“Marriage: a book of which the first chapter is written in poetry and the remaining chapters written in prose.” (Beverley Nichols)
“Back when I was struggling in my marriage, everyone looked happier than my husband and me. On every street corner, in every cafe, every couple seemed to be radiating rainbows,” says Winifred Reilly, a psychotherapist specialising in marital therapy and relationship issues.
If you’re unhappy in your relationship, all the couples around you seem not only happier, Reilly continues, but somehow more competent at creating and maintaining that happiness. The scenarios the therapist confesses to imagining may haunt the imaginations of many spouses discouraged by their partner’s behaviour once the honeymoon period is over—maybe they are more compatible, she said to herself, or maybe they are more discerning in choosing a partner. Or maybe marriage comes with a long list of unwritten rules that others understand and follow better.[1]
Nevertheless, the “ideal” couple is more likely to be found in statistics than in reality. By collecting data from various statistical sources on the characteristics of marriages with a minimal chance of dissolution, the Federal Institute for Population Research in Wiesbaden has created the profile of the perfect couple. The partners have a strong emotional and sexual bond, a positive communication style, and are mutually supportive and loyal. They also have children and friends, live in the same house, neither they nor their parents have been divorced, they are about the same age and have a similar level of education, and their interests and lifestyles are quite similar. Religiosity, a more mature age at marriage, and the fact that they do not live in the individualistic environment of big cities are also part of this set of characteristics.
But a deviation from this ideal does not mean that a marriage is doomed to failure. In fact, writes Winifred Reilly, the differences between happy and less happy marriages are often not of epic proportions. Rather, they are a tangle of details that nonetheless require the energy and persistent effort of the partners to unravel. And it’s really about how they perceive the relationship and each other, and how they manage the inevitable conflicts between them, says Reilly.
It’s the little things
A study into the factors that keep couples together and ensure the success of their relationship has confirmed what the American psychologist has found in more than 30 years of couples therapy. A research project at the Ludwig-Maximilian University in Munich, carried out in three stages in the early 1990s, 2001 and 2003, asked hundreds of German couples, many of whom had been married for several years, to identify the elements that made their relationship satisfying.
Tolerance and acceptance were, surprisingly, the elements mentioned by one in two respondents, with trust and honesty (43%) coming second in the list of characteristics of a good marriage. Love (41%) came third in this ranking of marital virtues, followed by constructive conflict resolution and constructive communication.
A satisfactory sex life was mentioned by 6% of respondents and ranked 12th in the list of characteristics of a good marriage. The recipe for a good marriage also included common interests and friendships (29%), mutual support (28%), shared responsibility for children and grandchildren (21%), loyalty (19%), material possessions (10%), compatibility of values (9%), humour, religious beliefs and the security of living with a partner (each mentioned by 5% of respondents).
It may seem surprising that tolerance and acceptance top the list of values that make a relationship work. But it’s no surprise to Christian, one of the husbands in the survey—married for 11 years, he knows that accepting his partner for who they are is the key to a good relationship. “Each of us consciously gives up the things the other can’t offer,”[2] is the magic formula that makes their relationship work.
The conflicts that erupt in a couple are less likely to have to do with big, overwhelming issues—as psychologists Eva Wunderer and Klaus Schneewind also point out—and more likely to be about everyday trivialities: towels left untidy in the bathroom, socks that did not make it into the dirty laundry basket, or being late for dinner.
The art of living in harmony as a couple lies in this ability to accept differences, to be at peace with the shortcomings of the partner (who has the same task), and to maintain the tolerance that was present at the beginning of the relationship, when the loved one’s positive qualities blatantly overshadowed his or her negatives. A solid relationship can bear differences and disagreements, Wunderer and Schneewind argue[3], and its hallmark is not to raise the bar unjustifiably, because it has been shown that one’s life partner can be changed only to a relatively small extent.
Accepting the other person as they are is part of the commitment made on the wedding day, says therapist John Thoburn. The acceptance that comes from a covenant is a real safety net for the partner, making them feel loved despite any disagreements. “Acceptance and commitment mean that there is no hidden agenda for changing one’s partner or for leaving,” Thoburn points out. It’s not a conditional love agreement, but a guarantee that love will be offered no matter what your partner does or doesn’t do for you. (I wrote more about unconditional love for your partner in the article “Love, from dawn to dusk”.) Such a covenant builds a solid foundation for the relationship and gives both of you the freedom to change, not because of constraints, but for the sake of the relationship and your partner.
Facets of long-term love
It’s possible to stay in love with one person for a lifetime, says counsellor Phillip Hodson, adding that this kind of love can be very different from the euphoria and avalanche of chemical reactions of the early days. Mature love “is the ability to cope together, and to be with someone who not only understands you, but who can let you be utterly yourself.”
Although the fireworks that precede a relationship are one of its most exciting aspects, love doesn’t stand the test of time on such a fragile foundation.
In the 1980s, psychologist Ted Huston followed 168 couples for 13 years from their wedding day, and found that the way they managed their relationship from the start was a relevant clue to where it was headed. Huston found that exaggerated romantic affection was not a good predictor of the longevity of a relationship—couples who entered marriage with a burst of romance were more likely to divorce than others because the intensity of feelings was difficult to maintain at the same level.
Surprisingly, partners in good but lacklustre marriages had a lower risk of divorce—perhaps because they didn’t start with a romantic ideal that would fade over time.
On the other hand, Huston found that in happy couples where the partners claimed to be in love, negative feelings were expressed less often and the subjects had more favourable perceptions of their partner than the other participants in the study. These couples were the opposite of those who were overly romantic at the beginning of the relationship but became critical and negative as the relationship progressed.
Another conclusion of the study was that it is the loss of love that is ultimately responsible for the breakdown of a marriage, not the conflicts that erupt between the partners. In summarising his observations, Huston emphasised that while the classical therapeutic approach has focused on helping couples to resolve their conflicts, the priority should be for the partners to preserve the love in the couple.
Conflict resolution
Everyday stress plays a major role in divorce, according to a 2007 study that examined the role divorcees attributed to stress in the breakup of their families. The majority of participants cited everyday stress caused by trivial incidents as the final trigger for divorce, more so than violence or infidelity.
While stress is a factor faced by every couple, it becomes toxic to the relationship when it intersects with the couple’s inability to maintain emotional connection and manage conflict effectively.
After studying hundreds of couples in the Family Research Lab, nicknamed the Love Lab, Professor John Gottman concluded that while conflict is a part of every relationship, it is not the real destabilising factor.
Friendship is the antidote to the distance that disagreement can create, Gottman emphasises—the more solidly the relationship is built on the pillars of friendship between spouses, the better the prognosis for the relationship, despite the inevitable conflict.
In his book, The Seven Principles for Making Marriage Work, Gottman identified four behaviours that can kill a relationship, calling them the “horsemen of the apocalypse”: criticism, defensiveness, contempt and stonewalling. Claiming that 90% of divorces can be predicted by the way partners interact with each other, the psychology professor says that 80% of relationships that tolerate these communication killers are headed for divorce.[4]
After years of studying how couples manage their conflicts, the psychologist developed a rule called “John Gottman’s 5:1 Rule”: in happy couples, one negative interaction is balanced by at least five positive interactions.
In fact, almost 70% of marital conflicts can’t even be resolved, says Gottman, because they stem from major differences, including the partners’ outlook on life. Under these circumstances, devoting energy to resolving conflict is like chasing a moving target. Weaving strong threads into the fabric of marital friendship is a safer way to go.
Tell me how you think so I can tell you what kind of relationship you have
A large body of research suggests that the robustness and happiness of a marriage depends less on the objective qualities of the partners than on how their minds are set to evaluate the relationship.
When we fall in love, we look at the person next to us through rose-coloured glasses, which enable us to transform even their weaknesses into virtues. As the years go by, there is a tendency to discard these pastel-coloured glasses and to scrutinise all the shortcomings of the partner and the relationship.
People who idealise their partners (and are idealised by their partners) report being happier and more satisfied with the quality of their relationship, according to the study coordinated by Sandra Murray, who teaches psychology at the University of Buffalo.
Murray called this overvaluation of one’s partner a “positive illusion,” noting that the benefits include higher levels of affection and trust in one’s partner, as well as a less conflictual relationship. The icing on the cake of idealisation is that, in the end, partners tend to change to match their partner’s ideal.
People’s perceptions of how relationships form and evolve predict the pattern of behaviour they will follow in their relationships, concludes a study co-ordinated by researcher Raymond Knee. Typically, people have one of two views on relationships—either they believe that relationships are fated, meant to work or not, or they believe that a relationship has the potential for development that can be activated by the partners. While the category that sees the relationship through the prism of fate tends to leave at the first sign of crisis, the second category focuses on the development of the relationship, interpreting crisis as an opportunity for growth.
A couple’s happiness is directly proportional to how they evaluate their relationship, according to a 2002 study. Researchers asked participants to write down the positive and negative events of each day in a diary and then asked them to recall them without consulting the written notes. The happy couples recalled more positive events than those mentioned in the diary, while the unhappy couples recalled more negative events and downplayed the positive ones.
Better two than one
“Marriage is, and will always be, the most important journey of discovery that a man could ever do” the Danish philosopher and theologian Søren Kierkegaard observed more than a century and a half ago. While the longevity of a marriage is no sure sign of its happiness, the transience of modern marriage suggests that we are equipped for shipwreck rather than a long voyage.
In the US, about 50% of marriages end in divorce, with the risk of failure increasing with each remarriage—41% of first marriages, 60% of second marriages and 73% of third marriages end in divorce. The average duration of marriage is eight years and the average age of couples who divorce for the first time is 30.
Over the last half century, the marriage rate in the EU has fallen by almost 50%, from 7.8 marriages per 1000 inhabitants in 1965 to 4.3 marriages per 1000 inhabitants in 2015. Over the same period, the divorce rate has doubled from 0.8 to 1.9 divorces per 1,000 inhabitants.
In the UK, 13 couples divorce every hour, with 34% of marriages ending after 20 years of marriage, with the 40-44 age group being the most likely to divorce.
The fact that divorce has reached epidemic proportions in modern society doesn’t mean that its effects are any less devastating for those who experience them. The pain of divorce can be so overwhelming, says psychologist Anda Brosh, that people may question whether it would have been better to stay in the relationship or even face other terrible events, such as death.
The depth of grief can be unsettling for those who are convinced they need to end the marriage—but the rational decision, however well argued, may ignore the strength of the bond. The physical and emotional connection to one’s partner has created a bond deeper than the partners imagine, and breaking that bond can prove devastating, triggering feelings and behaviours that are difficult to replicate in other life contexts, Brosh concludes.
The painful metamorphosis of the person closest to you into a stranger (if not an outright enemy) is easier to endure if there was a longer period of separation before the divorce, if a new romantic relationship was started, or if the subject was the initiator of the separation.[5]
Adjustment to the new status is quite slow, with studies suggesting that it takes two to four years for divorcees to reach equilibrium, with 42% of subjects still not fully adjusted to the divorce five years after the divorce.[6]
In fact, on the stress scale devised by psychiatrist Thomas Holmes, divorce scored 73 points, ranking it second on a list of stressful events, just behind the death of a partner (100) and more destabilising than imprisonment or the death of a close family member (both scoring 63), major personal health problems (53) or the death of a close friend (37).
According to studies, divorced people have higher rates of clinical depression, 30% more physical ailments and doctor visits, and higher mortality rates from certain infections and diseases, including six times more deaths from pneumonia than married adults.
The bad news about divorce is that it seems to be passed from parents to children. Experts have identified several possible explanations for the inheritance of this relationship pattern. It is possible that the stress of divorce leads to children leaving the family prematurely, followed by early marriage and children being born before financial and emotional equilibrium is achieved, increasing the risk of the newly formed family disintegrating. Other explanations are based on the stigma of parental divorce, which has a negative impact on the development of the future adult, or on the range of characteristics shared by parents and children, which may be either beneficial or detrimental to long-term relationships.
A new marriage: a better chance at happiness?
Although many people who have seen their marriages crumble think about starting a new family where their dream of marital bliss can finally take shape, statistics show that second and third marriages are even more likely to fail than the first.
What keeps many couples together despite marital problems is not wanting to destroy the family by hurting the children, and sometimes not wanting to be forced to share the financial assets they have acquired. If there are no children or important material possessions in a new marriage, the partners feel they can separate more easily than in the previous relationship, says therapist Virginia Gilbert, in an attempt to outline an explanatory model for the fragility of second marriages. “Divorce is not as scary as it was the first time around. It’s now the ‘devil you know:’ if you’ve been through it once before, you know you can do it again,” Gilbert writes.
The irreconcilable problems of first marriages have a way of resurfacing in different forms in later marriages, and combined with the difficulties of reconciling members of two families, only serve to put the new couple in the crossfire, says psychologist Alicia Clark.
The economic and emotional self-sufficiency gained over the years paves the way for divorce in second marriages, says psychiatrist Mark Banschick, who notes that it is not impossible for adults to find their way through the more tangled complexities of a new marriage, but that coming to terms with past mistakes and devising a strategy to avoid them is essential to success.
In fact, the way we feel about the quality of a relationship and our own well-being can improve significantly over time if we choose to stay in it and address its pain points. That’s the conclusion of a recent British study, which found that most couples who felt unhappy when their first child was born described themselves as fulfilled a decade later.
Harry Benson, founder of the Bristol Community Family Trust, who has been through a period of marital crisis, has a contrasting view of the study’s findings: “Contrary to popular belief, staying in an unhappy marriage is the best thing you can do for its long-term success.” Benson adds that, except in situations of abuse, most marriages have their moments of unhappiness, which they can overcome and reap a harvest of contentment in the future.
Happiness and love in marriage can be confusing if we think they come only in doses and forms that we are familiar with. Sometimes we forget that love is also abrasive, and naturally so, since life is a process of continuous growth.
Sometimes we aim very low, like the little girl who invents a game in which she gives orders to all the passers-by in her line of sight from the roof of the 10-storey building. Her commands are reasonable, even simple: she orders the fountain to flow, the children in the park to kick the ball, and the driver at the curb to unlock his car with the keys in his hand.[7] Instead of setting such ordinary goals as the goal of enduring—heroically or through inertia—in our relationships, or the goal of reclaiming our right to happiness, we might choose goals that are challenging enough to require the rest of our lives to pursue, like building a love that “does not dishonour others…is not self-seeking…is not easily angered…keeps no record of wrongs” (1 Corinthians 13:5).
And the rest will follow.
Carmen Lăiu is an editor of Signs of the Times Romania and ST Network.
