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Emotionally Intelligent Husband – Commentary

Okay welcome to the commentary for the emotionally intelligent husbands article.

This chat about why I chose this and what it means to me. I chose this I guess because I myself am hoping to improve my relationship with Tomoe and always trying to be better.

And this is from a very interesting book by Dr. John Gottman. Trying to remember the name of the book exactly, “the seven principles of good marriage” something like that.

Anyway, Gottman’s interesting, Dr. John Gottman, he’s a researcher, he does research on marriages. So his book is based not just on his opinion or experience, but also on research. And what they do, is they, he and his group, research marriages. And they try to figure out what causes marriages to succeed and what causes them to fail.

And his definition of success and failure are important. Success means that both partners report— say— they are very happy with the relationship. Okay? So that’s success. And failure means number one of course divorce, but it also means number two that one or both partners (husband wife, girlfriend boyfriend) are very unhappy so that’s failure.

So, some people remain married but they’re not happy. So, that’s considered a failure by Dr. Gottman in his research.

So, they find these groups of marriages, these two kinds of marriages, and they study these people. And it’s quite interesting, they study them in a very close detail.

Of course, they interview them and get lots of information but they do much more than that. They bring them into their research, I don’t know if you wanna call it a lab, office maybe, they bring them on to their office many times, and they have them discuss different topics and sometimes they argue, sometimes they agree.

Whatever, but they have the husband and wife talk about topics. While they’re talking, they measure their heart rate and their sweat glands, how much they’re sweating. They also videotaped them very closely specially their faces, their emotions.

After these videotaped conversations, after this research, They go back, they watch the videotape step by step like each frame. When they do it, when they watch it very slow like that, they can see very quick gestures, very quick emotions on the face.

When you’re just looking at normal speed, you don’t see them. But when you look at a video and you go slow, slow-motion, you can see very quickly some quick emotion show on the face.

So, anyway, they have all this information all this data about heart rate and all these videotapes and then they study them very carefully. And they identify, you know, what are the things that are the same for the successful marriages, the successful couples. And what are the things that are the same for the failing couples or the divorced couples, or the ones that are probably going to be divorced.

And from this research, he has identified different key traits, key things you must do for your marriage to be successful. And this article is one of them.

And of course, it’s focused mostly on the husband. Other things are focused on the wife or focused on the both of them. But for my own purpose, I’m, of course worried more about what I can do myself.

So, this is focused on the husband and one key trait is that, the husbands need to be emotionally intelligent. It means they have to learn how to deal with their emotions in a healthy way. And this has two sides, one side is they have to be able to understand and respect other people’s emotions. Of course, their wife’s feelings. The husband needs to be able to understand and respect his wife’s feelings.

But also, his children’s feelings and his friend’s feelings, just in general. He has to know how to understand and identify and talk about other people’s feelings and to be sensitive to those feelings and to care about those feelings.

And in the other side of it, he has to be able to identify and understand and communicate his own feelings. So, he’s got to be able to talk about his own feelings and not just anger, not just, “I’m pissed off!” But also, when he’s sad and other things. He has to be able to clearly understand those feelings, handle them and communicate them in a positive way, in a respectful way.

And a lot of this has to do with what he calls accepting influence from his wife. So Dr. Gottman’s accepting influence is the key part of emotional intelligent.

What does that mean? Well, what it really means practically, simply is that the husband has to share power with his wife. He influences his wife, of course. He has some, not control is a bad word; he effects his wife. He changes his wife somewhat, but he also has to be willing to, be changed. He has to be willing, he has to let his wife change him. He has to accept her power. He has to accept her influence also. It has to be both ways.

So, accepting influence, sharing power is very important for marriages, especially now in most countries, society is changing. Women are getting more power. Those old ideas from the 1950s, man is in control, the man is the leader, the man says what is done and the woman does it.

Those ideas don’t work anymore. They certainly don’t work in America or Europe as we know or Latin America and in Asia, I know, this is also changing quite a lot. And really, this doesn’t work in Asia anymore either.

Simply because, women will not tolerate it anymore, right? They’re sick of it. And they’re not gonna put up with this any more. It doesn’t matter what men like or don’t like or want or don’t want. The women will not accept this anymore. In my opinion that’s good. So, I’m quite happy about that. I think it’s a good thing.

But it’s an adjustment and he’s right about that. In the past men, especially older generation, my father’s generation, my grandfather’s generation; they did have that entitlement. You know, they had that feeling that naturally men should be the leader, naturally men should have the power, or more power.

And naturally women should be weaker. They have the strong idea. Society taught them that. Their own family taught them that. So, it’s hard for them to change. Some of them have a difficult time changing. They feel their losing that entitlement and some of them do respond with righteous indignation. They do respond with anger.

Now to be fair some of them do not. Actually, my own father; I’ve seen him change quite a bit. And I have known plenty of older men, my father’s age, in fact, my grandfather, my mother’s father was not like that at all. He very much shared power with my grandmother. In fact, I would say my grandmother was the stronger one in their relationship.

So, you know, we have to be careful. These are general trends in societies. But they’re not true of every single person. However, I think Dr. Gottman is absolutely correct that in general, in modern societies especially, things have changed and to have a successful marriage as a husband you must give up your power.

It doesn’t mean you’re weak. It means you share power. It means you’re strong about your own ideas and opinions. But you also respect your wife’s strength and you let her and you want her to be strong. And you want her to express her opinions. And that it’s a partnership, an equal partnership. I think Dr. Gottman’s definitely right about that.

If you do this, it creates healthy relationships. I think a lot of men, these old-fashioned men, they feel threatened. They’re afraid of this, but actually I have found in my own life, it’s quite positive. It’s a lot less stressful when you share power with someone else when you’re a partner.

If you have all the power, it seems like it’s great; you can “oh, clean my room”. But on the other hand you also have all the responsibility and that’s very stressful.

Another thing, I think, from the man’s point of view, a woman who serves you, who’s not equal, let’s face it, it’s boring, extremely boring. I know for my own part, I don’t want a servant. I want a partner, I want an equal partner.

I want someone who has strong opinions and strong ideas, who’s very intelligent, who’s very confident. I can learn from her. And hopefully, I hope, she learns from me too.

So, anyway it’s interesting because I read this article, we studied this article in my class, here in San-Francisco. And I was a little shocked, to be honest, that about the reaction, several, I guess I have to say several of the Asian students, especially the men, not surprisingly, disagreed strongly with this article.

They were, they didn’t like this idea. They thought the man must be the boss and the woman naturally must follow him and that is the way, you know, the world is suppose to work. Or I don’t know, God says this is true or society or whatever. They still had a very strong idea about this. And to be fair there was actually at least one Asian woman who thought the same thing, who thought the woman should follow men.

Now, for an American and I am sure for most Europeans, is quite a shock. I couldn’t believe they were saying that. But I should not have been surprised, I lived in Asia. However, I have lived in Asia I also know the women in Asia are changing. And that these men, may not like these changes; however, they can’t stop it.

So, even if you don’t like it, I think you have no choice. You have to adjust. If you want to have a marriage because you know, to be really direct, if you have this old idea and you marry a woman today, in modern life, if you act like this, she’s probably going to divorce you. You can try to be the big strong boss but you’ll probably find that after a few years or sooner, she is just going to divorce you.

So, if you really do want a happy family and a happy life, I think you’ve gotta change. And that, I think that’s as true in Japan and Korea and Taiwan and China and Thailand as it is in Europe and America and Latin America. I think it’s true all over the world really.

And now from women’s point of view, of course I think this is a very, very positive trend that women should be equal. They’re equally intelligent, equally smart, equally strong, maybe not physically, in terms of lifting weights but that’s not important in modern society anymore. So, anyway.

Okay, that’s all. I will see you next time. I hope you enjoy this lessen. Please go to the forms, write your opinions about the role, the proper role for husbands and wives in relationships. Do you agree with my opinions here? Do you agree with Dr. Gottman’s opinions and his research?

I don’t mind, you can disagree with me. That’s fine. If you disagree with me, go to the forms and tell me that, you know AJ you’re totally wrong. That’s fine.

If you agree with me that’s also great, write that.

Okay, I’ll see you next time, Bye-bye