attempts by your partner. That means the conflict car has no brakes.
What’s an overall perspective to keep in mind that encapsulates much of this? Well, Gottman emphasizes the importance of friendship in a marriage and that is very true. But I think a more useful idea to keep in mind is writer Alain de Botton’s notion of treating them like a child. No, don’t be condescending like you might with a kid, but we create a lot of problems because we expect our partner to always be a competent, emotionally stable “adult.” They’re not. I’m not. And you’re not. As humorist Kin Hubbard once said, “Boys will be boys, and so will a lot of middle-aged men.” Showing the generosity and compassion that you naturally give to a child when they’re upset is a simple way to get around many of the problems we create. We’re just less likely to think a child is motivated by conscious malice. We think they must be tired, hungry, or moody. This is, frankly, an excellent thing to do with anyone.
Don’t expect someone to always be rational. When Tom Stoneham, a professor of philosophy at the University of York, is teaching logic, he always says, “Don’t use this at home or you’ll end up unhappily single.” When a five-year-old starts shouting and calling you names, you don’t immediately shout back and call them a poopyhead. With kids we usually treat emotions as information, and this is great advice. We suspend judgment, listen, and stick to the real problem at hand. We’re just a lot more charitable. And that injection of positive emotion makes all the difference. Adulting is hard, and when someone relieves us of that enormous responsibility and realizes that inside we’re always a bit of a moody child, it works wonders. And this isn’t just speculation. A 2001 study shows people who are compassionate with their partner during arguments have 34 percent fewer of them, and they last half as long.
Awesome. We’re done, right? Nope.
Reducing negativity and fighting isn’t enough. That might make a marriage hunky-dory (a technical term for “okey dokey”), but it won’t make it great. I currently have a “not negative” relationship with every stranger on this planet. That’s not love. Yes, reducing the truly lethal negatives like the Four Horsemen is necessary—but not sufficient. Studies have shown that while negatives hurt, it’s actually the loss of the positive that speeds marriages to the grave.
More specifically, Gottman realized that the most important thing is a 5:1 ratio of positive to negative. This is why the raw amount of negative doesn’t matter. As long as you have enough good times to offset it, a relationship can thrive. Couples headed for divorce typically have a ratio of 0.8 positives for every negative. But you don’t want to have too little negative either. If you hit 13 positives to every negative, you’re probably not communicating enough. Gotta talk, gotta fight. It’s a balance. (What’s fascinating is this applies to all relationships. Friendships need an 8:1 positive to negative ratio. And with your mother-in-law the number is actually 1,000:1.)
So we know our next goal: increase the positive. Time to put the funk in functional relationship. We want the “all” version of Eli Finkel’s all-or-nothing marriage.
But we don’t merely want the incremental increase of more positive. We want a phase change like NSO—but in the other direction. We want a return to the magic, the idealization. We want confirmation bias back on our side. A brand-spanking-new pair of rose-colored glasses.
This puts me in an interesting spot, actually. I’m the science guy always saying we need to look at the facts and the data and be rational. In the introduction to this book I swore a blood oath to destroy unscientific myths with Occam’s chainsaw. Very Enlightenment era. But now we need some Romanticism. The delusion. The idealization that is the magic of love. The world is harsh, and we need our illusions to forge a greater truth together.
This is new territory for me. I have to go from killer of bias to protector of bias. I can see the summer movie tagline: What it was designed to destroy, it must now defend. (Why is the theme from Terminator 2 playing in my head right now?)
So how do we increase the positive and renew the magic of love? Let’s look at someone who has to do just that. On a daily basis, actually . . .