{"id":39474,"date":"2017-12-19T04:45:54","date_gmt":"2017-12-19T10:45:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/michaelhyatt.com\/?p=39474"},"modified":"2017-12-19T04:45:54","modified_gmt":"2017-12-19T10:45:54","slug":"feeling-generous-baby","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/fullfocus.co\/feeling-generous-baby\/","title":{"rendered":"How Generosity Can Supercharge Your Marriage"},"content":{"rendered":"

When Roger Hodgson crooned<\/a> to his anonymous paramour back in 1977, \u201cGive a little bit of your love to me,\u201d so he might \u201cgive a little bit of my life for you,\u201d the Supertramp frontman presumably didn\u2019t have academic research in mind.<\/p>\n

But Hodgson\u2019s next beseeching couplet\u2014\u201cThere's so much that we need to share\/So send a smile and show you care\u201d\u2014might have intuited a conclusion social scientists have only recently begun to transform into a testable, verifiable hypothesis: Generosity improves marriage<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Enter the work of University of Virginia Professor W. Bradford Wilcox<\/a>, author of numerous books on the subject of marriage. He serves as a senior fellow at the Institute for Family Studies<\/a> and is the director of the National Marriage Project<\/a>, a one-stop shop for in-depth, cutting-edge research on holy matrimony. Wilcox has devoted a considerable portion of his life and career to determining what makes married people tick.<\/p>\n

Generosity is key<\/h3>\n

In 2011, as part of the Science of Generosity Initiative<\/a> at the University of Notre Dame, Wilcox headed up a survey of 1,630 married couples designed to home in on a single factor in after-the-nuptials happiness: marital generosity. In a 2013 article for the Journal of Marriage and Family<\/a><\/em>, Wilcox and coauthor Jeffrey Dew define this generosity as \u201cgiving good things to [one\u2019s spouse] freely and abundantly,” including \u201cregularly engaging in small acts of kindness, expressing affection, expressing respect, and forgiving one\u2019s spouse.\u201d<\/p>\n

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The survey found generosity to be \u201cpositively related to participants\u2019 reports of marital satisfaction and negatively related to participants\u2019 reports of marital conflict and subjective divorce likelihood.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cPositively related\u201d is well and good. But as a matter of degree, how important is generosity to maintaining a good marriage? According to the National Marriage Project\u2019s ultra-comprehensive 2011 \u201cState of our Unions\u201d report<\/a>, if \u201chappy marriage\u201d were an Olympic sport, sexual intimacy would take the gold, commitment the silver, and generosity would be wearing the bronze as it selflessly cheered for the other two.<\/p>\n

The hidden riches of marriage<\/h3>\n

On the surface, this last feature would seem to be the common currency of marriage. After all, sexual desire will ebb and flow. And the essential nature of what constitutes commitment between two evolving people will itself evolve. In its modern, love-centered iteration, virtually every marriage begins rich in love and devotion. And \u201cexpressing affection\u201d or \u201crespect\u201d is hardly akin to purchasing a Rolls-Royce or amassing a down payment for a spouse\u2019s dream home. The poorest can be as generous as the prosperous.<\/p>\n\t\t