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Our study didn't really find that men should give up all of their
personal power and let their wives rule their lives. But we did find
that the happiest, most stable marriages in the long run were those
where the husband treated his wife with respect and did not resist
power sharing and decision making with her. When the couple
disagreed, these husbands actively searched for common ground
rather than insisting on getting their way.
To arrive at these findings, we looked intently at what
happened when these newlyweds discussed an area of conflict and
also when they talked about the history of their romance. When we
analyzed the data, we were struck by a significant gender difference.
Although the wives would sometimes express anger or other
negative emotions toward their husbands, they rarely responded to
their husbands by increasing the negativity. Most of them either tried
to tone it down or matched it. So if a husband said, "You're not
listening to me!" the wife would usually say something like "Sorry,
I'm listening now" (a repair that tones down the negativity) or "I'm
finding it hard to listen to you!" which matched her husband's anger
but didn't go beyond it.
But 65 percent of the men did not take either of these
approaches. Instead, their response escalated their wives' negativity.
They did this in a very specific way: by trotting out one of the four
horsemen (criticism, contempt, defensiveness, or stonewalling). If the
wife of one of these men said, "You're not listening to me!" the
husband would either ignore her (stonewall), be defensive ("Yes, I
am!"), be critical ("I don't listen because what you say never makes
any sense"), or be contemptuous ("Why waste my time?"). Using one
of the four horsemen to escalate a conflict is a telltale sign that a man
is resisting his wife's influence.
Rather than acknowledging his wife's feelings, this husband is
using the four horsemen to drown her out, to obliterate her point of
view. This is the opposite of accepting her influence. One way or
another, this approach leads to instability in the marriage. Even if the
husband doesn't react this way very often, there's an 81 percent
chance that his marriage will be damaged.