When Hard Times Come, Your Relationship Can Grow Stronger | Nathan Leonhardt | #137
Resilience and Flourishing in Relationships: Insights from Dr. Nathan Lenhart
When we talk about resilience in relationships, most of us think about bouncing back from adversity. But Dr. Nathan Lenhart, assistant professor at Brigham Young University, offers a more nuanced view that can transform how we understand relationship hardships and growth.
During his illuminating conversation on the Strongman Marriage Connection Podcast, Dr. Lenhart introduced a fascinating concept: the difference between "capital R Resilience" and "lowercase r resilience." Capital R Resilience refers to those life-altering challenges that transform us fundamentally, creating something new through a crucible experience. These are the events that burn away impurities and refine us, like severe illness, loss, or betrayal. Meanwhile, lowercase r resilience involves smaller gains from difficult situations—perhaps not changing our entire life trajectory but offering valuable insights and growth nonetheless. This distinction helps couples recognize that different challenges require different approaches and expectations for recovery.
One of the most practical frameworks Dr. Lenhart discussed was the ABCX model for understanding family stress and resilience. This well-established model breaks down stressful events into components: A (the stressor or event), B (available resources), C (perception of the event), and X (the resulting level of stress or reaction). Using a cancer diagnosis example, he illustrated how the same stressor might affect different couples differently based on their resources (financial stability, community support, willingness to ask for help) and their perception (viewing the illness as an opportunity for growth, appreciating life's fragility, or seeing it as punishment). This framework provides couples with specific areas to address when navigating difficult times together.
Perhaps most thought-provoking was Dr. Lenhart's distinction between satisfaction and flourishing in relationships. While happiness and satisfaction are good, they're also fragile and often based on happenstance—external circumstances that happen to us. Flourishing goes deeper, rooted in meaning, belonging, growth, and purpose that transcends momentary feelings. Dr. Lenhart referenced fascinating cross-cultural research showing that Americans who pursue happiness often report lower well-being, while in East Asian cultures, happiness pursuit leads to better outcomes because it's tied to relationship development rather than individual pleasure. This suggests that our Western individualistic approach to happiness might actually undermine the deeper connections that create truly resilient relationships.
Dr. Lenhart also addressed how virtues form the foundation for relationship success—more fundamental than even communication skills. While communication techniques might offer short-term improvements, virtues like forgiveness, gratitude, and humility create the fertile ground from which good communication naturally grows. As he eloquently put it, accurate communication doesn't matter much if you're just effectively communicating distaste for each other. This perspective invites couples to focus less on techniques and more on character development, which though harder to teach, has more profound and lasting impacts.
The conversation touched on sexuality as well, with Dr. Lenhart noting the importance of addressing biological, psychological, and relational aspects when working through intimate challenges. He emphasized that sexual fulfillment isn't isolated but connected to overall relationship quality, psychological health, and physical well-being. Similarly, he discussed how transcendent experiences—moments of intense positive change—can serve as powerful antidotes to trauma, creating breakthroughs in seemingly impossible situations.
For couples seeking to strengthen their resilience, Dr. Lenhart offered this unique advice: find inspiring relationships to emulate. Whether parents, community members, or even characters in literature and film, identifying exemplary relationships provides both a vision of what's possible and motivation to develop the virtues needed to get there. This recommendation stands out because it acknowledges that transformation often begins with inspiration rather than information.
The conversation concluded with a profound observation that encapsulates the heart of relationship resilience: "Nobody is completely whole, and nobody is completely broken. We all need people close to us." This humble recognition of our interdependence reminds us that resilience isn't about self-sufficiency but about creating connections where we can both give and receive support through life's inevitable challenges.