The Relationship Decision Making Box

Introducing the RDMB

For couples, equity in decision making seems to be paramount in today’s increasingly individualistic culture and having a format for measuring how this occurs within relationships is the basis for the development of the RDMB. The RDMB is a brief self-evaluative exercise drawn from the primary author’s experience in conducting marital therapy at a mid-western, regional mental health clinic.

The RDMB produces a quick, immediately accessible snapshot of decision-making patterns in relationships. It can be administered as part of an assessment and as part of the treatment in conjoint couple’s therapy (see Appendix A).

Review of Research Relating to Couple’s Decision Making

According to Stritof and Stritof (2012), most couples consider the following decisions to be major items of discussion:

Where the two of you will live.

With respect to the decision-making process itself, these authors stress that making decisions should be a shared responsibility. Studies have shown that the unhappiest people in a marriage are often those who have the burden of making decisions alone. In the most successful marriages, decision making is a shared activity. Another characteristic of a successful marriage is that both partners are sincerely concerned about the wishes and personal preferences of the other. They are both willing to go more than halfway in reaching mutually satisfying compromises. “Decisions or compromises that are made are made willingly instead of grudgingly”(p. 2).

In an interview on Pete’s “Oprah and Friends” radio program, Klapow (2009) notes that “Making decisions as a couple is not so much about what you decide on, but rather how you go about the process of making the decision, if you approach each decision with the same game plan, then over time, you will become experts at decision-making.” Using a SMART mnemonic, he proposes these five steps to collective decision making: Set, Monitor, Arrange, Recruit, and Treat. The five steps in more detail are:

Set a specific goal—the more specific the better.

Marshack (2000) uses the images of justice and the Statue of Liberty to advocate an emerging more equalitarian joint problem-solving relationship model. While her model addresses only a heterosexual partnership and is based on certain gender stereotypes, the metaphor is creative nonetheless in a more equalitarian problem-solving relationship decision-making process. She says that:

Lady Liberty represents this principle of the combined talent and energy of an entrepreneurial couple. That is, a woman was chosen to represent America rather than a conquering male warrior, because of the desire to represent our country as welcoming immigrants … Lady Liberty is carrying a torch in her hand, not a sword, symbolizing the enlightenment of democracy that shines out to the world. She holds the Declaration of Independence in the other hand as evidence that we are all created equal. On her ankle is a chain that is broken, representing freedom from oppression. Yet the statue is enormous, representing strong and powerful leadership and even domination in the world…. Just as Lady Liberty welcomes immigrants, the wife can welcome a variety of options and possible solutions to a problem, weighing those options impartially just as Lady Justice does. Lady Liberty also represents decision making in that she is holding the Declaration of Independence or the law of the land, just as the husband's strength is to get the decision made and follow it with action, as is implied by the sword that Lady Justice holds. In either case, whether it is the husband's or the wife's decision-making strategy, the goal is a fair decision …

In one research study, Houlihan and Roger (l990) contrasted 10 satisfied and 10 self-reported unhappily married couples describing how they make decisions of low, moderate, and high levels of difficulty. Responses were coded as reflecting the use of equity, need-based, situational, or other norms. Results were consistent with previous findings that a state of equity is associated with marital satisfaction but also indicated that multiple norms are used in decision making of both satisfied and dissatisfied couples. Decision difficulty influenced use of both situational and need-based norms. A trend was found for satisfied husbands to make greater use of need-based norms than did dissatisfied husbands when decisions were high in difficulty. However, this trend did not apply to wives. Houlihan and Roger’s findings appear to support a distinction between equity as a state and equity as a process and as supporting an instrumental utilitarian pragmatic value theory of decision making.

Summary

The purpose of the article has been to introduce the RDMB to you as a couple’s problem-solving activity. Additional couple’s renewal activities can be found in Gottman and Silver (2000), Olsen and Stephens (2001) and Hendrix and Hunt (2003), and Eckstein (2012), along with for couple columns published previously in The Family Journal (Appendix B).