More than a century ago, the Russian novelist Leo Tolstoy wrote, Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.

    The words have become immortalized, and the unhappy story of Anna Karenina is considered one of the greatest novels ever written. Recently, however, psychologists and sociologists are starting to question the observation.

    I think Tolstoy was totally wrong, said John Gottman, a professor of psychology at the University of Washington in Seattle. Unhappy families are really similar to one another - there's much more variability among happy families.

    Gottman and others are trying to understand why as many as one in two marriages end in divorce, and why so many couples seem to fall out of love and break apart.

    Some of the most revealing answers, it turns out, come from the couples who stay together.

    While conventional wisdom holds that conflicts in a relationship slowly erode the bonds that hold partners together, couples who are happy in the long term turn out to have plenty of conflicts, too. Fights and disagreements are apparently intrinsic to all relationships--couples who stay together over the long haul are those who don't let the fighting contaminate the other parts of the relationship, experts say.

    Why do people get married in the first place? asked Thomas Bradbury, a professor of psychology at the University of California at Los Angeles. To have someone to listen to--to have a friend, to share life's ups and downs. We want to try to draw attention to what's valuable in their relationship.

    Researchers are finding that it is those other parts of relationships--the positive factors--that are potent predictors of whether couples feel committed to relationships, and whether they weather storms and stick together. As long as those factors are intact, conflicts don't drive people apart.

    What we've discovered is surprising and contrary to what most people think, said Gottman, the author of The Mathematics of Marriage. Most books say it's important for couples to fight fair - but 69 percent of all marital conflicts never get resolved because they are about personality differences between couples. What's critical is not whether they resolve conflicts but whether they can cope with them.

    Every couple has irreconcilable differences, agreed Diane Sollee, the founder of www.smartmarriages.com , a Web site devoted to teaching couples the skills to improve their relationships. She explained that such differences ought to be managed, instead of being grounds for separations, split-ups and divorce.

    Almost 90 percent of Americans marry at some point in their lives. An overwhelming number of those who get divorced marry a second time, meaning that although they may have lost faith in a partner, they have not lost faith in the promise of the institution. At the same time, changing social mores and expectations have placed stresses on long-term relationships. Two-income couples juggle demanding jobs, and professional advancement can sometimes detract from family and intimate relationships.

    Simultaneously, the rising number of women in the work force has given women the economic security to leave unhappy relationships, the sexual revolution has made sex before and outside marriage common, and the destigmatization of divorce has contributed to the phenomenon of serial monogamy.

    Despite these pressures and temptations, most Americans still seek lifelong soul mates--and expectations from love and marriages have never been higher.

    The juxtaposition of high expectations with the stress and cycles of relationships appears to be an important reason why many relationships don't work, said Ted Huston, a professor of human ecology and psychology at the University of Texas at Austin, who tracked 168 couples over 13 and a half years

    Huston found that changes in the first two years of marriage often predicted the outcome of relationships. Almost half of divorces occur within the first seven years of marriage, according to national census data, and many of these early exiters report a decline in bliss right after marriage.

    When you look at them as newly-weds, they look like they are mutually enchanted and deeply in love and a prototype of your perfectly wed couple--they hug, kiss, say 'I love you' all the time, he said. Two years later - they've lost a lot of that romance. They think, 'We once had this great romance, and now we don't.'

    People have this fairly unrealistic idea: 'I have got to have bliss and it's got to stay or this is not going to work,' he said. at some level, you don't need the bliss. The Hollywood romance may not be the prelude to a long-term happy marriage.

    Couples who were happy over the long term reported being content at the start of relationships and still content two years later. Some of these couples told Huston, 'I wasn't sure I was in love because I didn't have the tingly feelings you are supposed to have,' he said. They worried their feelings were positive but not intense.

    一個多世紀以前，俄國小說家列夫·托爾斯泰寫道，幸福的家庭都是相似的，不幸的家庭各有各的不幸。

    這句話已成為不朽的名言，《安娜·卡列尼娜》的不幸遭遇則被認為是有史以來寫得最好的一部小說之一。可是最近，心理學家和社會學家卻開始質疑這一評價。

    我認為托爾斯泰完全錯了，位于西雅圖市華盛頓大學的心理學教授John Gottman說道。不幸的家庭其實是彼此相似的，而幸福的家庭才各不相同。

    Gottman等人試圖弄懂為何多達一半的婚姻都以離婚而告終以及為何如此多的夫妻不再相愛，彼此分開。

    研究表明一些最能說明問題的答案恰恰來自那些長相廝守的夫妻。

    一般人都認為婚姻關系中的矛盾會慢慢侵蝕夫妻間的紐帶，但是調查卻表明其實那些長相廝守的快樂夫妻也存在著這樣和那樣的矛盾。顯然，爭斗和鬧意見存在于所有的婚姻關系中——專家認為那些長相廝守的夫妻只是沒有讓這些爭斗波及影響到婚姻關系的其它方面。

    人們結婚最主要是為了什么？位于洛杉磯加州大學的心理學教授Thomas Bradbury問道。是為了找一個說話的人？是找一個朋友，來共同走過充滿歡樂與痛苦的坎坷的人生道路。我們試圖要人們注意他們關系中有價值的一些方面。

    研究者們發現正是婚姻關系中的這些其它方面——積極的因素——能有效地用來預測配偶們是否會忠誠于他們的婚姻，是否能共渡難關，攜手走過人生道路。只要這些積極的因素完好無損，矛盾就不會導致夫妻離婚。

    我們的發現與大多數人的想法相反，令人驚訝，《婚姻數學》一書的作者Gottman說道。大多數書都說重要的是夫妻間的矛盾要公平解決，然而69% 的婚姻矛盾因為夫妻性格的差異造成，永遠都無法解決。所以關鍵不是看他們能否解決這些矛盾，而是看他們能否處理好它們。

    每一對夫妻之間都存在著不可調和的差異， Diane Sollee同意這一觀點說道。她是www.smartmarriages.com網站的創立者，該網站致力于教授夫妻們學會改善他們關系的技巧。她解釋說對這些差異應該 管理，而不是用來作為分居、斷絕關系乃至離婚的理由。

    幾乎有90%的美國人在他們人生的某個階段都會結婚。在那些離了婚的人中，絕大多數又會再次結婚，這意味著盡管他們可能對某個配偶失去了信心，但他們對婚姻習俗的美好希望卻沒有喪失信心。與此同時，變化的社會習俗和人們對婚姻的期望值也在使人們開始重視長期的婚姻關系。雙收入的夫妻面對高要求的工作，努力做到兩邊兼顧，而精力過多的用于事業的發展有時會影響人們對于家庭和夫妻親密關系的關注。

    同時，越來越多的婦女加入到就業大軍中，這使她們在結束不幸婚姻之后有了可靠的經濟保障，性的革命使得婚前和婚外性行為變得普遍，而隨著離婚漸為人們所接受，是造成連續的離婚再結婚現象的部分原因。

    但是，盡管存在著這些壓力和誘惑，大多數美國人仍然追求終生的心靈伴侶，并且人們對愛情和婚姻的期望值則達到歷史最高。

    高期望值和婚姻關系中壓力和周期循環的并存似乎是很多婚姻失敗的一個重要原因，位于奧斯汀德州大學的人類生態學和心理學教授Ted Huston說道。他對168對夫妻進行了為期13年半的跟蹤調查。

    Huston發現婚后最初兩年的變化常常能夠預言婚姻關系的最后結果。全國人口普查數據表明，近一半的離婚發生在婚后的最初7年中，而這些早退者中又有很多說在婚后不久對婚姻的幸福感就有所降低。

    觀察一下新婚燕爾的夫婦生活，他們顯得彼此迷戀，深陷情網，似乎是完美的結合-他們擁抱，親吻， '我愛你 '不離口，他說。但是兩年以后他們就已經失去了很多這種浪漫。他們在想，'我們曾經擁有浪漫，而現在卻沒有了。'

    人們有著這樣一種很不切實際的想法：'我必須得有幸福感，而且得一直有，否則我的婚姻就是不行的，' 他說。其實在某些層次，你并不需要這種幸福感。好萊塢似的浪漫并不一定是長期、幸福的婚姻的序幕。

    那些長相斯守的快樂夫妻在關系初建時就有一種滿足感，而兩年后也仍然彼此滿意。他們中的一些人告訴Huston，我并不能肯定我戀愛了，因為當時我并沒有那種戀愛中似乎應該擁有的觸電的感覺，' 他說。他們當初還擔心，盡管他們的感情是積極的，但似乎來得不夠強烈呢。