Best Friends

After more than three decades teaching "Marriage and the Family" at Baylor and leading nearly a thousand couples through marriage enrichment workshops, Dr. Preston Dyer can sum up the secret to a successful marriage in two words: best friends.
"You must know what's going on in your partner's life on a daily basis as you would a best friend," says Dr. Dyer, Baylor professor of social work and sociology. "What's happening at work, what your partner is worried about, their hopes and dreams, even who their enemies are." 
He notes that the work of marriage researcher John Gottman, co-author of The Seven Principles for Making Marriage Work (Crown Publishers, 1999), shows that most divorces are not caused by a single problem. Instead, partners experience a gradual drift away from each other until they are leading parallel lives -- married, but not really connected.
One reason this occurs is because of the hurried pace of life, Dr. Dyer says. With work, social commitments and children, couples often spend little time together. As a result, one can become more attuned to a colleague's life than to a spouse's. 
"Lack of time is a killer of relationships because people will drift apart if they don't know each other," he says. "That leads to loneliness, and who wants to be married and lonely?"
Dr. Dyer and his wife, Dr. Genie Dyer, lecturer in social work and sociology, have co-taught the Baylor marriage class since 1990 and have conducted marriage enrichment workshops for decades. One way they've found to keep their 42-year-old marriage strong is by having a daily appointment in which they share what each did that day and what's planned for the next day. The practice, he says, is a way for couples to stay connected and support one another.
"I think marriage is like a port in the storm, a place to escape from the stresses of everyday life," he says. "Partners should be able to help each other weather the storms of stress. But if you don't know what's really going on inside someone's life, how can you do this?" 
 

Beal is a lecturer in Baylor's Louise Herrington School of Nursing, where she teaches "The Experience of Illness." She received her BS from Columbia University and her MN from Emory. She is a freelance health and medical writer.