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Relationship Matters – Podcast Number 28 16.24

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Interviewer: From Champlain College in Burlington, Vermont, this is
Relationship Matters. Hello, and welcome to Relationship Matters,
the podcast of the Journal of Social and Personal Relationships. I’m
your host, Dr Bjorn Holmes. Welcome to podcast number 28 and the
third of five podcasts in our fall 2013 series. Matt, my dear brother
in studio crime, what’s the most compassionate thing that your dear
wife has done recently for you?

Matt: Wow. Do you know what, she just actually said to me today we
were talking about vacation and she said to me, do you know what,
you tell me where and when you want to go and I’ll be there because
I’m just going to be happy to be with you.

Interviewer: Folks, the voice of Matt Grasso with me here in the studio in
Vermont. Do you know Matt, every once in a while we get someone
on the podcast who is just a brilliant and caring person in so many
ways and dude I’m telling you we’re in for a real treat today.

Matt: Right on.

Interviewer: We’ve got one of my most absolute science heroes with us. Just to
get an example, Matt, in 2012 Dr Harry Reis won the distinguished
career award from the International Association for Relationship
Research. He’s a past president of a society for personality and
social psychology and the list goes on. But Matt, what I like most
about this guy that we’re about to interview is his true compassionate
nature, just an incredibly humble and caring being, in the same way
that I think of the late Carol Rusboldt who we all dearly miss and
who was a close friend of Dr Reis. Harry has always been there
throughout my career as a person interested in one’s welfare as a
younger scholar and I’ve really appreciated that support and interest.
So with us on the phone today from the University of Rochester
where he is a professor of psychology, I’m pleased to have Dr Harry
Reis, welcome to the podcast Harry.

Dr Reis: Glad to be with you Bjorn.

Interviewer: So the title of the paper is The Expression of Compassionate Love in

Everyday Compassionate Acts and is co-authored by Michael
Maniaci and Ronald Rogge, also of the University of Rochester. The
paper is available online at this time and will appear in print in the
future, it’s free to download from the web page of the Journal of
Social and Personal Relationships courtesy of Sage Publications. So
Harry given the introduction I just gave, what got you in to studying
compassionate love?

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Dr Reis: Well we were interested in knowing more about how people express
their compassion for their partners to each other. There’s been a lot
of research lately on peoples’ feelings of compassion for each other
and those kinds of feelings are all well and good but what we were
interested in is how do people actually show it to other people.

Interviewer: What do you mean by show it?

Dr Reis: Well, what do you do in everyday life to show to your partner that
you are truly caring of their needs that you’re trying to do something
special for them, that you’re trying to take their priorities in to
account? Often we can feel that way and yet in the humdrum
business of everyday life we don’t manage to show it, we’re too busy
in a sense to show it to other people. So we were interested in seeing
what allows a person to actually express that feeling to a partner.

Interviewer: You have examples?

Dr Reis: We saw it at first using examples such as cooking special meals and
things of that sort, but we realised that that list would be hopelessly
long. So what we ended up doing instead was going for somewhat
more abstract representation of these kinds of things, so we put it in
terms of things like taking my partner’s needs in to account, going
out of your way to do something special for your partner, trying to be
caring and compassionate, things of that sort.

Interviewer: So before we get in to the actual methodology, how do you define

compassionate love?

Dr Reis: We defined compassionate love in terms of taking the other person’s

needs and priorities in to account, but doing so in a way that allows
the other person to recognise that that’s happened. So one of the
things that’s special about our approach is that we very much took a
dyadic approach, in other words it doesn’t really work if you thought
about doing it but your partner wasn’t actually recognising that you
did it.

Interviewer: Is this you, Matt?

Matt: Yes, so credit is important.

Dr Reis: The word credit is a little bit loaded and I would rather say
recognition is important.

Matt: Got you, okay.

Interviewer: Alright, so what did you guys actually end up doing?

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Dr Reis: So what we ended up doing was we recruited a sample of 175

couples throughout North America and we had them keep what’s
called a daily diary for us every day for two weeks.

Interviewer: And how does that work?

Dr Reis: Basically what they do at the end of each day is log on to a dedicated
site on the internet and spend about 10 minutes describing what they
did that day, how they felt about their day, what they saw their
partner doing that day and things of that sort and then at the end of
the two weeks we do our statistical magic.

Interviewer: I like how you phrase that. So what kind of demographics are these
couples? Are these all different types of ages?

Dr Reis: Well the couples, well they’re all newlyweds. We wanted to focus
on newlyweds because we know that the first year of marriage is
kind of a risky period. This is the period of time when couples go
from being wildly excited about the prospect of all that’s going to
come and then settling down with someone and realising that living
with someone and adapting your patterns to a new person and new
routines can be challenging. We know that there’s a lot of research
showing that some couples experience a great deal of stress during
that period and so we realised that compassion could be one way of
mitigating some of the problems that can come up.

Interviewer: So what did you guys find?

Dr Reis: And we indeed found that the more often one did compassionate acts
and the more often one perceived one’s partner as doing
compassionate acts that couples were actually doing better at the end
of that first year of marriage.

Interviewer: Do you think that compassionate love changes at all over time in a
relationship? I mean I realise you guys studied the beginning, but
what do you think?

Dr Reis: That’s a very interesting question and I think that there may well be
subtle shifts in the way it’s expressed over time. As people get to
know each other they often become so exquisitely aware of their
partner’s likes and dislikes, preferences and things that they would
rather not do, that they can begin to take them to account almost in a
rather matter of fact way.

Interviewer: In our last podcast the author basically was telling us that her
research was showing that people over time in a relationship become
very confident about understanding or thinking they understand what
their partner prefers, but that actually people are pretty bad at
predicting what it is. So they become more confident over time.

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Dr Reis: We didn’t actually address that issue in this research. But in other
research we’ve actually shown something rather interesting, which is
that often as couples mature over time they actually feel like they
know the person better and they actually start to know the person less
and we think that that may be because couples don’t communicate
their preferences quite as well in the later stages of a relationship.
Early on couples are good at communicating their wishes and
preferences because your partner doesn’t know and you want your
partner to, you know, you want to see if this person’s a good fit, you
want this person to take your needs and desires in to account so
partners are explicit about these kinds of issues. But over time
couples just sort of let these communications become more implicit
and, as a result, sometimes they can actually be less accurate over
time.

Interviewer: So they start presuming that they understand their partner. I mean
the way I look at this, Harry, it’s really interesting, I realise this is a
side discussion, but it’s almost as if you start feeling that you know
somebody over time very well and you start presuming that you
understand your partner. But I think what people forget is that
people are dynamic over time and relationships are dynamic over
time and there are all kinds of moving things and unless you continue
to communicate, you continue to renegotiate and continue to be
aware of changes then you sort of maybe shouldn’t presume
anything.

Dr Reis: Well, you know, in fact we can take that argument one step forward
and make the argument that sometimes these changes can be
threatening to the well-being of a relationship and so being aware of
the changes that a partner is going through may actually be
something that people are motivated to not pay attention to.

Interviewer: Right, but don’t they catch up with you.

Dr Reis: Well eventually they do certainly, well they certainly can catch up
with you and that may be one of the reasons why couples will report
themselves growing apart over time.

Interviewer: So compassionate love, if you have any piece of advice for our
listeners out there on how to utilise compassionate love in their
relationships what is it?

Dr Reis: Well the advice that I would give to couples is to do things that try to
show a partner that you’re thinking about them and that you’re trying
to understand what makes them happy, what their needs are and that
you’re trying to take those things in to account. Often those are little
things, it doesn’t have to be big things like buying someone a Lexus
for the holidays, often it can be something quite little like bringing
your partner a small gift that doesn’t cost very much, but that’s
completely unexpected and is something the partner would really like

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or making a special meal for them or doing something to show that

you’re really thinking about them and placing them in a special place
in your heart.

Interviewer: Harry, can you teach or learn compassionate love or is it something

that’s more dispositional? In other words, is it related to just having
a greater sense of collective identity or a greater sense of compassion
for humanity?

Dr Reis: Well I’m certain that there is a piece of it that is dispositional, that it
simply comes more naturally to some people than others. But I think
one of the key points about compassion is that we’re all capable of
doing it and often in close relationships we forget about it. We make
this assumption that because we’re married, because we’re
committed, because our lives are intertwined we don’t have to try
any more. You may remember there was a famous booking the
1970s that had the catchphrase about ‘love means never having to
say you’re sorry’. I think what our research suggests is that that’s
exactly wrong, that love should just as well mean that you have to
say you’re sorry when you’re genuinely sorry and that we often make
our romantic relationships the last item of business in our days. We
work, we pay the bills, we take care of the kids, we do our exercise
and then somewhere around 10.30 at night when both partners are
completely exhausted we attend to our relationships. Well that’s no
way to make something as important as a close relationship work.
So instead of taking our partners for granted we need to periodically
remind ourselves and remind them about how important these
relationships are in our lives. One couple that I know that’s been a
very successful couple for a long term even with young children
always had a date night on Saturday night, that is no matter what else
was going on in their lives, they abandoned the children on Saturday
night to a babysitter and they would go out and simply do something
together as a way of sort of reminding themselves what got them
there in the first place.

Interviewer: Yes, I mean I’m often harping to my students that finding a partner
that you feel compatible with is the absolute beginning but it’s what
you do after that that really matters.

Dr Reis: Right.

Interviewer: I’m interested in something you said a second ago about people
feeling very committed more over time and hence growing out of
showing compassion for one another and I’m wondering perhaps a
better approach, and it’s not like people think about this consciously,
but perhaps a better approach is to commit to feeling compassion
over time, to commit to expressing compassion and to continue to go
back to compassionate love.

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Dr Reis: I think that would be a great idea. If one is forgetful, what you could
do is put something in to your scheduler that once a month gave you
a little reminder to do something compassionate for your partner on
that day. That sounds like a great idea.

Interviewer: So I’m curious, is there something today if a couple is out there

listening and they were like, “Yeah, we used to have that”, is there
something concrete that they can start with?

Dr Reis: Well there are a number of things they could do. One thing that
would be very simple would be to approach your spouse and say,
“Hey honey, I’ve got some time tomorrow, what could I do that
would make your life a little easier?” and see what they say.

Interviewer: Yes.

Dr Reis: And then, of course, do it.

Interviewer: Cool, well could talk about this all day but we’re out of time. This
has been fascinating and I really, really want to think you for
contributing.

Dr Reis: My pleasure.

Interviewer: Bye bye.

Dr Reis: Bye.

Interviewer: Relationship Matters is a production of the Journal of Social and

Personal Relationships and Sage Publications. You can subscribe
through iTunes by searching for Sage Podcasts or access the series
from the web page of the Journal. Send us e-mail at
jsprpodcast@gmail.com, follow us on Facebook by searching for
Relationship Matters or follow us on Twitter jsprpodcast. The music
you’ve been hearing is by Urban Delights, more at urbandelights.net.
Thank you for listening and remember we’re talking relationship
matters because relationships matter.
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