‘Yeah, I know.’ But it’s a yes-but. Even though he started to
validate her, he went on to say that he didn’t like the dog. He’s
really being defensive. I kept thinking, He’s so nice. He’s doing
all this validation. But then I realized he was doing the yes-but.
It’s easy to be fooled by them.”
Bill went on: “I’m getting way better. You’ve got to admit it.
I’m better this week than last week, and the week before and
the week before.”
Tabares jumped in again. “In one study, we were watching
newlyweds, and what often happened with the couples who
ended up in divorce is that when one partner would ask for
credit, the other spouse wouldn’t give it. And with the happier
couples, the spouse would hear it and say, ‘You’re right.’ That
stood out. When you nod and say ‘uh-huh’ or ‘yeah,’ you are
doing that as a sign of support, and here she never does it, not
once in the entire session, which none of us had realized until
we did the coding.
“It’s weird,” she went on. “You don’t get the sense that they
are an unhappy couple when they come in. And when they were
finished, they were instructed to watch their own discussion,
and they thought the whole thing was hilarious. They seem fine,
in a way. But I don’t know. They haven’t been married that