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Who Are the Exceptional Seven Percent?
There is no more lovely, friendly, and charming relationship, communion or company than a good marriage.
—MARTIN LUTHER
I CALL IT THE I-dare-you-to-make-me-love-my-mate stare.
That was the look Jack and Alicia had on their faces as they sat across from me in my marriage counseling office. It’s a look I’m accustomed to, and frankly, I have come to enjoy the challenge it presents for me, because I know a secret. I know that in the span of a few weeks, that defiantly pessimistic expression can be transformed into something beautiful: a look of love rediscovered, joy returned, and purpose restored. In fact, only four short weeks later, Jack and Alicia appeared to be more in love than they had ever been. They told me they could hardly believe the change.
What could possibly cause such a dramatic transformation? Nothing less than learning the secrets of what I call the Exceptional Seven Percent, those couples in first-and-forever marriages who exhibit much greater than average passion, happiness, longevity, and fulfillment in their relationships.
Mark and Jennifer have been married for nearly twenty years. Through good times and bad they have been able to maintain a partnership that is truly enviable. Mark says of his wife, “There isn’t anybody who understands me as well as she does. I have friends at work and in the community, but there isn’t anybody I’d rather be with than Jennifer—and she makes it pretty obvious that she feels the same about me. Sometimes my male friends kid me about how much time I spend with my wife. They think I don’t go out with them after work because I’m afraid that I’ll get in trouble or something. How ridiculous! They just don’t get it, and I’m really not sure how to explain it to them. The reason I rush home at the end of the day is because Jennifer is my best friend—I mean, we share absolutely everything—and I genuinely miss her.
“Of course we have interests outside of our marriage and family life. Lots of things compete for our attention: the work we do, the causes we support, our community involvements.... But everything else has to be secondary to our marriage because as far as we’re concerned, the success of everything else depends on our ability to succeed as a couple.”
What Planet Are These People From?
While it is uplifting to hear the stories of those who are happily married, the knowledge that exceptional couples like Mark and Jennifer exist leaves us with several important questions. For example, if less-than-exceptional marriages are made up of men from Mars and women from Venus, what planet do these couples come from? What do Exceptional couples know that others don’t, and, more important, can what they know be taught? To begin to answer these questions, let’s take a brief look at some of the research on exceptional couples.
In 1968, Dr. Don Jackson and William Lederer of the Palo Alto Mental Research Institute wrote a book called The Mirages of Marriage. In it, they identified a group of couples they called “collaborative geniuses” whose common backgrounds and “gracious stability” enabled them to be happier than average with each other over the years. The authors of the study suggested that only about 10 percent of all married couples fell into this, or similar, categories. However, Jackson and Lederer’s description of such happy couples was purely theoretical and took up only two pages in their 450-page tome, thus demonstrating psychotherapy’s traditional lack of interest in healthy people.
It was not until the mid-1990s that it was possible to say more about “exceptional” marriages based on observations of actual couples. At this time, sociologist Dr. Pepper Schwartz wrote a book called Peer Marriage that identified certain exceptional couples who exhibited traits like egalitarianism, a solidified value system, uncommon intimacy, deep friendship, and a unique commitment to their relationship. Around the same time, psychologist Dr. John Gottman wrote a book called Why Marriages Succeed or Fail, which described his fascinating longitudinal study of both healthy and unhealthy marriage behaviors. Remarkably, Dr. Gottman’s study was able to predict, with 95 percent accuracy, which couples would be together and which couples would be divorced within five years. Even more importantly, data from his study strongly suggested that exceptional couples are made, not born.
Finally, psychologist Dr. Judith Wallerstein completed a critical examination of healthy marriages in her book, The Good Marriage (1995). In it she described a marital type called “Romantic Marriages,” which I found to exhibit many traits strikingly similar to Dr. Schwartz’s “peer couples.” Dr. Wallerstein went on to state that 15 percent of the marriages she studied fell into this highly desirable category and about half of these—the group I call the Exceptional 7 Percent—were in first marriages.
Some cynics suggest that exceptional couples are “just born that way,” but this is simply not the case. Dr. Gottman’s study demonstrated that the difference between couples who were happy together and those who weren’t boiled down to certain teachable skills, attitudes, and communication patterns. Further, Gottman’s study is supported by Wallerstein’s finding that half of all exceptional couples are in second marriages. In other words, if all exceptional couples were simply “born that way,” half of them wouldn’t have had to get divorced to figure out how to do it!
In my attempt to identify and explain what makes exceptional couples tick, I not only examined the relevant research on the subject, but I also thought about the couples I know personally and professionally who exhibit many of the traits these studies identified as being necessary for achieving exceptional status. I considered these couples with an eye toward identifying the rules they live by, the ways they think about their individual and married lives, and what habits, behaviors, or choices they demonstrated on a consistent basis that made them different from other good but somewhat less satisfying relationships.
Consider the following pages to be an orientation to the nine secrets of exceptional couples. As you read through each summary, complete the quizzes throughout the text. They will help direct you to the areas of your own marriage you should begin working on first. For best results, it will be necessary for both you and your mate to complete the quizzes. However, if for some reason your mate is unable to take the quizzes, you may attempt to answer for him or her. This is obviously a less desirable approach, but it is acceptable as long as you remember to be both fair in your answers and cautious in your interpretations of the final results.
The First Secret: A Marital Imperative
Every couple’s marriage revolves around a theme, that thing to which a couple gives most of their time and emotional energy. For example, more conventional couples build their lives and marriages around either securing their basic needs, maintaining companionship and security, or finding each other’s place in the world, investing heavily in careers or social roles. Exceptional couples, on the other hand, while concerned with all of these to some degree, spend most of their energy working together to pursue the development of positive character traits, moral virtue, and spiritual growth—a theme I call a marital imperative. In other words, exceptional couples consider their marriage to be their best hope for becoming the people they want to be at the end of their lives. This is the single most important way exceptional couples distinguish themselves. Their tendency to view marriage as a partnership in destiny accounts, in no small way, for the uncommon longevity and fulfillment these couples exhibit.
Take the following quiz to help you determine the clarity of your own marital imperative.
MARITAL IMPERATIVE QUIZ
Circle the level of agreement you have with each of the statements below. The points you receive for each item are printed below the answer you choose. Be honest. No one is going to see your results except you. Complete scoring and interpretive information will be presented later in the chapter.
a. I know the purpose of my life.
b. My daily life and choices obviously and consistently reflect my attempt to fulfill the purpose of my life.
c. My mate and I share clearly defined and compelling values, priorities, and ideals.
d. Every day, my spouse and I consciously work to help each other live up to our clearly defined values, priorities, and ideals.
e. I believe that my mate and I are uniquely qualified to help each other fulfill the purposes of our lives.
You scored __ out of a possible 25 points for this section.
Your mate scored __ out of a possible 25 points for this section.
As a couple, you scored __ out of a possible 50 points for Marital Imperative.
The Second Secret: Exceptional Fidelity
Most people think of fidelity in sexual terms, as in “I’m faithful because I’m not sleeping around,” but exceptional couples have a broader understanding of this word. To them, fidelity, the promise to “forsake all others,” includes all those friendships, family-of-origin commitments, career opportunities, and community involvements that do not serve to increase either the physical and mental health of each spouse or the intimacy of the marriage. This Exceptional Fidelity is absolutely essential if the marriage is to become a partnership in destiny (see the First Secret). That is not to say that Exceptional Fidelity requires a husband and wife to never leave the house. Rather, Exceptional Fidelity raises the couple to a new level. It empowers them to guard the initmate core of their marriage. It encourages them to prefer the meaningful companionship of a few close friends over a menagerie of casual acquaintances, and it dispels the illusion that social and occupational success must come at the price of marital poverty. Spouses in exceptional marriages don’t give up anything that is truly important. They just don’t waste time pursuing anything that isn’t.
EXCEPTIONAL FIDELITY QUIZ
Circle the level of agreement you have with each of the statements below.
a. My work is regularly in competition with my marriage and family life.
b. My social commitments or other friendships place many demands on me, sometimes making it difficult for me to find time for my marriage.
c. Though I may feel guilty about it, I would often rather be at work or out with my friends than with my spouse.
d. I feel caught in the middle between my parents and my spouse.
e. When it comes to dividing up my time and energy, my marriage usually gets the leftovers.
You scored __ out of a possible 25 points for this section.
Your mate scored __ out of a possible 25 points for this section.
As a couple, you scored __ out of a possible 50 points for Exceptional Fidelity.
The Third Secret: Exceptional Loving
To varying degrees, more conventional couples view love primarily as a feeling, and they perform affectionate gestures when they feel loving. Exceptional couples, on the other hand, view love as a calling. They do loving things for their mate every day, whether or not they feel like it and whether or not their mate “deserves” it. Why? For two reasons. In the first place, it would be beneath their own personal dignity to act any other way, and secondly, Exceptional couples know that it is their personal commitment to being actively loving—whether they feel like it or not—that helps them so often feel in love. Loving behavior fuels loving emotions. Exceptional couples know this and practice it.
EXCEPTIONAL LOVING QUIZ
Circle the level of agreement you have with each of the statements below.
a. I believe it is possible for love to simply die.
b. I think it is dishonest to do loving things for my mate if I don’t feel lovingly toward him/her.
c. I could easily answer the question, “What did you do today to show your mate how much you love him/her?”
d. Love is either there or it isn’t. Good relationships shouldn’t ever feel like work.
e. My mate regularly compliments me on how thoughtful and affectionate I am.
You scored __ out of a possible 25 points for this section.
Your mate scored __ out of a possible 25 points for this section.
As a couple, you scored __ out of a possible 50 points for Exceptional Loving.
The Fourth Secret: Exceptional Service
Exceptional couples value daily, mutual service more than “fairness” or sharply defined roles and responsibilities. To put it another way, Exceptional couples do not argue over turf issues. Also, because neither the husband nor the wife views the marriage license as a permission slip granting either of them the right to sit around waiting to be taken care of, each actively looks for opportunities to serve and nurture their mate, creating a dance of competence that enables chores and other domestic responsibilities to be passed back and forth gracefully, and accomplished efficiently. For example:
Q: In an Exceptional marriage, who dusts the table?
A: Whoever bumps into it first.
For the Exceptional couple this attitude is a common thread throughout every aspect of work, family, and domestic life. While more conventional couples view service as a means to an end (When I do nice things, I get affection/appreciation in return; when I don’t get appreciation/affection, I stop doing nice things), Exceptional couples view service as an end in itself (When I do nice things I am exercising and fulfilling the values with which I most closely identify; service is its own reward). I am not suggesting that Exceptional couples don’t appreciate being appreciated—in fact, they give and receive more expressions of gratitude than most couples (see The Seventh Secret)—it is simply that applause is not their primary motivator, and they recognize that emotional scorekeeping or maneuvering to see who takes better care of whom are fruitless exercises.
EXCEPTIONAL SERVICE QUIZ
Circle the level of agreement you have with each of the statements below.
a. All day long, I look for opportunities to make my mate’s life easier or more pleasant.
b. Every day, it is obvious to me that my mate looks for opportunities to make my life easier or more pleasant.
c. Frequently and cheerfully, I do household jobs that are not specifically “mine” to do.
d. Frequently and cheerfully, my mate does household jobs that are not specifically his/hers to do.
e. My mate would agree with me if I made the following statement: “I am good at remembering and anticipating my spouse’s needs.”
You scored __ out of a possible 25 points for this section.
Your mate scored __ out of a possible 25 points for this section.
As a couple, you scored __ out of a possible 50 points for Exceptional Service.
The Fifth Secret: Exceptional Rapport
Research clearly shows that Exceptional couples are equal partners in their capacity for emotional and verbal expression. Because of their willingness to be challenged and grow, men and women in Exceptional marriages have learned to overcome both their basic gender and personality differences, allowing them to achieve an enviable level of understanding and rapport in their relationships.
EXCEPTIONAL RAPPORT QUIZ
Circle the level of agreement you have with each of the statements below.
a. Sometimes it seems like my mate and I are speaking two different languages.
b. I often feel like something is missing in my marriage, but I don’t know what.
c. I often feel that my mate does not understand me.
d. Sometimes I think my mate does not understand what it takes to have a good relationship.
e. My mate and I are both good at expressing our love for each other.
You scored __ out of a possible 25 points for this section.
Your mate scored __ out of a possible 25 points for this section.
As a couple, you scored __ out of a possible 50 points for Exceptional Rapport.
The Sixth Secret: Exceptional Negotiation
Arguments between less satisfied husbands and wives tend to look like competitions to see whose need will be met this time. For such couples, fairness is determined by having an equal score in the game of giving-in. But in Exceptional relationships, all needs are respected and met—even when a partner’s need is not completely understood. That your need will be met is never called into question; the only topic of debate is, “What is the most efficient, respectful means by which your need can be met ?”
Simply put, Exceptional couples live by the following rule: Never negotiate the “what.” Always negotiate the “how” and “when.”
EXCEPTIONAL NEGOTIATION QUIZ
Circle the level of agreement you have with each of the statements below.
a. When my mate and I have a disagreement, it feels like we are competing to see whose need or agenda is “more important”—or who has more power.
b. Even when my mate and I strongly disagree, I feel like (s)he makes an effort to respect and understand my needs and opinions.
c. Sometimes I suspect that my mate gives up his/her own needs rather than tell me what (s)he thinks and risks continuing an argument.
d. I would rather surrender my own need than risk continuing an argument.
e. I frequently feel demeaned/demoralized after a disagreement with my mate.
You scored __ out of a possible 25 points for this section.
Your mate scored __ out of a possible 25 points for this section.
As a couple, you scored __ out of a possible 50 points for Exceptional Negotiation.
The Seventh Secret: Exceptional Gratitude
In exceptional marriages, every service—no matter how common or simple—is viewed as an active expression of love to be noted and appreciated. Because the level of mutual service is so high (see the Fourth Secret), there are no real expectations about the chores one’s mate has to do to “keep up their end.” Yes, dinner must be cooked, bills must be paid, kids must be picked up, and homes must be cleaned, but, “You didn’t have to do it.” This view is absolutely essential if true gratitude is to flourish. Anything less, and gratitude gives way to expectation (“Why should I thank you, it’s your job to do that!”) or self-righteous scorekeeping (“I did all this for you and you couldn’t even...”).
Exceptional couples tend to say thank you for “silly” or “common” things for which more conventional couples would never think of voicing appreciation.
EXCEPTIONAL GRATITUDE QUIZ
Circle the level of agreement you have with each of the statements below.
a. I know that my mate appreciates me and all I do.
b. Every day, I look for opportunities to compliment or thank my mate.
c. I am good at noticing and complimenting changes my mate makes in his/her appearance.
d. I am good at noticing and complimenting the things my mate does to maintain our home or to improve it.
e. I couldn’t imagine a partner better suited to me than my mate.
You scored __ out of a possible 25 points for this section.
Your mate scored __ out of a possible 25 points for this section.
As a couple, you scored __ out of a possible 50 points for Exceptional Gratitude.
The Eighth Secret: Exceptional Joy
Part of the Exceptional couple’s strength is their ability to play and be joyful together. They look for new interests to share and work to share in the interests they already have. They are comfortable being silly together. They know which areas of their partner’s life are acceptable teasing material and which are off-limits. They make time to be together, work at being present to each other, and actively seek ways to ease each other’s burdens. Compare this to more conventional couples who used to play together, “but who has time now?” Or other husbands and wives who are forced to develop separate interests and friendships because their spouse frequently greets invitations to certain activities with, “You know I don’t enjoy doing that!”
EXCEPTIONAL JOY QUIZ
Circle the level of agreement you have with each of the statements below.
a. I enjoy spending time with my mate more than with anyone else.
b. If it came down to a choice, I would rather be doing something I didn’t enjoy with my mate, than something I did enjoy without my mate.
c. I am comfortable with the way, and the degree to which, my mate and I tease each other.
d. My mate and I share a lot of laughs and good times.
e. My mate knows just what to do to uplift me when I am going through a difficult time.
You scored __ out of a possible 25 points for this section.
Your mate scored __ out of a possible 25 points for this section.
As a couple, you scored __ out of a possible 50 points for Exceptional Joy.
The Ninth Secret: Exceptional Sexuality
Exceptional couples have developed a truly spiritual, life-giving sexuality. More conventional couples view sex as something they do, another activity—albeit a pleasant one—that they just don’t have the time and energy for very often. But Exceptional couples view sex as something they are. Every quality discussed in this book, from mutual service to fidelity, from love to joy and everything in between is represented and practiced in the lovemaking of the exceptional couple. For them, lovemaking is not an activity or a performance; it is a total self-gift, a symbol and expression of all that is good about themselves and their relationship. Where the conventional couple can feel pressured by the responsibility of maintaining their sex life, Exceptional couples draw strength from their sex life (which is a reflection of their marriage as a whole) to allow them to deal with the stress of things less fascinating than their marriage.
EXCEPTIONAL SEXUALITY QUIZ
Circle the level of agreement you have with each of the statements below.
a. Lovemaking regularly gets put off due to stress or exhaustion.
b. I feel like my mate makes love to my mind and spirit, not just my body.
c. I think of lovemaking as both a renewal of our wedding vows and a celebration of all that is good in our marriage.
d. I consider children to be a great blessing and I think my mate is (would be) an exceptional parent.
e. I am comfortable with any and all of the following: making love with the lights on, telling my mate what pleases me and what doesn’t, trying new positions, laughing during sex, and both verbally and physically expressing my pleasure during lovemaking.
You scored __ out of a possible 25 points for this section.
Your mate scored __ out of a possible 25 points for this section.
As a couple, you scored __ out of a possible 50 points for Exceptional Sexuality.
Developing Your Action Plan
In this section, you will identify both the strengths and opportunities for growth your marriage presents. By the end of this exercise, you will have a good idea of what you need to do to help your marriage better resemble those of the Exceptional 7 Percent. Because each marriage is different, every couple will score differently overall, and every couple will be better at certain skills than others. Try not to look at the quizzes as simply picking out your weak points. Rather, concentrate on the things you are good at, and build from there.
Sometimes people get a little paranoid about what the results of self-help quizzes actually mean. Please note that the self-tests included in this book are not scientifically validated instruments. Scoring low on a particular quiz—or even a number of quizzes—does not necessarily mean that your marriage is bad, and scoring high on them doesn’t necessarily mean your marriage is exceptional. What your score does point to is how much loving attention your marriage needs in order for it to become all that you want it to be. That said, let’s look at how you scored overall.
Go back through the last several pages and, in the spaces provided, write the scores you each received individually and as a couple for each trait discussed.
As a couple, you and your mate scored __ out of a possible 450 points.
Keeping in mind that this is not a scientifically validated instrument, it has been my experience that Exceptional couples tend to score in the 420+ range. Please remember, these couples—being part of the Exceptional 7 Percent—would be expected to score higher than 93 percent of all other couples in first marriages (and 85 percent of all couples). If you did not score in this range it does not mean your marriage is bad. For example, scoring in the 360 + range is still very respectable—a bit like getting a solid B or B + . Couples scoring in this comparatively lower range still have some of the best marriages on the block. And if you scored lower than this, it still doesn’t mean your marriage is bad. It simply suggests that you may have been taking either your mate or your marriage more for granted than you ought to and, if this is the case, you’ve come to the right place.
The reason I feel the need to tell you over and over how good your marriage probably is, is that this book has an entirely different focus than most self-help books. Other self-help books are interested in telling the reader how to take a rotten relationship and make it passable. While The Exceptional Seven Percent could be used in this manner, most of the information contained in these pages would be lost on a truly miserable couple. The main focus of The Exceptional Seven Percent is to show couples how to take an average to good relationship and turn it into something profound, blissful, and energizing. Please keep this in mind as you work through the remainder of the book.
Now, let’s take a look at your particular strengths and weaknesses.
Review your individual scores to each quiz. In the space provided below, write the three areas you and your mate scored highest in, individually.
You scored highest in...
Your mate scored highest in...
These areas represent your and your mate’s unique strengths, respectively. Over the next few days, discuss how you will share your particular strengths with each other. For example, how could you help your mate develop more of a particular quality? How could your mate do the same for you? What are the struggles you expect to encounter as you attempt to increase your proficiency in a particular area? What struggles will your mate face? Take time with these questions and discuss them thoroughly.
As a rule of thumb, if you scored higher than your partner on a specific trait, it will be your responsibility to help your mate grow in that area, and vice versa. I do not mean to suggest that a lower-scoring spouse has to do everything the “expert” in a particular area says to do. But I would invite the spouse who scores lower to give serious consideration to any gently and charitably offered suggestions his or her higher scoring mate might make on improving a particular trait.
Now let’s look at the areas that you will want to improve upon as a couple.
Review the couple’s scores you received on each quiz. In the space provided below, write the three areas that as a couple you and your mate scored the lowest in.
As a couple, we need to improve in these three areas.
These represent the areas on which you and your mate will want to focus most of your attention as you begin your journey toward Exceptional couplehood. Of course you should feel free to discuss these areas now, but I will defer any particular discussion questions and tips until later. Just be sure to pay particular attention to these chapters as you read through the book and you will receive many helpful suggestions for increasing the frequency of these positive traits in your marriage.
The Circle of Intimacy
As you consider the nine secrets, it will most likely be obvious to you how each of the Exceptional couple’s qualities, attitudes, and behaviors play off of each other in an ever-widening circle of intimacy, devotion, and actualization (that is, being a living, breathing example of your values, ideals, and goals). Couples who practice these secrets in their marriages are able to tap into the true transformative power of love. They become each other’s best hope of arriving at the end of their lives as the people they always wanted to grow up to be.
For some of you, the ideal that is the Exceptional marriage might seem somehow unrealistic. Our disposable culture has taught us to believe that transformative love is the stuff of fairy tales, but nothing could be further from the truth. From the very beginning, we humans were built to love, to be loved, and to be transformed by love. As infants, we fail to thrive if we are not loved, touched, cuddled, and nurtured—rejecting even food if our greater hunger for affection remains unsatisfied. It could very easily be claimed, on biological and physiological grounds, that we are hard-wired for intimacy from the very first day of life. It is true that somewhere along the way many adults lose the innate instruction manual that would teach them how to satisfy this most deep-seated of needs, but there is good news. With proper training and a willing heart, we can learn to love and be loved as we were created to. No matter where your relationship stands today, you must take comfort and encouragement from the fact that you and your mate were born with the ability to celebrate Exceptional love in your lives and—by association—in your marriage. By practicing the secrets of the Exceptional 7 Percent, you will discover that the path to Exceptional love lies within you, because Exceptional love is your innate call; it is the essential ground of your physical, emotional, and spiritual being. It is what you were built to do.
So, turn the page, and let’s get to it.
