Marriage Makers: Acknowledge and Engage

Couples who acknowledge and engage each other tend to have greater couple satisfaction and are more likely to stay together. That's what relationship research* has found. It has also found that one of the greatest predictors of relationship success is a couple's ability to, and habit of, turning toward each other rather than away from each other. The intimacy bond can be improved tremendously when one spouse makes an effort to connect by reaching out and the other spouse accepts the effort and responds accordingly. It's what I call acknowledging and engaging.

Acknowledging and engaging can include a simple gesture such as a brief verbal response, or it can involve a spouse "moving to action." Here are a few examples:

• A wife is reading a book. She says to her husband who is across the room, "Wow, this is really interesting. I never knew this." Her husband looks toward her and says, "You never knew what?"
• A husband is standing at the window looking outside. He says, "It looks overcast today." His wife says, "Does it? Perhaps this will be the perfect day to pop some popcorn and watch that movie we've been wanting to see."
• A wife is trying to get the new printer to work. She says, "That's strange, this ink cartridge won't snap into place." Her husband says, "Let me take a look," as he walks over to her.
• A husband and wife are driving to dinner. The husband says, "I wonder if we'll get in without a reservation." The wife says, "Hmmm, I don't know. But it's worth a try."
• One spouse says, "My knee is looking a bit swollen." The other spouse comes over, looks at it and says, "It does look a bit swollen. Is it painful?"

Those are all examples of a spouse acknowledging and engaging. So simple. Yet the opposite can easily become a habit in marriage. Spouses can begin to ignore their spouses' attempts to connect. They begin to overlook opportunities to deepen intimacy through the simple gesture of acknowledging and engaging. 

A research* study conducted with newlyweds found that six years after the wedding, the couples who had stayed together were the ones who had turned toward each other 86% of the time. If you were to take an inventory of your responses to your spouse, what percentage of the time would you say you acknowledge and engage?

There's no time like the present to begin!

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*Findings based on forty years of research conducted by Dr. John Gottman.