{"id":287561,"date":"2017-01-24T09:30:42","date_gmt":"2017-01-24T09:30:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/citifmonline.com\/?p=287561"},"modified":"2017-01-24T09:30:42","modified_gmt":"2017-01-24T09:30:42","slug":"the-key-to-happy-relationships-is-not-all-about-communication","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/2017\/01\/the-key-to-happy-relationships-is-not-all-about-communication\/","title":{"rendered":"The key to happy relationships is not all about communication"},"content":{"rendered":"
If couples were paying any attention during the past few decades, they should be able to recite the one critical ingredient for a healthy relationship \u2014 communication. But the latest study shows that other skills may be almost as important for keeping couples happy.<\/span><\/p>\n While expressing your needs and feelings in a positive way to your significant other is a good foundation for resolving conflicts and building a healthy relationship, these skills may not be as strong a predictor of couples\u2019 happiness as experts once thought.<\/p>\n In an Internet-based study involving 2,201 participants referred by couples counselors, scientists decided to test, head to head, seven \u201crelationship competencies\u201d that previous researchers and marital therapists found to be important in promoting happiness in romantic relationships.<\/p>\n The idea was to rank the skills in order of importance to start building data on which aspects of relationships are most important to keeping them healthy. In addition to communication and conflict resolution, the researchers tested for sex or romance, stress<\/a> management, life skills, knowledge of partners and self-management to see which ones were the best predictors of relationship satisfaction.<\/p>\n Couples were asked questions that tested their competency in all of these areas and then queried about how satisfied they were with their relationships. The researchers correlated each partner\u2019s strengths and weaknesses in each area with the person\u2019 relationship satisfaction.<\/p>\n Not surprisingly, those who reported communicating more effectively showed the highest satisfaction with their relationships. But the next two factors \u2014 which were also the only other ones with strong links to couple happiness \u2014 were knowledge of partner (which included everything from knowing their pizza-topping preferences to their hopes and dreams) and life skills (being able to hold a job, manage money, etc.).<\/p>\n Couples counselors, however, rarely address these two areas, as the focus on strengthening relationships has been on improving communication to reduce destructive behavior and to build support and comfort for each other.<\/p>\n \u201cFor the last 25 years,\u201d says Tom Bradbury, a veteran couples researcher at the University of California, Los Angeles, \u201cthe prevailing attitude has been that relationships need to meet our emotional needs.\u201d To be successful, however, he\u2019s also found that relationships need to function in more practical, and perhaps mundane ways as well.<\/p>\n And learning more about your partner, says the study\u2019s lead author Robert Epstein, a professor of psychology at the University of the South Pacific, in Fiji, could be relatively easy if people (men especially, since they scored worse in this area) took the trouble to find out, remember and put to use such relatively simple information as the names of their partner\u2019s relatives and the dates of birthdays and anniversaries.<\/p>\n Even more important, Epstein says, is knowing such critical things as whether your partner wants children. While his study did not separate trivial from such profound knowledge, he says that the two are strongly linked.<\/p>\n