What is the Happy Marriage Recipe?
What is the happy marriage recipe and what role do chocolate and chemistry play in a happy marriage recipe?
Most people associate chocolate with romantic love, that early stage of love that Helen Fisher, Ph.D., Scientific Director of Chemistry has studied and written about so much, which usually occurs before the participants are contemplating marriage.
It turns out that chocolate has a molecule, PEA, that alerts the brain that something exciting is happening.
Dr. Daniel Amen suggests that a square or two of dark chocolate could be part of any couple’s date night, especially for husbands of wives whose cingulate gyrus can get stuck.
I’m not going to go into the niceties of Dr. Amen’s argument, but I do want to illustrate that research has led us to the brain and its chemicals as part of our happy marriage recipe.
Apparently, we’ve left behind the breathless advice from experts and gurus and delved into brain science for our happy marriage advice.
In fact, Dr. Fisher has suggested, based on her data analysis, that we humans fall into four broad personality types, each associated with a particular hormone or neurotransmitter, and that our happy courtship should begin by finding partners with whom we are chemically compatible. .
Now, that’s a long way from Ann Landers, the advice guru of my childhood, and it’s also a long way from the Hefner or Guccione model, and also the Disney model of the happy marriage recipe that requires the intervention of the Fairy. Godmother.
Robert Epstein, Ph.D. says…
that the recipe for a happy marriage in India, where marriages are arranged and couples can meet once before marriage, is the regular practice of intimacy exercises, such as ‘soul gazing’ or ‘heart rate synchronization’, which leads to a successful marriage relationship, with increasing levels of happiness in 95% of marriages in India, even though divorce is an option. Our marriages don’t come close to that level of success.
John Gottman, Ph.D., another researcher with extensive experience in the study of marriage, has put together a workshop called “The Art and Science of Love” that couples can purchase and complete on their own. The workshop takes couples through a lot of exercises and videos that I think are very similar to what Professor Epstein describes.
Gottman has selected his exercises from observing what the Masters of Marriage do in their relationships, what makes the relationship work, and also talks about a recipe for unhappy marriage based on the number of times he sees expressions of contempt, defensiveness, criticism and obstruction. .
Happy marriage recipe by heartbeat…
I was very intrigued reading Dr. Epstein’s ideas on heart rate synchronization. I’ve done it with couples using heart rate variability biofeedback programs.
It turns out that we can learn to regulate the physiology of our heart beat by beat, because our heart actually has a brain of its own, actually a very sophisticated nervous system, which sends a lot of data to the brain about how we’re doing. feeling, and that heart brain is affiliative and cooperative, which is a great physiological platform for our happy marriage recipe to happen.
I have taught individual members of couples how to do heart rate variability biofeedback, then asked them to come together to work on the heartbeat of the marriage. I hook them up to computers in tandem, individually cohere them, and then hold their hands to see what comes up on their computer screens.
If they pay attention effectively to their own internal coherence, then a relationship heartbeat emerges that is like a third heartbeat, moving in and out of coherence based on what individuals are thinking.
Most couples are very amazed to experience that their relationship has a heartbeat, that it shifts in and out of coherence so quickly and often, and that they can make small internal adjustments that have a huge impact on the happiness of both. participants.
Heart rate variability has many other applications for test taking and golf, to name a couple, and stress management in the workplace.
So it looks like science is helping us determine the physiology, chemistry, and heartbeat of a happy marriage recipe.
But we still have to stir and cook the dish.