https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2014/06/happily-ever-after/372573/

Another powerful kindness strategy revolves around shared joy. One of the telltale signs of the disaster couples Gottman studied was their inability to connect over each other’s good news. When one person in the relationship shared the good news of, say, a promotion at work with excitement, the other would respond with wooden disinterest by checking his watch or shutting the conversation down with a comment like “That’s nice.” We’ve all heard that partners should be there for each other when the going gets rough. But research shows that being there for each other when things go right is actually more important for relationship quality. How someone responds to a partner’s good news can have dramatic consequences for the relationship. In one study from 2006, the psychological researcher Shelly Gable and her colleagues brought young adult couples into the lab to discuss recent positive events from their lives. They psychologists wanted to know how partners would respond to each other’s good news. They found that, in general, couples responded to each other’s good news in four different ways that they called: passive destructive, active destructive, passive constructive, and active constructive. Let’s say that one partner had recently received the excellent news that she got into medical school. She would say something like “I got into my top-choice med school!” If her partner responded in a passive destructive manner, he would ignore the event. For example, he might say something like: “You wouldn’t believe the great news I got yesterday! I won a free T-shirt!” If her partner responded in a passive constructive way, he would acknowledge the good news, but in a half-hearted, understated way. A typical passive-constructive response is saying “That’s great, babe” as he texts his buddy on his phone. In the third kind of response, active destructive, the partner would diminish the good news his partner just got: “Are you sure you can handle all the studying? And what about the cost? Med school is so expensive!” Finally, there’s active constructive responding. If her partner responded in this way, he stopped what he was doing and engaged wholeheartedly with her: “That’s great! Congratulations! When did you find out? Did they call you? What classes will you take first semester?” Among the four response styles, active-constructive responding is the kindest. While the other response styles are joy killers, active-constructive responding allows the partner to savor her joy and gives the couple an opportunity to bond over the good news. In the parlance of the Gottmans, active-constructive responding is a way of “turning toward” your partner’s bid (sharing the good news) rather than “turning away” from it. Active-constructive responding is crucial for healthy relationships. In the 2006 study, Gable and her colleagues followed up with the couples two months later to see if they were still together. The psychologists found that the only difference between the couples who were together and those who broke up was active-constructive responding. Those who showed genuine interest in their partner’s joys were more likely to be together. In an earlier study, Gable found that active-constructive responding was also associated with higher relationship quality and more intimacy between partners.