"Why women seek conflict"
Men who say that theirwives or girlfriends deliberately pick fights may be on to something.
A newstudy shows that in romantic relationships, men feel best when they can tell that their significant others are happy; women, on the other hand, are most content when their partners are upset or agitated, because the intensity of their emotions shows they’re invested in the relationship.
Researchers videotaped 156 married and unmarried couples discussing recent episodes that had upset them; then they had the couples watch the tape and answer questions about how they felt at different points.
They discovered that “women tend to want to engage around conflict,” Massachusetts General Hospital psychologist Shiri Cohen tells NPR.org.
That’s because women feel most connected when they can tell that their partners are distressed—or when the men understand that the women are suffering.
Men, on the other hand, find conflict threatening, and feel best about their relationships when their partners are in a good mood.
How can both styles hope to peacefully coexist?
“The more men and women try to be empathetic to their partner’s feelings,” Cohen says, “the happier they are.”
That means that women have to accept men when they’re blithely content, while men must be willing to deal with women’s occasional need to be unhappy.
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