Although many popular writings have focused on the expression of anger in intimate relationships, and how to deal with it, there has been scant attention paid to the misconceptions and miscommunications that are so often responsible for the anger and conflict. How one spouse perceives and interprets what the other does can be far more important in determining marital satisfaction than those actions themselves.

To avoid such marital misconceptions, it helps to understand how the mind functions—and malfunctions—when we are frustrated or disappointed. Our fallible mental apparatus predisposes us to misinterpret or exaggerate the meaning of other people’s behavior, to make negative explanations when we are disappointed, and to project a negative image onto these people. We then act on these misinterpretations—attacking the very negative image that we have projected.

It rarely occurs to us at that moment that our negative judgment could be wrong, and that we are attacking a distorted image. For instance, when frustrated by Ted’s moods, Karen projected an image of him as a kind of mechanical man, incapable of expressing feeling to another person. At the same time, Ted saw Karen as one of the Furies, filled with hate and vengeance. Whenever one of them would disappoint the other, these extreme images took over their minds and fueled their anger.

At this point, it would be helpful to review the flow of Lois’s thoughts, in which we can see the gradual snowballing of negative ideas, leading to her feeling alone and abandoned.

Why is he silent?

He must be angry at me.

I must have done something to offend him.

He will continue to be angry at me.

He is always angry at me.

I always offend people.

Nobody will ever like me.

I will always be alone.

In close relationships, we are less flexible in using our coding system than in more impersonal situations. In fact, the more intense a relationship, the greater the possibility of misunderstanding. More than any other intimate tie, marriage presents continual opportunities for the misreading of signs.

We can see what underlies many of the problems of committed relationships more clearly if we look at the exaggerated versions of these ways of thinking in people who have psychological disorders such as anxiety, depression, and hypochondriasis. Their system of coding particular events is uniformly biased. Depressed people, for instance, are likely to interpret ambiguous events in a way that reflects badly on themselves. A housewife, seeing that the children are squabbling, concludes, “I am a failure as a mother.” An anxious person, on the other hand, sees danger in innocuous situations. A nervous husband whose wife is late for an appointment thinks, “She was mugged.” And the hypochondriac interprets normal bodily sensations as signs of serious disease: slight faint feelings signify a brain tumor, heartburn indicates an impending heart attack, and a backache signals kidney disease.

Such people differ from “normal” people in that they ascribe much more importance to their conclusions and hold them far more tenaciously. They are much more likely to spot patterns that fit their own preconceptions, and to ignore information that does not fit these patterns. Paradoxically, they remain mired in their way of thinking even though it brings them great pain. Such “cognitive rigidity” is accentuated in most people when they are under stress.

We can learn a great deal from these psychological disorders because we see the same kind of thinking in distressed relationships when the prejudice is directed toward the partner. Research studies have shown that couples in distressed marriages can be reasonably objective in the motives they attribute to other couples; but, in the same situations, they inaccurately attribute negative motives to their own spouses.

Distressed couples often react to each other as though they themselves had a psychological disorder. Their thinking about their spouse shows bias like that seen in people with anxiety and depression. To them, their beliefs are real, their minds are open. Actually, they have closed minds and a closed perspective where their partner is concerned.

Hostile spouses, for example, do not realize that their view of their partner may be distorted by their state of mind and the beliefs that dominate them. When someone tries to correct these distortions—particularly the spouse—that person may well run into a wall of hostility. Angry people do not take kindly to having their views of reality contradicted, and they see the other person not only as wrong but as attempting to manipulate them or even deceive them.

When hostile spouses attempt to divine an invisible state—namely, their partner’s emotions, thoughts, and motives—they are as convinced of their conclusions as they would be if they could see right into their spouse’s mind. To them, their beliefs are not simply a conclusion but reality. To correct these conclusions requires the application of a number of strategies,…

On the other hand, during the infatuation of courtship and early married life, couples show a positive bias. Almost everything the partner says or does is interpreted in a positive light. He or she can do no wrong. But if the marriage runs into difficulties, the repeated disappointments, arguments, and frustrations lead to a change in mental attitude. Distressed, the partners shift from a positive to a negative bias. Then, much of what either of them does is interpreted in a negative light. He or she can do no right.

The power of negative thinking is demonstrated in our casual observations. How often have we heard a partner complain, “We had a great day together and then one stupid little thing happens and it spoils everything!” The power of the negative is shown in a number of research studies. What most of all distinguishes distressed marriages from satisfactory marriages is not so much the absence of pleasant experiences but the larger number of unpleasant experiences, or ones given that interpretation. The improvements that couples show in counseling are accompanied more by a reduction in unpleasant encounters than by an increase in pleasant events. Happiness seems to come more naturally when the negative experiences and negative interpretations are diminished.

Just as cognitive therapy can help patients with clinical anxiety or depression understand their erroneous thinking, the same principles can counteract the misunderstandings and biases of distressed marriages, such as those described in this chapter. But first it is important to understand the basis for such problems in thinking, and to learn how to identify them. Then, couples can test their interpretations and beliefs about each other, and correct them accordingly—rather than letting negative thinking spoil their happiness.

Ted’s reaction reflects a sobering fact. What attracts partners to each other is rarely sufficient in itself to sustain a relationship.

Ted’s inflexible expectations of Karen illustrate a crucial characteristic of all intimate relationships. When someone fails to live up to our expectations in a non-intimate relationship, we may feel disappointed and tend to expect less from the person, or write off the relationship as not worth maintaining. In this kind of relationship, our expectations adjust to fresh experiences—and disappointments lower our expectations.

In a marriage or other committed relationship, however, the response is frequently different; disappointment does not necessarily lead to a lowering of expectations. In many cases, the husband or wife either cannot or is unwilling to relinquish the original expectations. Ted said, for instance, “I’m entitled to have Karen ready when I’m ready. She doesn’t have the right to keep me waiting . . . I have every reason to expect that my wife will do what I ask. I always do what she wants.”

The expectations in marriage are generally less flexible than in an uncommitted relationship. Part of the inflexibility may be explained by the fact that when couples make a lifetime commitment, the stakes are much higher than in a more casual relationship. Marriage implies entrusting your happiness, if not your life, to another person. As a result, the partners build strict rules into the relationship to provide warranties against being abused or betrayed. Further, committed relationships are much more likely to revolve around symbols—of love or rejection, security or insecurity—which by their very nature are inflexible.

A particularly distinctive aspect of such expectations in marriage is interpreting “lapses” as indicating a general failure in the relationship. The offended spouse regards these lapses as evidence that the partner is uncaring. Karen, for example, expected that Ted would accept her unconditionally—as he had during the courtship. When he became critical, she believed that he didn’t care.