The Hook by Warren Bull

(This is a previously published blog by Warren Bull on craft.)

Not Captain Hook or the follow up to a stiff right-hand jab. Every writer in every work needs to have one. When I taught graduate clinical psychology students and psychiatric residents, I used to ask them: What is the main purpose of the first visit with a client? They’d mention important things like determining a preliminary diagnosis, establishing at least a tentative relationship, or more important than those, getting the damned paperwork signed.  I would agree that all those were critical and valuable elements of the first visit. But, I would ask, what is the one, essential goal that superseded all the rest? 

Nobody ever gave the right answer.  I guess my former students let the newbies find out for themselves.  The one goal that had to be accomplished for therapy to ultimately be successful was — to get the client to come back for a second visit.

However great your writing is, if the reader does not turn to page two, she will never know.

 I just watched the opening fifteen minutes of the classic movie Once Upon A Time In The West.  Sergio Leone co-wrote the script from a short story he also co-wrote. For good measure, he directed the movie too.  In the first scenes, the audience hears sounds like the wind blowing a door closed, a squeaky windmill that needed grease, and steps on a wooden porch. I counted 19 spoken words, all from a minor character. The visuals are striking, unkempt, unshaven men, in dusty clothing, and a vast bleak landscape at a railroad station. And the tension builds throughout. I found it absolutely riveting.  Without music, with very little movement by the actors, the sense of foreboding saturates the screen. I truly suggest that you watch it so see how it evokes the expectation of coming violence.

Writers are told, “never write about the weather” to open a book. But Raymond Chandler’s novella Red Wind does exactly that.  There was a desert wind blowing that night. It was one of those hot dry Santa Anas that come down through the mountain passes and curl your hair and make your nerves jump and your skin itch. On nights like that every booze party ends in a fight. Meek little wives feel the edge of the carving knife and study their husbands' necks. Anything can happen. You can even get a full glass of beer at a cocktail lounge.

Carolyn Hart’s Death On Demand opens with a point-of-view she drops and never uses again in the entire book. That’s a really bad idea.  Unless you’re Carolyn Hart. 

Of course, it helps to thoroughly master the rules before you break them. Whatever rules you hear about, they are only suggestions. Hook ‘em and reel ‘em in. 

New Tricks for Aging Dogs by Warren Bull

 

I believe them

Musical Technology Progress: A Blog by Warren Bull

 Image by Karim Manjra on Unsplash

Musical technology Progress: A Blog by Warren Bull

Howard Goodall wrote Big Bangs: Five Musical Revolutions.

https://www.amazon.com/Big-Bangs-Five-Musical-Revolutions-ebook/dp/B005G37S4W/ref=sr_1_2?crid=2FF095QHAOM5I&keywords=Howard+Goodall&qid=1678425066&s=books&sprefix=howard+goodall%2Cstripbooks%2C612&sr=1-2  The book followed a series of five television programs that won the British Academy of Television Huw Weldon Award for The Best Arts Programme or Series and a Peabody Award.

The videos provide a wonderfully clever review of five turning points that took place over a thousand years. He discussed five discoveries that forever changed Western music. The visuals are striking and the stories he shares are funny. 

You don’t need a musical education to understand and appreciate the programs.  The basic issue was how to share music with people not in the immediate area when it is produced.

The answers were immensely creative. 

In this blog I will limit myself to the current day. Just like digital printing, modern technology is vastly better than earlier methods.  Also, like digital printing, the success of our methods of recording and sharing music creates issues that were unimaginable before the methods were invented.  

For example, “click tracks.”  In a studio recording, or sometimes in a live performance, musicians hear a steady beat not audible to the listening audience that keeps everyone in sync and maintains the tempo. In the studio, a song is made up of multiple sections of performances of a single song essentially cut and pasted together to make one flowing steady presentation. 

The Beatles did not use click tracks. Various takes of their songs could be spliced together smoothly because the drummer, Ringo Starr, was incredibly consistent in setting and maintaining a tempo. Their first drummer, Pete Best was not. Ringo was in a better-known group before he joined the Beatles. He took a risk by becoming one of the Fab Four.

So, the recording you hear of Mozart’s Eine Kleine Nachtmusik is a combination of the best pieces of many performances of the work assembled by skilled recording engineers.  It is likely that some of the music produced by some of the softer instruments, like the cello, was enhanced by the engineers.  In a concert what you hear will be less technically correct, and less balanced among the different instruments. 

Will it be closer to what Mozart imagined or intended?  There is no way to know.  

Some artists are no longer making CDs. On sites like Spotify, Apple Music, YouTube Music, MixCloud, and Soundcloud, songs are presented one at a time. You can create a mixtape of your personal favorites, without “B side” songs, which is great. But it limits artists in presenting unified conceptual albums 

https://www.subjectivesounds.com/musicblog/frank-sinatra-in-the-wee-small-hours-album-review#:~:text=Widely%20regarded%20as%20a%20masterpiece,on%20Come%20Fly%20With%20Me. 

Frank Sinatra’s 16 tracks on In The Wee Small hours of the Morning combine and reinforce the mood in ways individual songs alone cannot. The reviewer above noted that the sound is not as warm as it was on the original record. 

Also, some “B side” offerings became more popular than the “A” side tunes.  

Totally subjectively, I enjoy live performances where the audience and performer connect.

In 1988 Garth Brooks had an audition with Capital Records and left the studio without an offer from the executives, Jim Fogelsong and Lynn Shults. A few weeks later he filled in at a concert where the scheduled artist did not show. Sitting in the audience was Lynn Shults who had come to listen to the no-show. After the event, Shults asked Brooks to come back to the office. Capital signed Brooks who became the biggest artist in country music.

Digital Books Versus Paper Books: A Blog by Warren Bull

 Image from Wikimedia Commons 

Digital Books Versus Paper Books: A Blog by Warren Bull

I like the heft, the appearance, and the experience of physical books. However, in this blog, I address less nostalgic and more practical issues that occur along with the real benefits of digitalization.

https://thewalrus.ca/how-digital-archives-delete-the-human-experience/

The idea of seamless, simple, and cost-free access to information has been the dream of librarians, researchers, and curious minds since people began preserving human knowledge in central places. And now, in many ways, that collective goal of civilization has pretty much arrived. Thanks to more than half a century of computer technology, the seeming limitlessness of the internet, and the constant increase in data-storage capabilities with remote access (cloud computing), it seems we can not only preserve an infinite number of things but also preserve them for infinity. This ability goes beyond precious and historically important works to the everyday personal bits and bytes of our lives: notes, emails, and family photographs live on a series of anonymous server racks, in an air-conditioned warehouse, in whatever mystery location Dropbox and Google have chosen to domicile them. 

But, in fact, digital storage is fallible. Every computer and hard drive can be remotely hacked, infected with destructive viruses, erased by electrical surges, or just fail for reasons that cannot be remedied.

While this digital preservation seems assured, and ridiculously cheap, it comes at an unseen cost in effort, in energy, and in dollars. It also comes at a cost in privacy. The relationship we have to the information that institutions such as libraries care for on our behalf is one we take for granted, but it is more tenuous than we realize. And as we push to preserve, we stand to lose the intimate connection that lies at the heart of research.

Digital preservation is a moving goalpost. The language of binary code may remain static, but the formats we use to store that code are constantly changing, and the pace of change accelerates faster each year. 

Digital archives require vigilant maintenance and migration to new formats and standards. Other libraries have faced similar problems. Last April, an article in IEEE Spectrum, a magazine published by the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, detailed how the loss rates of film archives are increasing quickly, and the technology needed to save the film can’t keep up. It has been estimated that the format chosen to store films, linear tape-open (think big digital videotape reels), needs to be replaced by a new tech generation every seven years, on average. Similarly, research suggests that non-digital videotapes aren’t expected to survive the next twenty years, leading to a crisis of preservation for anything stored in that format. Data on floppy disks, magnetic reels of tape, old hard drives, and flash drives are vastly more fragile than a book bound six centuries ago.

And while there are ongoing costs with a library, of course, for staffing, utilities, and the materials used to preserve collections, digital storage is a service that requires daily feeding of dollars to stay alive. Those dollars are neither infinite nor without their prejudice. Unless a library owns and operates its own servers and stores all its digital information in computers it owns (a costly effort that requires massive capital upkeep), the library’s information is at the whim of for-profit corporations. These companies’ interest in preservation goes as far as their bottom line.

The price of digital processors and computer memory continues to decline, on average, but that of digital storage for archiving purposes may not. In a 2012 paper, Stanford digital preservationist David Rosenthal, along with a panel of experts, raised the alarm that long-term digital cloud storage will likely become less economical over time. “Paper as the medium for the world’s memory has one great advantage,” Rosenthal wrote. “[I]t survives benign neglect well. Bits, on the other hand, need continual care, and thus a continual flow of money.”

Then there is the dirty truth of digitization, which is that, in many cases, it can actually aid in the destruction of physical information. To be scanned well, pages need to be flat and free of creases. Fifty years of damage can be caused by opening up a text the wrong way.

Not everything wants to be preserved, or digitized, or shared with the widest possible audience. Sometimes, it is for reasons of fragility and value, but other times, it is that information is best restricted to its analog format.

That may seem archaic and slow, and it is surely less efficient, from a time perspective than a Google search. But it also is a process of discovery that leads the researcher to unexpected and revealing places. It requires more effort but may lead to more learning. It slows down the process of information absorption and encourages a connection between the text, document, and reader. That can lead to greater insights or even a subtle sense of one letter’s context among many. 

Information is many things. It is dates and facts and images and words and numbers. But all of those were created to capture something about the human experience, and the reason we seek out and work to preserve information is to deepen our understanding of that experience and where we fit into it, as if we were a single sentence inside a vast library.

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/301769869_Cost_of_Print_and_Digital_Books_A_Comparative_Study

Print versions of academic titles are cheaper than their digital counterparts. Commercial publishers are more capable of catering to the information needs of students and researchers than the University presses by publishing more books. Just 57.5% of the required academic titles are available in digital format; hence, libraries cannot switch over to e-only collection development as all of what is needed is not available in digital format.

https://hechingerreport.org/textbook-dilemma-digital-paper/

While we await those future digital products, students deciding what school books to buy this fall would do well to ask themselves just what they hope to get from the text. As Alexander notes, “If I’m only trying to learn something that’s going to be covered on a test and the test is shallow in nature, then [digital] is just fine.” If, on the other hand, you hope to dive in deeply and gather imperishable pearls, spring for the book.

If you are reading something lengthy – more than 500 words or more than a page of the book or screen – your comprehension will likely take a hit if you’re using a digital device. The finding was supported by numerous studies and held true for students in college, high school, and grade school.

It held true although students thought they learned more from a digital device, perhaps because they could they could finish reading the material more quickly.

Not mentioned in the articles above is another issue.  Errors are made in the process of digitalization. When questions arise, it is usually possible to check the original paper source, unless the original has been discarded.  Space is always limited. Many libraries are culling their holdings.

I have been under Hutchinson, Kansas in a former salt mine that holds the original negatives of movies from the 1920s to the present in 15,000 square feet of a stable environment. Motion picture studios recognize the limits of digitalization. Despite the undoubted advantages. We should too.

Animal and Human Cooperation: A Blog by Warren Bull

 Animal and Human Cooperation: A Blog by Warren Bull

Animals and humans have a long history of cooperation for mutual benefit. For at least one hundred and fifty years, joint activities have been noted and recorded. Unfortunately, as human society changes people have become less interested in practices that were formerly a routine of daily life.

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/dolphins-and-humans-work-together-to-catch-fish-in-brazil-180981553/#:~:text=With%20nets%20in%20hand%2C%20the,for%20more%20than%20a%20century.  

Both dolphins and people fish together in Brazil.

Using drones, sonar, and underwater sound recording, the research team recorded the interspecies fishing team in action. They found that when the fishers cast their nets in sync with the dolphins’ cues, the cetaceans increased their echolocation click rates to create a “terminal buzz”—a sign of them homing in on prey. When the fishers were not in sync with the dolphins, this response was less common. 

The dolphins took advantage of disoriented fish after the fishers cast, even snatching some directly from the nets.

Fishers were also more successful when they worked with the dolphins. When dolphins were present, the fishers were 17 times more likely to catch fish and netted nearly four times more mullets when they timed their casting with the cetaceans’ signals. Eighty-six percent of all 4,955 mullets caught during the study period came from “synchronous interactions”—when both predators coordinated their actions perfectly with one another. 

“Dolphins benefit fishers by herding mullet schools towards them, creating temporary high-quality patches just before giving a cue, and signaling when prey are within reach of fishers’ nets,” write the authors. “During interviews with the most experienced fishers, 98 percent reported that dolphins gain foraging benefits from synchronous interactions.” 

The study also revealed that dolphins hunting with humans had a 13 percent increase in survival rate over other dolphins. These cooperative dolphins are more likely to stay near the shore, reducing their chance of entanglement in illegal fishing gear.

“This study clearly shows that both dolphins and humans are paying attention to each other’s behavior and that dolphins provide a cue to when the nets should be cast,” Stephanie King, a biologist who studies dolphin communication at the University of Bristol in England and was not involved in the research, tells Christina Larson of the Associated Press. “This is really incredible cooperative behavior.”

https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fcosc.2021.727479/full 

Honey-hunting between humans and honeyguides in Coastal Kenya

The Awer people, are described by observers as marginal hunter-gatherers, who depend on wild honey, to trade with other people.

The remarkable mutualism between humans and greater honeyguides (Indicator indicator) is known still to thrive in only a few places in Africa. Here, we report on the honey-hunting culture of the marginalized Awer people in Kenya, historically a hunter-gatherer culture who today practice a mixed economy including significant amounts of foraging for wild foods. As part of a larger effort to document cross-cultural honey-hunting traditions in Africa, we interviewed six Awer honey-hunters to document their cultural practices. The interviewees reported that they depend on wild honey as a source of income and that they readily seek the cooperation of honeyguides. Honey-hunting skills and the calls/whistles used to communicate with honeyguides are learned from their fathers and other elders in the village. The best time to honey-hunt is in the months following the big rains (August–December) when interviewees go out honey-hunting once a week on average. Honeyguides are not actively rewarded with wax, as it is believed that once a bird is fed it will not cooperate again for some time, and therefore after the honey harvest is complete, all remaining wax comb is buried. Honey-hunting practices are declining in this region, which interviewees attributed to drought and a lack of interest by the youth. These findings expand our understanding of how human-honeyguide mutualism persists across a range of human cultural variations.

All interviewees reported they learned to honey-hunt with honeyguides using the signaling calls and whistles from their fathers and other elders in the village. They reported that the skills are known by all men but only a few use them.

According to folklore, one day the bees called for a ceremony for all feathered creatures. They did not invite the honeyguides. The meal served was honey. When the honeyguides realized they were the only birds not invited and the other birds kept talking about the sweet, tasty, treat. they were annoyed and disappointed. When the birds finally got to taste honey, they resolved to partner with humans to have the first taste of honey and to punish the bees.

I am reminded of European colonizers who “discovered” new lands where people were already living. I’m glad these examples are now officially documented, but in fact, the interactions have been going on for a very long time.

You Just Can’t Keep Any of Several Bad Ideas Down: A blog by Warren Bull

 You Just Can’t Keep Any of Several Bad Ideas Down: A blog by Warren Bull

Image by Daniela Dimitrous on pixabay

For more information read:

https://www.azquotes.com/author/9393-Horace_Mann/tag/reading#:~:text=Book%20by%20Horace%20Mann%2C%201859,is%20hammering%20on%20cold%20iron.&text=Resolve%20to%20edge%20in%20a,the%20end%20of%20the%20year. 

In the New York Times on December 25, 2022, Sarah Mervosh wrote about a new intervention in Memphis, TN high schools — teaching phonics.

Nationwide, two in three eighth graders are not reading with proficiency, according to the National Assessment of Educational Progress, a rigorous exam overseen by the U.S. Education Department. Nearly one in three falls “below basic,” meaning they have not demonstrated even partial mastery of the comprehension and analysis skills expected for their age.

In Memphis, Tennesee, high schools teach, phonics in every class, and students are discovering that “big words come from small words.” Some vowels are silent and adjacent consonants make one sound, e.g. rabbit. There are prefixes, root words, and suffixes. Not only that but when you have the vocabulary first, Ta Dah!, concepts come more easily.

Why the emphasis on phonics in high school? Because students did not learn the skills they need in earlier grades. 

The district recently received the state’s highest rating for academic growth for the first time in seven years.

Still, just 21 percent of students districtwide are meeting state standards in English.

https://www.memoriapress.com/articles/history-phonics/

Where did this ground-breaking fantastic idea originate? In the first century AD the Roman teacher Quintilian suggested that when a language has an alphabet that reflects the sound of the spoken language, children should be taught the sounds of the symbols when being taught to read.  The very first school text in the American colonies, the New English Primer, published in 1690, used the same strategy to teach reading and spelling. It was the most successful textbook of the century and became the foundation of most schooling until the 1790s.

That approach remained essentially unquestioned until the middle of the 1800s.

1800 educational reformer Horace Man argued against linking letters to sounds and for “whole word” teaching.

https://www.azquotes.com/author/9393-Horace_Mann/tag/reading#:~:text=Book%20by%20Horace%20Mann%2C%201859,is%20hammering%20on%20cold%20iron.&text=Resolve%20to%20edge%20in%20a,the%20end%20of%20the%20year.   

His advice was: 

Resolve to edge in a little reading every day, if it is but a single sentence. If you gain fifteen minutes a day, it will make itself felt at the end of the year. 

Wonderful advice? Would you allow a surgeon to operate on you who has practiced as much as fifteen minutes a day? 

Whole-word teaching was rediscovered and promoted in the 1930s as the latest and greatest in the 1930s.

Ken Goodwin in 1967  suggested graphic cues, syntax cues, and semantic cues. In other words, anything except the sounds of the letters. 

https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2018/09/25/straw-man-new-round-reading-wars/ 

Balanced  Originally, Balanced Literacy was intended to “balance” several aspects of instruction that scientific research highlighted as important, but in tension: reading and writing (instead of focusing heavily on reading at the expense of writing); teacher-directed and student-centered activities (instead of being totally student-led inquiry, or complete teacher-directed explicit instruction); whole group, small group and independent configurations (instead of all one or another), and skill-focused (e.g. phonics) and meaning-focused (e.g. comprehension) instruction.

Each of these things is important: reading, writing, teacher direction, student inquiry, etc. None of these things should cancel out any of the others. But holding them in balance within a 90-minute period is challenging. Teaching a range of skills (for decoding and spelling) and strategies (for meaning-making), in a range of formats (whole group, small group, and one-to-one), using a range of practices (read-aloud, shared reading, interactive reading, word work, guided reading, independent reading, interactive writing, shared writing, independent writing) is not only time-consuming but also requires tremendous skill in planning, execution, assessment, and reflection from a knowledgeable, responsive teacher every single day.

In short, by assigning more than can possibly be done, the theory assures that all aspects are given short shrift. 

Perhaps 40% of students manage to sail by without trouble. 

My field, psychology has been rightfully criticized for rewarding the “new” at the expense of fleshing out our understanding of what we already know. My wife, an audiologist recently commented to me that new articles in her field neglect to mention the findings of research completed years earlier.  

Sarah Mervosh’s article is only the latest report about the miseducation of reading by disciples of the latest newest “flavor” of teaching reading, which is really only rehashing what already failed so many students. As long as “shiny new” models of teaching reading get presented by people who enthusiastically toot their own horns and wallow in ignorance, the failures to teach will doubtlessly continue.  

Note: If you find my remarks harsh, please present real-world replicated data to dispute them. Why should a few thousand years of consistent information matter anyway?

Evolution of a Song: A blog by Warren Bull

 Image by Mohamed Hassar on Pixabay

It has been my experience as a writer, that my work bubbles and percolates on its own. I am frequently not consciously involved in the process. One of my novels, Heartland. came about when the same characters involved in a series of short stories finally informed me that if I put the stories in order, I would have a novel.  There was a gap or two to fill and a few inconsistencies to resolve, but they were correct.

I had the storyline about a hapless, lovelorn cowboy for quite a while before I had the skills to put it into a simple tune. Believe me, it is a simple tune.  I sang Jackson’s Daughter for two skilled music teachers both of whom are committed feminists. One thought it was hilarious. One thought it was offensively misogynistic. 

A cowboy song about a pretty girl he hasn’t even met. I tried to think of cowboy songs where the protagonist expresses respect and admiration for more than the physical appearance of a woman.  I discovered enough songs to make a pile of albums in which a cowboy on a phone call expressed love and acknowledged the importance of his wife and children. However, in those songs, the lyrics that followed the introductions are variations on a theme that can be described as, “Gotta go. They just called for my rodeo event to start.  Wish me luck on making the next round of competition. I’ll be home real soon … in about six months unless I qualify to compete in the National Finals Rodeo. Then I’ll be gone longer.” 

I decided those songs did not qualify as non-misogynistic. 

I expanded my search for songs of any genre where men do not patronize or totally idealize women. It turned out to be a short list. I will keep looking in hopes of eventually finding enough to put in a blog.

Of course. there are some touching and romantic songs by cowboy, country, and popular singers about their wives. Garth Brooks, and co-writer Kent Blazy, wrote a sweet tribute to Brooks’ wife Sandy. If Tomorrow Never Comes. That was before Sandy divorced him because he was almost never home.  John Denver wrote the delightful Annie’s Song to his wife. Then Annie divorced him because he was on the road most of the time. 

The Captain & Tennille had their first hit with Love Will Keep Us Together. They were married for 39 years until “Captain” Daryl Dragon’s poor health and health insurance issues led to Toni 

Tennille getting a divorce. They remained good friends until Dragon’s death. So maybe that song qualifies.

In my original song, the cowboy, the girl, and her father are characters.  Working to avoid sexism, I gave each of the three a set of lyrics. Pretty soon it became evident that Jackson’s daughter could hold her own and more.

So, now I have a very short (five-minute) musical ends with the hapless, lovelorn cowboy still 

looking for love.

Tree Talk: A Blog by Warren Bull

 Image by Valiphotos on Pixabay

For more information see https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/the-whispering-trees-180968084/ 

In the Musical Paint Your Wagon a lonely character sings, “I talk to the trees.”  (But don’t listen to Clint Eastwood sing it in the movie version. I did and it took a lot of time and effort to get his off-key, out-of-time, version out of my head before I could learn to sing the song as it was intended to be sung.)

Do trees talk to each other? Depending on who you ask, you get the answer, yes, no, and it depends on what you mean.

German forester Peter Wohleben who is the author of, The Hidden Life of Trees: What they feel, How they Communicate writes about trees as communal within species and sometimes cooperative with trees of other species. He shares research showing that through underground fungal network messages are passed, including distress signals about drought, disease, and insect attacks. The fungi consume about 30% of the sugar trees photosynthesize from sunlight.  Beech saplings in deeply shaded parts of the forest that do not have access to sunlight are kept alive by surrounding beeches pumping sugar into the network. 

Beech trees send out include electrical voltage along the system. In sub-Saharan Africa when a giraffe starts to eat acacia leaves, the tree emits ethylene gas.  Giraffes eat leaves that Neighboring acacias push tannins into their leaves, which can sicken or kill herbivores. Interestingly, Giraffes choose trees located so that the wind does not blow the gas in the direction of other trees.  They also ignore trees close to their first food source and move far enough away before consuming more leaves that the emitted gas message has not reached their second “course.” Some plants in Western Australia seem to emit and detect sounds at a frequency humans cannot hear. Other trees detect saliva and release pheromones that make the leaves taste bad or attract parasites of the insect attacking the trees.

In British Columbia, Suzanne Simard and her students study “hub trees” or “mother trees.” These are among the oldest trees with the deepest roots that can draw up water and distribute it to more shallow-rooted seedlings. Allen Larocque working on an island off the coast of British Columbia has shown that nitrogen from salmon carcasses is shared among trees.  

Critics point out that no overall intention or consciousness is required for these interactions. Natural selection can explain everything. They say the writing suggests that putting findings in the language of storytelling is entertaining but it implies a level of consciousness that is not impossible but is far from proven. 

I have seen small groups of deer gather and wait on one side of a road until a traffic light turns red and stops traffic. Then the deer cross safely. Is that conscious behavior? I don’t know. I suggest that, like the giraffes described above, there is likely to be some level of learning that might be passed from one generation to another. 

It is fun to wonder how much is communicated. Do you think trees share stories?  

The Love Equation: A Blog by Warren Bull

Image from Karen Warfal on Pixabay

The Love Equation: A blog by Warren Bull

Scientists have been trying to find out empirically what makes relationships work for many years.

For more information see: 

https://www.cnbc.com/2022/11/12/gottman-love-lab-this-math-equation-will-make-or-break-your-marriage.html

Researchers in the article referenced above have observed 3,000 couples, following some as long as 30 years. 

They suggest that couples that stay together happily have a ratio of at least 5 positive interactions for every 1 negative interaction during times of conflict.  When there are no conflicts, happiness is found when the ratio is 20:1. The experimenters noted that the power of single negative interactions like blaming exceeds the power of single positive interactions. That is a consistent finding.

Very happy couples are kinder and gentler than less happy couples.  Very happy couples refrain from criticism, contempt, and sarcasm. People in happy relationships admire their partners and express their admiration.

For additional information see:

https://www.cnbc.com/2022/11/11/the-no-relationship-hack-according-to-psychologists-who-have-been-married-for-35-years.html 

Other researchers who have put their finding to use in their own marriage report the following behaviors have helped them.

They suggest turning toward a partner and attempting reach out using:

• • Eye contact
• • A smile
• • A sigh
• • A direct request for your help or attention
• • Saying “good morning” or “good night”
• • Asking for a favor
• • Reading something aloud to you: “Hey, listen to this...”
• • Pointing something out: “Look at that!”
• • Calling your partner’s name from another room
• • Noticing when your partner seems sad or down
• • Noticing when your partner is physically carrying something heavy by themselves
• • Seeing when your partner seems frustrated

These authors encourage persistence in explaining, and trying to get to the root of any issues.

They say there are times, like you, your partner will be distracted, and/or tired.  They suggest not reacting when, like you, you will not get a response. If your partner does not respond over time, ask about it.

I remember years ago reading research that observed one sign of a happy marriage is that partners kiss before going off to work. I remember, Sleeping Beauty aside, and Cher’s Shoop Shoop Shoop Song (It’s in his kiss) song thinking that there was nothing magical about the kiss. The “magic” was in keeping a relationship in which both partners want to kiss each other before leaving for work every morning.