A Very Old Story
The summer after I graduated from college, I worked as a door to door community organizer for a non-profit that focused on electronic waste. Our small team would go door to door for hours in the evenings talking to strangers about the dangers and adverse effects of electronic waste in our local communities. Believing in and committing to a joint cause, along with being rejected often, day after day, door after door, created an intense tight knit community amongst the organizers. Naturally, we would frequently find ourselves enjoying the company of one another late into the evening at a local bar, or friends apartment.
Often I would receive a text message late in the evening from my wife asking me when I would be home. Because of my own immaturity, I’m embarrassed to admit, I did not always respond well to her requests. However, I also have to say that among the other young male activists, there was an elaborate public shaming ritual that took place whenever I did leave “early” to go home to be with my wife that included frequent admonitions of being ‘whipped’ with accompanying pantomime gestures, and discussion about which of us wore the proverbial ‘pants’ in the relationship. The intended meaning was clear - real men do what they want, and only what they want alone…not what their partner tells them to.
It turns out…while ignoring what your partner tells you to do may make you popular among you immature friends, it is in fact not the best relationship advice.
But what is actually good relationship advice?
How Can I Improve My Relationship Series
This is the first week in a three part series sharing research backed relationship advice that every couple, partnership, or marriage could benefit from. As we’ll talk about later in this post, this advice isn’t just a collection of old wives tales about relationships, but has 40 years of extensive research backing it up.
It may or may not seem obvious upon first glance, but actually working to implement the gems here will undoubtedly improve your relationships.
If you’re interested in knowing sure fire things you can do to quickly improve your relationship - this series is for you!
Accepting Influence
This post takes a look at what world-renowned couples researcher John Gottman has found to be a key indicator of future marital and relationship success - “accepting influence”.
In this post we will:
Look at Bible stories that seem to be part of the long lineage of stories men tell each other about how nothing good comes when you listen to your partner
Introduce John Gottman and his research findings on the importance of “accepting influence” in your relationship.
End with a strange story where it appears that even Jesus realizes that it’s okay to change your mind and learn to open yourself to the influence of another.
Okay, here we go:
Men Accepting Female Influence in the Hebrew Bible - A Cautionary Tale
The idea that men should not let their wive’s have influence over them is, to use an Esther Perelism, “a very old story”.
So old in fact, that even in Hebrew bible stories there appears to be cautionary tales about what happens when men accept the influence of their female partners, to detrimental effect. Those young men in a dive bar late at night in Austin, Texas chastising their male co-worker for listening to his wife in the opening story of this post were certainly nothing if not unoriginal.
Adam and Eve
The first story of human relationship in the Bible begins, in fact, with a man (Adam) accepting the influence of a woman (Eve), which ends in disaster for them both as they are expelled from the Garden of Eden. As Susan Nidich points out in the Women’s Bible Commentary, Adam seems “utterly passive. The man eats as if he were a baby”(Nidich, 31).
Adam’s agency in the situation is downplayed even by Adam himself who’s self-defense concerning the event, “like his passive act of disobedience, portrays him in a childlike manner”(Nidich, 31). Adam defends himself by saying “the woman whom you gave to be with me, she gave me the fruit from the tree, and I ate it”(Genesis 3:12, italics mine).
I can hear echoes of this feigned bewilderment and exasperation in couples counseling sessions today as the husband cries out “I mean I tried to do what she told me to do, and look what happened!”
Either way, the outline of the story that is passed down from generation to generation is clear: man accepts women’s influence with disastrous results.
Ahab and Jezebel
Here’s a deep cut you may or may not be aware of from the Hebrew Bible. In 1 Kings 16:29, Ahab becomes King of Israel. In the next two verses readers are informed in order that 1) Ahab “did evil in the sight of the Lord”(1 Kings 16:30), 2) Ahab married Jezebel, the daughter of a Phoenician king, and then 3) Ahab begins to worship a different God, Baal instead of Yahweh.
While it is not explicitly stated in 1 Kings 16:31 that it was Jezebel that caused Ahab to turn away from Yahweh, the association is not to be ignored. Later, in 1 Kings 21:25, Jezebel’s corrupting influence over Ahab is made explicit:
There was none who sold himself to do what was evil in the sight of the Lord like Ahab, whom Jezebel his wife incited (1 Kings 21:25 ESV)
Here again, is a cautionary tale of what happens when a man accepts the influence of his female partner.
I’m also not unique in my view that this is a myth about the dangers of men accepting female influence. Josey Bridges Snyder writes in the Women’s Bible Commentary that in the Talmud (famous Jewish commentary on the Hebrew Bible), “we find the warning ‘he who follows his wife’s counsel will descend into Gehenna’ (b. Bava Metzi’a 59a)” (Snyder, 180).
While there is debate and interpretation about what Genenna is exactly, one thing that is certain, is that it is definitely not a place you want to be, and, at least according to this interpretation, it seems as if women are the ones who are going to lead you there if you’re not careful.
Gottman’s Research on Accepting Influence
But what does couples research show?
Will men “descend into Gehenna” if they accept their wives' influence?
Will they end up being forced out of Eden if they allow themselves to be shaped by their female partners?
John Gottman has been systematically studying couples since the 1970s. While there have always been theories, advice, and ideas about what did or did not make relationships last, Gottman was the first to be informed by intense scientific rigor and analysis. Gottman’s research teams have interviewed, documented, coded, and analyzed over 30,000 couples, and he can famously predict after an hour of talking to a couple with 95% accuracy if they will still be together in 15 years. It would be hard to overstate the influence that Gottman has had on the field of couples therapy.
And yet, the beauty of his discoveries lies often in their simplicity.
One of the data points Gottman tracked while analyzing conversations of couples was how often couples would “accept influence” of one another; how often would the ideas, suggestions, thoughts, longings, perceptions, dreams of one member of the couple be received by the other member of the couple?
Did how often couples “accept influence” from one another have any relationship to how happy the couple was, or whether they stayed together over time?
It turns out, rates of woman accepting the influence of their male partners did not change between happy couples and unhappy couples.
In other words, in an unhappy couple, the woman was just as likely to accept influence of the man as in a happy couple. Woman frequently accepted influence in both happy and unhappy couples, in a large part due to the way they have been socialized and due to the lived affects, demands, and expectations of patriarchy.
However - there was a big difference in the amount of influence that men accepted from their female partners between happy and unhappy couples.
Gottman found in a study that tracked 130 different couples over time, that 81% of marriages where the man is unwilling to accept influence from the woman end in divorce (Gottman, 2015).
Yes Honey
Gottman is definitely not advocating that men (or women) should simply shut up and do what their partners are telling them to do in order to keep the peace.
I remember the cliched marriage advice I received many times from older Christian men in my circle when I got married: “What are the two most important words in a marriage? Yes Honey”.
The implication of the statement was, *wink* we men all know women may be illogical, fickle, hysterical, etc., but we just do what they say to placate them and make our own lives a little easier.
This is not accepting influence. Gottman Trainer Sinead Smith writes that,
By accepting influence, you acknowledge that your partner has a valid point of view. You welcome it, are willing to be influenced, and maybe have your perspective changed by it. Accepting influence says, “You are important, and your opinions matter to me even if (and bonus points for this, especially if) I don’t agree with you.
Again, begrudgingly replying ‘yes, honey’ is definitely not what Gottman has in mind when he talks about accepting influence, and yet, there is reason to believe that this is the way most men likely perceive their role - not because of their female partners deficit (although both members of the couple of course have them), but in this case because of the male partner’s lack of emotional maturity and development.
Gottman found that only 35%, roughly a third, of male partners interviewed would qualify as emotionally intelligent.
Part of men in particular, but both partners in general, learning to accept influence then becomes about developing the ability to step out of their own perspective, and enter into and understand and have compassion for the other (often female) partner’s lived reality.
This is an emotional skill that can be developed and cultivated with help of a marriage therapist, and can be a relationship changing experience, as well as a life changing experience for the individual.
If men no longer see their relationships as duels to be won or lost,
and no longer feel that their partners are illogical and utterly indecipherable,
they can begin to gain the ability to both hold onto their own experience while also simultaneously possessing the ability to understand and empathize with others, then internal growth and more positive relationships will result.
Jesus And Accepting Influence
Accepting influence may be such an important part of our development and growth as humans that even Jesus seems to model it.
While this may be a challenge some readers' beliefs about Jesus, there is one very peculiar story recounted in Mark 7:24-31 and Matthew 15:21-28 where Jesus appears to ‘accept influence’ of a Gentile woman.
In Matthew, the woman approaches Jesus, calls him Lord, and tells Jesus that her daughter is tormented by a demon. Jesus, we are told, “did not answer her at all”(Matthew 15:23 NRSV) and seems to ignore and dismiss her presence altogether. The disciples also dismiss the woman saying “send her away, for she keeps shouting after us”(Matthew 15:23 NRSV).
Yet the woman persists, and again calls out to Jesus, “Lord, help me.”(Matthew 15:25 NRSV).
In a statement that troubles and unsettles many Christian readers, Jesus again dismisses the woman saying, “it is not fair to take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs”(Matthew 15:26). The implication of the statement is that Jesus’ healing is only for the “children” of Israel, and not for those outside of the house of Israel, or, the dogs, as Jesus calls them and the woman.
Pastors often try to soften the seeming callousness of Jesus’ statement that the woman is a ‘dog’, saying that Jesus said it with a smile and a wink and a loving nod…there’s certainly no indication of that in the text. Furthermore, Amy Jill Levine writes, “nor does the point that the term for ‘dogs’ (Gk. kynaria) really means “puppies” or “household dogs” soften the response (‘little bitch’ is no nicer than ‘bitch’)”(Women’s Bible Commentary, 474). Additionally, the term was used throughout the near east as a standard insult at the time.
Despite being ignored, told to go away, and even insulted by Jesus, she remains calm. She expresses her devotion to Jesus and, in a clever twist of Jesus’ own insult, uses the phrase dogs as a logical argument him: “Yes, Lord, yet even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their masters’ table.”(Matthew 15: 27 NRSV).
Jesus then commends the woman for her faith, seemingly changing his mind, and heals her daughter.
As Elizabeth Struthers Malbon writes, “Mark seems to go out of the way to present Jesus learning from a Gentile woman in a Gentile place about the inclusivity of God’s realm. Maybe others - both inside and outside the narrative - can learn as well”(Women's Bible Commentary, 484).
Could it be, perhaps, that if even the Son of God can learn to listen to others and be changed and influenced by them for the better, perhaps we all can do the same as well?
This is Part 1 in the series How Can I Improve My Relationship. If you’re interested in learning more researched backed relationship essentials and you’re not already subscribed, you might consider subscribing so you don’t miss out.
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About the Author
Travis Jeffords is a National Certified Counselor and Licensed Clinical Mental Health Counselor Associate in North Carolina. He holds a Master of Science degree in Clinical Mental Health Counseling from the University of North Carolina Greensboro, and a Master of Divinity from Christian Theological Seminary. Travis writes on the intersection of faith, spirituality, the church, and mental health.