Marriage Experiment: Better to Be Right Than Happy |

I once wrote an article for Venture Inward describing an incident on a plane where an older couple had my seat. I didn't mind and I wasn't going to ask them get up--(I didn't care where I sat) but I did insist that they admit they had my seat. The wife got extremely upset while the husband eventually apologized. the point is, I got a negative reaction from many readers that it is better to be happy than right! I however disagree--I think reality, truth, admitting when we are wrong is much more likely to lead to happiness for everyone concerned.

They did a study in New Zealand, trying to find if a husband would just agree with his wife, whether he really agreed or not, would lead to a better marriage. Thinking of what we teach at Respect-me rules--what would you guess the answer to be? The wife didn't now what the experiment was about--and as the husband continued to agree and acquiesce to her will, he  became more and more depressed. She became even more demanding and intrusive!

(photo thanks to Save the Chimps)

Why would she get "power hungry" so to speak? If you took the free tutorial and used our workbook, you would know that whatever behavior you reward, you get more of. By agreeing with his wife even when he didn't, he rewarded her every whim. Then he got more of her whims shoved at him--it is human (and chimpanzee behavior). The researchers of this study " also noted that this was further proof that if given too much power, humans tend to “assume the alpha position and, as with chimpanzees, they become very aggressive and dangerous.” 

Remember that when you reward bad behavior you get more of it. If he yells and you try to be nicer to get him to stop, he's going to yell more often, not be nicer. that is reality. Read about the study here:

Marriage Experiment: Better to Be Right Than Happy | TIME.com: "The study was set up to examine the old marriage advice about whether it’s more important to be happy or to be right. Couples therapists sometimes suggest that in a bid to avoid constant arguments, spouses weigh up whether pressing the point is worth the misery of marital discord. The researchers, who are doctors and professors at the University of Auckland, noticed that many of their patients were adding stress to their lives by insisting on being right, even when it worked against their well-being."

 So they found a couple who were willing to record their quality of life on a scale of 1 to 10. They told the man, who wanted to be happy more than right, about the purpose of the study and asked him to agree with every opinion and request his wife had without complaint, even when he profoundly didn’t agree. The wife was not informed of the purpose of the study and just asked to record her quality of life

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