Mediate Michigan

THE sudden breakup of Al and Tipper Gore’s seemingly idyllic marriage was the latest and among the sharpest reminders that the only two people who know what’s going on in a marriage are the two people who are in it.

The truth is that most marriages, even our own, are something of a mystery to outsiders.

Several years ago, a marriage researcher — Robert W. Levenson, director of the psychophysiology laboratory at the University of California, Berkeley — and his colleagues produced a video of 10 couples talking and bickering. Dr. Levenson knew at the time that five of the couples had been in troubled relationships and eventually divorced. He showed the video to 200 people, including pastors, marriage therapists and relationship scientists, asking them to spot the doomed marriages. They guessed wrong half the time.

“People on the outside aren’t very good at telling how marriages are really working,” he said.

via Researchers Study Brain Scans for Insight to Marriage – NYTimes.com.