What one thing could my partner do next time to avoid this
argument?
If, after working through this exercise, you or your spouse still
find it hard to accept each other's perspective, it may help you to
work together more on the exercises in Chapter 4 (strengthening your
fondness and admiration system). I have found that couples who
have remained happily married for many years are able to enjoy each
other--foibles and all--because of the strength of their fondness and
admiration. Many of the older couples I studied with colleagues Bob
Levenson and Laura Carstensen in the San Francisco Bay Area were
masters at this. They had been married for a very long time--some for
more than forty years. Through the course of their marriages, they
had learned to view their partners' shortcomings and oddities as
amusing parts of the whole package of their spouse's character and
personality.
One wife, for example, accepted with a chuckle that her
husband would never stop being a Dagwood--always running late
and frantic. She found ways around it. Whenever they had to get to
the airport, she'd tell him their plane left thirty minutes sooner than
the actual takeoff time. He knew she was deceiving him, and they
laughed about it. Then there was the husband who looked upon his
wife's weekly shopping sprees with as much amusement as dread,
even though her shopping style made bill-paying very confusing-she
almost always returned about half of her purchases.
Somehow couples such as these have learned to mellow about
their partner's faults. So although they communicate to each other
every emotion in the spectrum, including anger, irritability,
disappointment, and hurt, they also communicate their fundamental
fondness and respect. Whatever issue they are discussing, they give
each other the message that they love and accept each other, "warts
and all."
When couples are not able to do this, sometimes the problem is
that they are unable to forgive each other for past differences. It's all