[p. 56] By now you may be wondering how these three very different types of marriages can be equally successful, or how couples with such clear difficulties, or apparent inadequacies can stay together. The answer is that happiness isn't found in a particular style of fighting or making up. Rather, our research suggests that what really separates contended couples from those in deep marital misery is a healthy balance between their positive and negative feelings and actions toward each other. For example, I mentioned that volatile couples stick together by balancing their frequent arguments with a lot of love and passion. But by balance I do not mean a fifty-fifty equilibrium. As part of our research we carefully charted the amount of time couples spent fighting versus interacting positively--touching, smiling, paying compliments, laughing, etc. Across the board we found there was a very specific ratio that exists between the amount of positivity and negativity in a stable marriage, whether it is marked by validation, volatility, or conflict avoidance.

That magic ratio is 5 to 1. In other words, as long as there is five times as much positive feeling and interaction between husband and wife as there is negative, we found the marriage was likely to be stable. It was based on this ratio that we were able to predict whether couples were likely to divorce: in very unhappy couples, there tended to be more negative than positive interaction.

[p. 61] Like the Second Law of Thermodynamics, which says that in closed energy systems things tend to run down and get less orderly, the same seems to be true of closed relationships like marriages. My guess is that if you do nothing to make things get better in your marriage but do not do anything wrong, the marriage will still tend to get worse over time. To maintain a balanced emotional ecology you need to make an effort--think about your spouse during the day, think about how to make a good thing even better, and act.

[p. 66] One intriguing question is why negativity is necessary at all for marriage to survive. Why don't stable marriages have a positive-to-negative ratio that is more like 100 to 1? Wouldn't marriages work best if there were no disagreements? Our research suggests that in the short run this may be true. But for a marriageto have real staying power, couples need to air their differences, whether they resolve them in a volatile, validating, or minimizing style. For example, we found that couples who fought were less satisfied with their marriages than those who described their interactions as peaceful. But when we checked on these couples three years later, we found the situation had reversed. Those who did not fight earlier on were less likely to have maintained stable marriages than those who were more confrontational. The originally "happy" couples were more likely to be on the trajectory toward divorce, or even be divorced, than the others. In other words, what may lead to temporary misery in a marriage--diagreement and anger--may be healthy for it in the long run. Rather than being destructive, occasional anger can be a resource that helps the marriage improve over time.

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