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" You get out of the same bed each morning, finish each other&amp;#039;s sentences, love your kids madly -- but do you inhabit the same emotional universe? To find out how happy you 30-something Americans are in your marriages, Redbook commissioned a survey based on a national sample of more than 2,100 married men and women, most of whom are in their 30s, have children under the age of 18, and have been married 10 to 12 years.  What we learned: You and your mate are both pretty happy. But in many ways, you and he are on completely different wavelengths about what you want from your partnership. This isn&amp;#039;t a bad thing. It just means you and he take different approaches to reaching the same goal: a sexy, nurturing, mutually empowering marriage. In fact, understanding how your approaches differ can only bring you closer.  Most of the news is very good indeed. A large majority of you give your marriage a top grade of A or B. Most of you describe your spouse as your best friend. You also say that, knowing everything you know today, you&amp;#039;d marry this less-than-perfect person all over again. Another sign of mutual satisfaction? Asked &amp;quot;Who loves whom more?&amp;quot; nearly three out of four say, &amp;quot;We love each other equally.&amp;quot; Keep reading to find out more! Guess Who&amp;#039;s Happier? (Hint: It&amp;#039;s Not You) He is. (No news to you, right?) A higher percentage of men than women say they&amp;#039;re satisfied with their marriages. At first blush this finding seems to support research from the 1970s that showed married men to be happier and healthier than married women. But Maggie Gallagher and Linda Waite, authors of The Case for Marriage, point out that more recent studies find equal psychological benefits for both married partners.  So why the discrepancy in happiness in our report? Probably because the majority of women polled have children under 11 and are working outside the home. &amp;quot;Those are high-stress years, no question about it,&amp;quot; says Gallagher. &amp;quot;Nobody has a clear picture of how men and women should be dividing up home and work duties. And if you&amp;#039;re busy with kids, this is when you have the least time for companionship.&amp;quot;  Other experts believe the happiness gap is due to women&amp;#039;s higher emotional expectations of marriage. We bring our own ideals of friendship into marriage, thinking that we and our husbands will bare all and feel close through long conversations. When this doesn&amp;#039;t happen as much as we&amp;#039;d like, we&amp;#039;re in &amp;quot;a state of yearning,&amp;quot; says Sharyn Wolf, a marriage and sex therapist in New York City. &amp;quot;A woman&amp;#039;s need for closeness, for extended time alone with her partner, is just different from that of men, who usually don&amp;#039;t want to sit and talk after a day at work -- it&amp;#039;s not how they unwind. Perhaps a long evening with his wife would be helpful to him, but so would washing his car.&amp;quot;  &amp;quot;Men have lower standards, basically,&amp;quot; agrees Pepper Schwartz, Ph.D., author of Everything You Know About Love and Sex Is Wrong. &amp;quot;They go into marriage expecting companionship, nurturance, and a family life, and unless their sexual life is a mess, they&amp;#039;re fine.&amp;quot;  The paradox here is that when asked what could improve their marriages, men and women both say they want to spend more time alone together! The yearning for closeness exists in both sexes -- it&amp;#039;s just that we seem to have very different ideas of how to achieve it. What You Want More Than He Does--Time to Yourself A whopping 72 percent of women say time alone is &amp;quot;extremely&amp;quot; or &amp;quot;very&amp;quot; important to achieving a happy marriage -- versus 54 percent of men. Why the difference? Probably because women feel more responsible for everyone else&amp;#039;s needs, and that&amp;#039;s an emotional drain. While we love being the emotional nurturers in our families, we should also realize we can&amp;#039;t be &amp;quot;on call&amp;quot; all the time, says Michele Weiner-Davis, author of Getting Through to the Man You Love. Wives can learn from their husbands here. &amp;quot;Men are much better at going off on their own,&amp;quot; says Weiner-Davis. &amp;quot;They don&amp;#039;t ask permission, they just do it; whereas women, especially if they work and have children, feel guilty about taking time for themselves.&amp;quot;  Good Friends Outside of Marriage While many of us say our husband is our best friend, we also recognize that we have different standards than men for what a best friend is. &amp;quot;Women generally think that best friendship means sharing each other&amp;#039;s deepest longings, mistakes, fears, desires, history -- the more that&amp;#039;s revealed, the better the friendship,&amp;quot; says Schwartz. &amp;quot;Most men grow up with a more modest definition: Friends are guys they do stuff with.&amp;quot; A smart woman, adds Schwartz, understands that the man in her life is being as good a friend to her as he can but that she still needs more. She turns to her girlfriends for their humor, their perspective, and their ability to talk about ideas, people, and emotions. Sex -- More and Better &amp;quot;Good sex&amp;quot; is the only good-marriage ingredient husbands say they care about more than wives do. We do care -- we just don&amp;#039;t give sex the priority men do: 75 percent of men versus 62 percent of women say good sex in marriage is &amp;quot;extremely&amp;quot; or &amp;quot;very&amp;quot; important.  Yeah, we know what you&amp;#039;re thinking: Isn&amp;#039;t that just like a guy, to have nothing but sex on his mind? But hear out the experts on this: They say men have sex and then feel close, while women like to feel close and then have sex.  &amp;quot;A woman can&amp;#039;t fathom how a man would want to have sex with her if they haven&amp;#039;t bonded first through talking,&amp;quot; says Weiner-Davis. &amp;quot;The only thing she can imagine is that sex is just like scratching an itch to him. She misses the mark completely -- that for men having sex is feeling close. When a man doesn&amp;#039;t have sex with his wife, he feels hurt, he feels rejected, he just shuts down emotionally. And then, guess what: He doesn&amp;#039;t feel like spending time with her. My message is: &amp;#039;Hello, women! There&amp;#039;s a way around all that!&amp;#039;&amp;quot;  In other words, take a man&amp;#039;s love of sex as an expression of closeness -- and use it to get the emotional closeness you both want. And while you&amp;#039;re at it, consider that seven out of 10 men and women already give their own marriages an A or a B on &amp;quot;good sex.&amp;quot; Not bad for busy parents! What Needs Work: You Want Better Communication Nobody&amp;#039;s marriage is perfect, of course. So when we asked you to grade your marriages and say what would make them better, we uncovered other areas that need work: Nearly everyone in our survey believes communication is important -- yet 31 percent of women and 26 percent of men think their marriages barely pass muster in this department. Which comes as no surprise to the experts, who say that trouble talking things out is universal -- it exists even in the best marriages.  John Gottmann, Ph.D., a professor of psychology at the University of Washington in Seattle, has identified in his &amp;quot;love lab&amp;quot; the communication patterns that determine which couples will stay together -- and stay happy. Happily married couples, he says, largely succeed in avoiding these four negatives in their conversations: criticism, contempt, defensiveness, and stonewalling.  They also tend to practice these positive techniques in conversation with their mates:  Take turns talking. Don&amp;#039;t give unsolicited advice. Show genuine interest. Communicate understanding of the spouse&amp;#039;s problem. Take his/her side. Express a &amp;quot;we against others&amp;quot; attitude. Show affection. Validate the spouse&amp;#039;s emotions.  If your mate doesn&amp;#039;t exactly make a habit of practicing these conversational techniques, you can influence him for the better by trying them on him.  What Needs Work: You Want to Resolve Those Nagging Conflicts More than a third of men and women believe their marriages would improve if they could fight less and agree more. Most of us don&amp;#039;t realize, though, that not every conflict can be resolved. Gottmann&amp;#039;s research indicates that even in happy marriages, most fights are about &amp;quot;perpetual problems.&amp;quot;  &amp;quot;I toot the horn about this,&amp;quot; says Weiner-Davis, &amp;quot;because so many people have misconceptions that can lead them to divorce. They think if they were better suited to each other or more skilled, they would not have these issues. But there are some issues that will not be resolved. The peace comes from knowing this is so.&amp;quot; You may feel, for example, that your husband&amp;#039;s work keeps him away from home too much -- but you know the two of you can stay happily married even if you never quite see eye to eye on this issue. Men give their marriages much higher marks on &amp;quot;fair division of household responsibilities&amp;quot; than women do. (You&amp;#039;re right -- he thinks he&amp;#039;s doing plenty around the house, and you don&amp;#039;t think he&amp;#039;s doing enough.) This jibes with patterns Gottmann and others have noticed: &amp;quot;Men often believe they are doing a larger share of domestic chores than is actually the case,&amp;quot; says Gottmann. In many marriages the husband does jobs that don&amp;#039;t have to be done daily -- like washing the car, financial planning, mowing the lawn -- but the wife carries more than her share of the daily drudge work. Sound familiar?  &amp;quot;Women may not rate this disparity as extremely important, because they may have begun to feel it&amp;#039;s futile,&amp;quot; says Wolf. &amp;quot;Yet I believe it&amp;#039;s central to women&amp;#039;s happiness in marriage. It&amp;#039;s like [internalized] racism: You don&amp;#039;t notice you&amp;#039;re being taken advantage of, because couples are so used to women carrying the double burden.&amp;quot;  What You Both Crave More time alone together. Two thirds of husbands and wives say this is the one thing that would make their marriages better. The other frequently cited remedies -- &amp;quot;more vacations together,&amp;quot; &amp;quot;more sex,&amp;quot; and, oh yes, &amp;quot;better sex&amp;quot; -- are also ways of spending more time alone together. The bottom line is that you and he want more togetherness -- so start making plans. Says Weiner-Davis: &amp;quot;I credit my husband with saving our marriage when our kids were little by insisting we have one date night a week.&amp;quot;  The difficulties in marriage fade away for a woman, say the experts, if a man shows his wife he&amp;#039;s capable of being influenced by her and pays attention to her. And the difficulties fade away for a man if his wife appreciates him and is happy having sex with him. The biggest obstacle to gaining this mutually blissful state, says Weiner-Davis, is failing to carve out time for each other. &amp;quot;Couples are not prioritizing their marriages,&amp;quot; she says. &amp;quot;If more couples understood how important it is to spend time together, marriage therapists would be out of a job.&amp;quot; The 6 Keys to a Happy Marriage Out of 17 components thought to form the bedrock of a successful marriage, these six were identified by more than nine out of 10 men and women as &amp;quot;extremely&amp;quot; or &amp;quot;very&amp;quot; important -- beating out other factors, such as &amp;quot;good sex&amp;quot; and &amp;quot;successful careers.&amp;quot;  Respect for each other Women: 100% Men: 99% Trust Women: 100% Men: 99% Honesty Women: 100% Men: 99% Communication Women: 99% Men: 98% Being good parents Women: 96% Men: 97% Having fun together Women: 94% Men: 97% "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.redbookmag.com/love-sex/relationships/advice/a88/couples-confess-happy-marriage/>