what is accepting influence in a relationship?

accepting influence means a partner's point gets into the decision. it is not obedience. in a study of 130 newlywed couples, john gottman and colleagues treated a husband's refusal of his wife's influence as escalating her frustration instead of looking for common ground. the researchers later said the finding was never that men should comply.

you can love them and still run the week as a series of decisions you already made. the vacation. the saturday. whose family at thanksgiving. their objection arrives, and the plan does not move. sometimes the reply is a case. sometimes it is a cheerful "whatever you want," which is a no with better manners. they stop offering a point, because a point that never changes anything is just a speech.

what is accepting influence?

the gottman institute's page on partnership and power defines it as taking a partner into consideration when you make decisions. you do not have to agree with every idea. you do have to let the idea into the room. the pieces it names are ordinary. be open to their opinion. acknowledge that their view is a real one, grounded in their experience, even when it is not yours. a short line, "i see why you feel that way," is the example it gives for sending the message that they matter.

the same page is blunt about the slogans that miss it. "anything you say, dear" and "happy wife, happy life" are not the skill. it is not compliance, and a boundary can still be yours. it is not one person always being the flexible one. it is not a yes offered only to end the talk. a forced "whatever you want" is avoidance, and the page says that kind of agreement can store resentment. the version it describes is listening, a question, and a decision that had both of you in it. that is teaching, not a score for one argument.

what did the newlywed study actually measure?

in 1998, john gottman, james coan, sybil carrère, and catherine swanson published a study of 130 newlywed couples in the journal of marriage and the family. a university of washington write-up says they were followed for six years. the abstract says the team tested seven ideas about conflict. three were not supported. anger, by itself, as a dangerous emotion. formal active listening, the paraphrase of a partner's feelings. and negative affect reciprocity, simply matching a negative with a negative.

what the abstract says did find support, as predictors of divorce in that sample of husbands and wives, included the husband rejecting his wife's influence. beside it: a negative start-up by the wife, a failure to de-escalate, and a lack of physiological soothing of the husband. divorce and stability were predicted with 83 percent accuracy inside the study, and satisfaction among stable couples with 80 percent. those are classification numbers for the models they ran. they are not a forecast for your kitchen. why a complaint can make you defensive walks through what those models did and did not support. this page is the influence piece.

in the paper, rejecting influence is not a questionnaire about who is the boss. the authors describe two ways a negative can be answered. one is in kind. anger meets anger. the other is escalation. a lower-intensity negative, like anger, is met with belligerence, contempt, or defensiveness. they write that this second pattern, in a husband's reply to his wife, is how they indexed a rejection of her influence. the hypothesis there is gender-specific. marriages work to the extent that men accept influence from women, indexed by a husband who does not escalate her low-intensity negativity. he is still in the disagreement. he has not raised the rank of it.

a 2000 reply in the same journal, by gottman, carrère, swanson, and coan, is plainer about the label. they say they measured rejecting influence, not a behavior they called accepting influence, and they measured it in that escalation sequence. they also say a qualitative read of the newlywed transcripts gave the sequence the same meaning outside the violent marriages where they had first noticed it. husbands who stayed low in that escalation, they write, were trying to find a common ground to compromise from, and they were still clearly specifying what they did not agree about. the los angeles times, they say, had reported the finding as men should comply with their wives. the authors call that a distortion. common ground, with the disagreement still named, is the picture. obedience is the cartoon.

what did the press line add?

the press line was stronger than the abstract. in the university of washington write-up, gottman says only those newlywed men who accept influence from their wives are winding up in happy, stable marriages. that is his summary for a reporter. the abstract's sentence is that the model was supported. in the 2000 reply the authors describe the groups. seventeen couples had divorced, set beside stable couples who were unhappy and stable couples who were happy. an extreme-group look can make a pattern easier to see. it is still one lab's heterosexual newlyweds.

you will also meet a different percentage. a gottman institute page on accepting influence states that when a man is not willing to share power with his partner, there is an 81 percent chance the marriage will self-destruct, and it attaches that sentence to the newlywed study. the abstract's 83 percent is how well the models sorted divorce from stability inside the study. the page's 81 percent is a chance attached to one behavior. neither figure is personal odds.

is this only a husband's job?

the 1998 hypothesis was written that way because, in the labs that filmed conflict, wives more often brought the issue up. the sample was husbands and wives. a pattern from that lab does not appoint one gender the flexible one now. the institute's current pages say the skill is mutual, and that it is not limited to heterosexual couples. either of you can finish the plan before the other person has spoken.

a separate line of work looked at gay and lesbian couples. the institute's research page describes a twelve-year study by john gottman and robert levenson of 21 gay couples and 21 lesbian couples. gottman says there that those partners showed less belligerence, domineering, and fear than the straight couples in the comparison, and that this suggests power-sharing was more common. that suggestion is his, on the summary page. the journal abstract describes the design: an events-of-the-day talk, a conflict talk, and a pleasant talk, then a model of how one partner's affect shifted the other's, including how effective a repair was. the abstract does not print the belligerence comparison. forty-two couples and an institute summary are a lead, not a ranking of whose relationship is better.

how is accepting influence different from defensiveness, or from a soft start-up?

defensiveness is the case. you stay in the talk and move the blame. accepting influence is the later question. did their point change anything. "you're right that i forgot" can be a real ownership and still leave the saturday exactly as you had already planned it. a soft start-up is the opening, not the reply: a feeling, one specific scene, and a positive need. in the 1998 abstract, a negative start-up by the wife was its own predictor, beside the husband's rejection of influence. a harsh opening can wreck a talk that might have been shareable. a gentle opening cannot move a plan that was never open.

a fight that keeps returning is a third thing. why the same fight comes back is often a difference you will not solve once. you can accept influence and still have the difference: name the part you can yield on, and the part you still do not agree about. that is the 2000 reply's picture of the husbands who were not escalating. if the subject is money, the number is usually the surface and the say is the fight. how to talk about money without fighting is that layer. shutting an idea down with "you always complicate things" is not a budget.

what should you remember so the next decision is actually shared?

none of these papers tested a script. what fits them is specific, and it belongs on an ordinary decision.

• the decision they wanted a say in, in their words. "thanksgiving at your sister's, and i need a day that is just us after" is usable. "they are difficult about holidays" is your caption.
• the part you can yield on, and the part you still disagree about. common ground, with the no still named. a yes that erases your own need is the avoidance the institute page warns about.
• the sentence that shut them out last time. a joke that ranked them. a "i've already booked it." the television. you cannot change a move you have renamed as being practical.
• the small next step that meant both of you were in it. one call made together. one hour of the saturday that is theirs to plan. a speech about equality is harder to repeat than the step.

date the lines. a compromise from a different season can be the wrong yield now. write the correction when they offer it.

tended is a place to hold those lines: the decision they wanted in on, the part you yielded, the part you still do not agree about. you still say the fair piece out loud, and you still change the plan where you said you would. an app cannot share power for you. it can keep thursday from being settled as if their objection never happened.

what can you do this week?

• pick one decision you have been treating as already made. say so, before you defend it.
• before your no, say the part of their point that is fair. "the paperwork is a lot" can be true while the idea still gets a next step.
• write the yield and the remaining disagreement the same night.
• if you are the one who always bends, name one need you have been skipping to keep the peace. influence that only travels one way is the slogan the institute page set aside.

when is yielding the wrong move?

some refusals are not a communication habit. in the 2000 reply, the authors say they first saw the escalation sequence in a study of violent marriages. a mild complaint was met with a faster, harder negative, and they read that version as intimidation and control. the same shape in the newlywed lab still meant rejecting influence. in a house where a no is punished, yielding is the wrong assignment. if you are unsafe, safety comes before a fairer decision. for the ordinary version, two people and a plan one of them already finished, let the point in and keep your own need in the sentence.