Couple Identity

Relationships with in-laws can be challenging, especially when it comes to long-held family traditions. Couples face the decisions of where to spend holidays, what traditions of their own they should start and many others. What is important to remember in these situations is that each couple needs to develop their own identity. A new marriage is a system of its own, separate from that of either family of origin. New marriages survive best when all parties involved can see this. 

In Genesis 2:24 we read that a man is to leave his family and “cleave unto his wife.” This goes for women as well. In a marriage, each person should put the welfare of their spouse ahead of all others and the welfare of their family of creation ahead of their families of origin. This is often hard as relationships that have been forged before marriage that are hard to change. Luckily, putting your spouse first does not mean abandoning your family of origin.

An example of this is seen in family traditions. Growing up there was little breaking up of my parent’s family’s holiday traditions. Christmas was especially challenging. We would rush between houses of both grandparents multiple times each day, trying to make everyone happy. There was little in the way of our own traditions for those days. As I got married, my husband and I were faced with the decision of where to spend Christmas. We decided that our own traditions were important and that we couldn’t please everyone. In the end we had to make sure that our family was taken care of. Like many couples, we decided to split holidays between families and save time for our family to have time together as well.

This worked well for us because our respective families responded well to this decision. They understood that the other spouse’s family is important as well. There was never pressure or guilt for us to be somewhere once we made a decision to be elsewhere. Other couples are not as lucky as we were. Many parent-in-laws had such strong relationships with their children that seeing anyone else get in the way of it, even the spouse or their parents, is too much for them. In these cases it is important that couples discuss these relationships together and make sure that they are in agreement on what should happen. Dealing with the complicated relationships that can come with a new marriage is easier if spouses can rely on each other for support.

Infidelity

One of the most damaging single events in a marriage is infidelity. This is because it breaks the foundation of a marriage. Unfortunately it is not as hard to fall into the grasp of infidelity as it may seem.

Many believe that they are only unfaithful if they have sex with someone else. However, there are many other actions that can have just as detrimental an effect on a marriage as a sexual affair.  Emotional infidelity and pornography are some of the other most damaging means of infidelity. While I have never been on the receiving end of a spouse’s infidelity, I have seen infidelity ruin a very dear friend’s marriage.

Basically infidelity can be summed up as any time you let your focus shift from your spouse to another person. I don’t just mean this in a sexual way either. Infidelity falls into four different categories: fantasy (characterized by having an emotional affair with someone who is unaware of the affair or with whom the affair is anonymous), romantic (emotional involvement with a person other that the spouse), visual (pornography), and sexual (sex without emotional attachment) (Gardner and Greiner, 2012). Notice that only one of these categories involves sex with someone other than the spouse yet all are equally damaging to a marriage.

Wallace Goddard, professor and Family Life Specialist at the University of Arkansas describes the way that emotional infidelity typically progresses. This type of infidelity usually stems from a “harmless” relationship with someone of the opposite sex. Eventually a strong relationship grows that claims a part of your heart that should belong to your spouse. Excuses are made to see this friend because the relationship is “special”. This displaces the spouse and the marriage starts to degrade. If action is not taken to stop the chain of events, this process will ultimately result in a romantic affair culminating in sexual relations. (Goddard, 2009).

Pornography was the downfall of my friend’s marriage. He didn’t use because he didn’t love his wife. He didn’t use because he was looking for something more exciting. For him it was an escape from the abundant challenges of his life. Nevertheless, his marriage suffered. He sought “help” and comfort from porn instead of his wife. He let part of his heart turn to somewhere else than to his wife. This is infidelity just as “cheating” on her would have been.

If you find yourself seeking someone else when you should be seeking your spouse, turn back. If you find yourself negatively comparing your spouse to someone else, stop it. If you find your spouse’s place is being taken up by someone else, you’re in trouble.

Obviously the best way to deal with infidelity is to stop it from happening.  Set boundaries.  Leave doors open to your spouse and walls between your marriage and the world. Be fiercely loyal; determine that nothing will come between the two of you and make it happen. Control your thoughts; they are yours so take responsibility for them.  Make your spouse a priority.

If infidelity does occur, it will be damaging, maybe irreparably so.  It may be possible to work through the problems and save your marriage but it will take time and it will take effort. It will hurt.

Scott Gardner and Christian Greiner (2012) outline five steps to keeping your marriage together after infidelity. First, you must rebuild your trust; this will involve taking accountability for actions and setting boundaries. Next, both parties must gain perspective of the infidelity, involving understanding why and how it came to happen and that one person is not responsible for the actions of another. Then repentance and forgiveness must occur. Next, the addiction must be overcome; the marriage may not last if the infidelity occurs again in the future. Finally, the decision must be made to stay together.

It won’t be easy but it can be done! Your marriage is worth it.

Infidelity can creep in even in good marriages. Don’t stop and think that your marriage is immune. You must work to keep outside influences where they belong, outside.

Gardner, S., Greiner, C. (2012). Honoring marital vows with complete fidelity . In A.J. Hawkins, D.C. Dollahite, T.W. Draper (Ed.) Successful marriages and families: Proclamation based principles and research perspectives. (pp. 59-69). Provo, Utah: Brigham Young University.

Goddard, H.W. (2009). Drawing Heaven into Your Marriage. pp. 86-98 Cedar Hills, Utah: Joymap Publishing.

Keep Going

The hardest part of any task is to keep doing it. The same goes for those things that are needed to make your marriage successful. Any tip or practice that you employ to keep your marriage moving in the direction of happiness is something that you will have to keep doing, even when it’s not easy. The principles that I have talked about and will continue to talk about are not hard to do, but you have to keep doing them.

After starting these practices and keeping with them for a while, they will begin to be second nature to you. You want have to think about them as much. Keeping your marriage healthy doesn’t have to take all of your time, but it should be a priority. It takes as little as five hours extra a week.

That’s less than 45 minutes a day.

That’s finding out about a specific event in your spouse’s day before and after it. That’s talking to him about his life at dinner and holding her on the couch while she unwinds before bed. That’s kissing her when she leaves and telling him that you appreciate the way that he works so hard. It’s spent honestly trying to see his side of a conflict instead of focusing on how you are being hurt.

Forty five minutes is not a big time commitment but it makes a big difference. Making your marriage, and your life together, a priority is not the same as making it a goal. You accomplish goals, but your work on your marriage is never done. As often as things tear it down, you will have to build it back up.

It can be easy to turn toward your spouse when things are going great. It will be harder when you are tired, upset, or sad. It will be harder when things in life, not just your marriage, become complicated and overwhelming. It will be harder when you just want to walk away.

Keep at it.

Keep keeping at it.

Don’t ever give up. Your marriage is worth it.

Conflict in Marriage

If you believe that a happy marriage is conflict free, you have another thing coming. As imperfect beings, nothing is ever conflict free. It’s not if but when you will disagree with your spouse. People can remain happily married for twenty, thirty, or even fifty years or more not because their marriages are without conflict but because they have learned how to deal with the conflicts in their lives. In his extensive research of married couples, John Gottman has learned that there are two kinds of conflicts in marriage and five steps to successfully work through them.

There are two types of conflict that occur in every marriage: perpetual and solvable conflicts. Gottman found that most conflict, 69% to be exact, falls into the first category, perpetual. These are the arguments that often occur over and over again. These are the arguments that are not really about whatever you are arguing about. These conflicts are often filled with emotions and flooding is common.

For my late husband and I, this was our fight about how much time he spent on the computer. He would spend hours on the computer at a time. I would fight with him about his time on the computer and he would brush me off. For us, this fight was not really about computer time. I felt like he was ignoring me and didn’t care about me or us. He was an introvert and saw his time on the computer as much deserved leisure time. Our fight happened over and over and eventually became about more than computer time; it became about emotions, feelings, and love. This is a perpetual fight.

For perpetual conflicts, the only way to work through them is to accept them. Learn that the behavior is part of who your spouse is. Gottman quotes Psychologist Dan Wile in his book The Seven Principles for Making Marriage Work saying, “When choosing a long-term partner…you will inevitably be choosing a particular set of unsolvable problems that you will be grappling with for the next ten, twenty, or fifty years.” If the root of our perpetual conflict is unchangeable personality flaws, then the solution should be loving acceptance of who our spouse is.

If we are not careful, our perpetual problems can work into gridlock, fighting that occurs over and over again where nothing is solved and both parties leave the argument more hurt than they entered it. This sort of perpetual problem can kill a marriage. Gottman suggests that if you find yourself in this sort of argument to remember that you can still work your way out of it. Gridlocked problems are a sign of differing basic beliefs. To figure out how to cope with the problem, these basic beliefs and dreams must be addressed and understood.

The second type of conflict that Gottman has found in marriage is the solvable conflict. The good news about these arguments is that there is something that you can do about them! Hey do not have to stick around forever. (In fact letting them stick around may give them the power to turn into perpetual conflicts.)

To illustrate this type of conflict I will discuss an argument that my sister and I had recently. I was visiting my parents, who live close to my sister. While I was visiting, my sister and I wanted to go and do something together. Whenever she called me to set something up, my dad had already made plans. She felt that I was trying to avoid her and responded by getting angry at me. I in return got angry at her for blaming me for things beyond my control. For us, this was a solvable problem. We solved out problem and came to a solution using Gottman’s five steps for resolving conflict.

If you go to a marriage counselor, chances are you will be told that to solve your problems you need to use more active listening with your spouse. Active listening, hearing what your spouse is saying and repeating it back to them in different words, is a great tactic and will definitely help to solve your problems but is difficult to use in practice, especially in high emotion situations. By watching couples that successfully remain married for the long-term and handle conflict well, Gottman was able to find five steps that these couples use to work through their conflicts. These five steps are:

1.       Soften your startup. This refers to the manner in which the conflict causing topic is brought up. The main characteristic of a soft startup is that it is devoid of criticism and contempt. This means saying something like “I was really hurt when you walked past the overflowing trash last night” instead of “You never help me with the housework anymore. I don’t know why I even think you will!” To execute a soft startup try some of the following techniques:

·         Complain but don’t blame.

·         Make statements that start with “I” instead of you.

·         Describe what is happening

·         Be clear

·         Be polite

·         Be appreciative

·         Don’t Store things up.

Gottman says that a conversation tends to end on in the tone that it began. Stating your conversation softly will give you a greater chance of making progress with your problem.

2.       Learn to make and receive repair attempts. These are equivalent to putting the brakes on during the argument. A repair attempt stops the conversation from continuing on in the current unhelpful direction. This can be done by acknowledging you spouse’s feelings and contributions, apologizing, using humor or even saying “let’s take a break and come back to this once we have cooled down.”

3.       Soothe yourself and each other. Flooding is the most unhelpful response to conflict resolution. If either you or your spouse becomes flooded, your emotions will get in the way of effective communication and repair attempts. To successfully work through a conflict both parties must remain calm.

4.       Compromise. The only way to successfully end a marital conflict is with compromise. There will often not be a winner or a loser. Constantly having a winner and loser would create too much inequality in a marriage. Both of you must remain open minded and remember that you each have opinions of value. Both of you are in charge of where your marriage is heading. Put effort into compromising.

5.       Be tolerant of each other’s faults. No one is perfect. No one ever will be. These are facts of life. It is unreasonable for us to expect such from our spouse. If we love our spouse it will be required of us to accept some of the things that we find annoying. Accepting these things will free up time previously given to endless, fruitless conflict.

Using these steps will help spouses to find productive ways to work through their conflicts. These steps are not hard and they don’t require much “training”, just effort. Dealing with the conflicts in your marriage is the only way to make it a happy marriage. The conflicts will never be gone from your marriage, but together you can work through them to build a stronger relationship

Share Your Life

Friendships are based on mutual interests. Marriages are no different. To keep the friendship in your marriage strong each spouse must turn toward the other and open up their life so that the two lives can become one shared life. We must put our spouse first, before our job, before our friends, before our children, even if it is just listening to what great thing happened to them in line at the grocery store or what horrible thing their boss said to them, or helping them with the dishes or kids. We must live our lives together, instead of just as roommates who have sex. If you have made a habit of living your life separately from your spouse, this may not be an easy task. 

Making our lives one is not a one-time task.  This will be something that we will work our whole lives to do. As our lives change and our marriage changes, we must constantly work to keep the two moving in the same direction. 

Marriage expert John Gottman gives some advice on how we can do this. In The Seven Principles for Making Marriage Work, he describes some activities that can help us to move our lives and our marriages in the same direction. One of these is to be aware of what he calls our spouse’s emotional bank account. Basically this means to record, but not for the sake of competition, the ways in which you show your spouse that you care and the ways in which you act contrary to that love. So washing your wife’s car would be a deposit into her emotional bank account while nagging your husband to take the trash out for the fifth time would probably be a withdrawal from his emotional bank account. This activity is a good place to start to look at where your relationship currently stands. It is a great way to see where you need to improve and whether you are making a net positive contribution to your marriage or not.  

As a side note, if you are having trouble showing your love in a way that your spouse is responsive to I suggest doing some reading on their love language. The Five Love Languages by Gary Chapman is a great resource for this. I know that the principles outlined in his book really helped me to see how to show love for my husband in a way that meant the most to him. Plus, these principles are applicable to any close relationship that you may have, be it with parents, children, siblings, friends or other family members. 

Gottman also suggests starting and maintaining jointly meaningful rituals. These activities bring a sense of shared meaning to a family. Don’t know what your rituals should be? Simply talk about it. What is important to you? What is something that you like doing together? How should special occasions such as holidays and birthdays be celebrated? Sit down and talk about these things. Find out what your spouse values and tell your spouse what you value. A shared life means honoring the things that each other value. Find meaningful ways to execute these rituals, even if it’s just dinner together every night. Remember that this is a joint effort.

These two items are by no means that you can really share a life with your spouse. They are a start though. Share your dreams, goals and beliefs. Share your time. Most importantly share yourself. And don’t give up. This will not be a short term task. Keep with it.

 

Finding Friendship

In my last post I shared how important it is to be friends with your spouse and how this can be a great defense against the struggles and frustrations that are inevitable in marriage. So what happens when that friendship seems to be gone? Is that it for your marriage?

Marriage expert John Gottman doesn't believe so. He states,

"If a couple still has a functioning fondness and admiration system, then their marriage is salvageable. I'm not suggesting that the road to reviving a marriage...is easy. But it can be done... Fondness and admiration are two of the most critical elements in a rewarding and long lasting romance. Although happily married couples may feel driven to distraction at times by their partner's personality flaws, they still feel that the person they married is worthy of honor and respect. When this sense is completely missing from a marriage, the relationship cannot be revived." (p.63)

Gottman believes that fondness and admiration are so crucial that as long as you feel that your spouse is worthy of respect and love, there is a path to take to salvage your marriage. It probably won't be easy, but it can be done.

So what happens when you find that you no longer like the person you are married to? You still love them but can't seem to find a way to make your lives work. Fighting and conflict seems to occur over the smallest incidences. Gottman shares that reviving these feelings of friendship is not complicated, it just takes action (p. 67). In his book The Seven Principles for Making Marriage Work there are a few exercises for helping to reignite these feelings for your spouse.

Most of these activities have the end goal of simply reminding you of the positive aspects of your spouse. There are some ways to change your thinking  that can help to remind you of these positives.  One activity that will help to immediately focus you on positive thoughts is to make a list of the things that you appreciate about and qualities that you admire in your spouse and to refer or add to it as negative thoughts creep back in. As Gottman mentions, stating specific instances makes this activity more powerful and effective.

Another activity that may help is to reflect, hopefully together, about the happy times in your relationship. Spend some time talking about happy memories from when you were dating, your wedding and honeymoon, and that time that Uncle Jim fell in the fountain and you choked on your water from laughing to hard. Talk about your philosophies of marriage. Don't make this activity a competition or a chance to correct your spouse's recollection of events. Enjoy this time and seek to understand what your spouse enjoys remembering and to enjoy your time together.

These types of activities seem like common sense but they can be hard to think of when you are in the trenches of a declining marriage. Changing how you think of your spouse, i.e. seeing the pleasant conversationalist v.s. the habitual late worker, will change the tone of your marriage. It will make a difference in your everyday interactions. It can change the course of your marriage. The activities are not all that you will need to make these changes but they will give you a starting point from which you can work.

These activities will also give you tools to strengthen your marriage in the future. They can provide you a way to keep that positive thinking that is necessary for friendship, and marriage, alive. Think of them as taking your car in to get the oil changed. Your car won't break down right away if it's not done on time but it will run smoother if you are punctual with that maintenance. Don't just use these tools once and forget about them.

Gottman, J.M., Silver, N., 1999. The Seven Principles for Making Marriage Work. Harmony Books: New York.