How Long-Married Couples Learn To Stop Arguing And Start Changing The Subject

Yet another reason to subscribe to the conviction that “it gets better.” Researchers at San Francisco State University report that the longer couples are together, the better they handle disagreements. How’s that? A recent study shows that more experienced couples tend to diffuse a potentially explosive discussion with an age-old tactic: they change the subject. A SF State news release reports that researchers followed 127 middle-aged and older long-term married couples across 13 years, checking in to see how they communicated about conflicts from housework to finances. The researchers videotaped the couples’ 15-minute discussions, noting the types of communication they used when talking about contentious topics, and hoping to learn how the couples might change in their use of a common and destructive type of communication, the demand-withdraw pattern, as they aged. In the demand-withdraw pattern, one person in a relationship blames or pressures their partner for a change, while the partner tries to avoid discussion of the problem or passively withdraws from the interaction. The researchers found that over time, both husbands and wives “increased their tendency to demonstrate avoidance during conflict,”  When faced with an area of disagreement, both spouses were more likely to divert attention from the conflict. It’s a beautiful day for a walk.