Emotional Intelligence Secrets Of My Family's Multi-Decade Marriages
My maternal grandparents were married for more than seventy years. As the youngest grandchild, I was fortunate to enjoy their company into their 90s. My parents were married for more than sixty years.
They weren’t the only ones in my family to maintain long relationships.
How did they do it?
Were they more emotionally intelligent than those whose marriages ended in divorce?
I’ve often considered the differences and talked with my grandparents and parents about what they thought the secret was.
I share those thoughts with my son as he contemplates the importance of choosing the right life partner and the keys to personal and professional success.
Since my divorce fifteen years ago, I’ve pulled back the layers of what makes a successful relationship.
In both personal and professional matters, your emotional intelligence makes a difference.
Daniel Goleman’s 1995 book Emotional Intelligence: Why It Can Matter More than IQ became a New York Times bestseller and changed the discussion about the importance of emotional intelligence. However, before that time, I’m certain my grandparents and parents were unaware of the term.
I first read Goleman’s book when it was released. At the time, I read it through the lens of professional development, working in corporate America. But over the years, the discussion of emotional intelligence evolved and developed, highlighting its importance in terms of both personal and professional success.
I recently returned to the key points of Goleman’s book, where he believed emotional intelligence meant having strengths in four key areas:
Self-Awareness:
Understanding your emotions and recognizing how they impact your thoughts and behaviors.
Self-Management or Self-Regulation:
Your ability to regulate emotions, manage impulses, and adapt to changing circumstances. Self-regulation means you take responsibility for both your emotions and your actions.
Social Awareness:
Understanding the emotions, perspectives, and needs of others and empathizing with those perspectives.
Relationship Management:
Your ability to develop and maintain healthy relationships, navigate conflicts, and inspire and influence others.
What may have appeared revolutionary thirty years ago is now the basis for emotional well-being.
Today, if you’re looking to succeed personally or professionally or maintain meaningful relationships, you must be aware of the prominent role emotional intelligence plays in every aspect of your life.
Strengthening your emotional intelligence is an essential life skill.
It helps build resilience, regulate your nervous system, and strengthen the skills needed to overcome adversity.
In business, leaders look for emotionally intelligent employees to improve customer experiences.
In a crisis, you want a leader who is as comfortable empathizing with another person’s perspective as they are navigating a conflict.
While working in corporate America, I witnessed C-suite executives utilize emotional intelligence before the term was coined. I understood the importance of maintaining one’s emotions and being calm when facing a crisis or a challenging situation.
Today, more than ever, emotional intelligence is a skill everyone should learn.
Leaders who understand social dynamics and how their actions affect others rally support.
Those who speak with confidence and empathy inspire trust. Those who don’t lead by fear.
In life, people look for emotionally intelligent partners and friends to improve relationships and overall happiness. When looking for a life partner, you want someone you can trust who understands your needs even if theirs differs from yours.
Empathy for others and understanding how one's actions affect another person are key factors in choosing a partner.
It was the reason my marriage ended in divorce, and my parents and grandparents did not. What should have been a red flag- the lack of empathy and the ability to understand another’s perspective- was overlooked. It was a costly mistake and one I haven’t made again.
Whether you’ve studied emotional intelligence or not, the premise is relevant in both your personal and professional relationships.
So what did my grandparents and parents know about emotional intelligence before Goleman coined the term “EQ”?
They understood the importance of consideration for each other and others, even if they had different beliefs.
They were calm in the face of a crisis.
They overcame adversity and challenges by working together.
They understood how their actions and emotions impacted others and respectfully approached interactions with those they didn’t know.
They had empathy for others and their perspective, even if they lived a different type of life.
They developed and maintained relationships with friends and coworkers from diverse backgrounds.
They were patient with those who pushed them to think differently.
They were kind to everyone.
Patience and kindness are generally not associated with emotional intelligence traits, but they should be. Because without them, the traits that make you aware of another’s need become misaligned.
Can you know your actions will negatively affect another and do it anyway?
Can you claim to have empathy and act in a way that hurts those who need it most?
I don’t think so. But we’re seeing it happen every day.
Emotional intelligence is based on learnable traits. Unlike genetics for hair color or height, emotional intelligence can and should be learned.
It should be taught in school along with algebra and world history.
If emotional intelligence were a part of every curriculum from grade school through graduate school, we might have more leaders leading with intelligence and far fewer divorces.
If emotional intelligence were taught, we might have a more unified society rather than a deeply divided one.
More people might be interested in building relationships rather than tearing them apart.
Emotional intelligence is the basis for effective communication, navigating the complexities of human interaction, and sustaining personal and professional relationships. It’s also the basis for long marriages, friendships, and partnerships.
What are your thoughts? Share in the comments below.
Until next time, be mindful and stay safe.
Tracy xo
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@Tracy Mansolillo – thank you for sharing a piece of your story, along with your family’s! :)
I’ve often reflected on what makes or breaks relationships over time. While qualities like care, respect, kindness and yes, attraction are important, one of the most defining differences I’ve seen is whether a couple can navigate life’s inevitable speed bumps without turning them into mountains or impassable terrain especially without resorting to blame.
It takes a certain level of emotional intelligence to openly acknowledge not just what’s bothering us about the other person but also the part we play in the dynamic as well. Many people are fairly practiced at identifying what they don’t like in their partner’s behavior or perspective. Far fewer are equally skilled at owning their contribution to ongoing struggles. That mutual self-awareness is what often creates the space for growth, connection and repair.
I believe kindness and consideration toward others can take you far in life but the ability to discuss our own role in an ongoing struggle behind closed doors and with that same kindness and consideration is a skill that often takes decades to develop. Done well it brings us closer. Do it poorly and it can quietly drive a wedge between us.
My parents were together for 70 years and married for 63 years. I learned three things from them:
Once you’re married, that’s it. It’s a life time commitment. There’s no way out. And that’s a good thing. It brings colossal security.
It’s not about how the other person makes you happy, it’s about how you make the other person happy. If you both love each other sacrificially you’ll be rock solid.
God is the most important person in this marriage - which is actually a threesome. The closer you each move to God. The closer you will be to each other.