In their new book, The Normal Bar, Northrup, Schwartz, and Witte (2012) developed an interactive, on-line relationship survey that asked people hundreds of questions about their primary love relationships. They collected data on romance, sex, dating, money, household tasks, compatibility, etc., from over 70,000 people in many different countries worldwide. They were interested in a basic question: What constitutes a normal happy relationship?

While this book is full of interesting, enlightening and surprising results, what interested me was that an overwhelming majority of individuals who took the survey (74%) reported that they were happy with their partner. In other words, it’s normal to be happy with your significant other! They also asked people to share what was the greatest source of their happiness in their lives. Responses included money, children, faith, relationship, career and health. Just over half of all men (56%) and women (54%) who took the survey said that it was their relationship with their partner that was the greatest source of their happiness. The other areas of their lives didn’t even come close.

In the last 60 years in United States, marriage has undergone a dramatic transformation. Despite this, one thing seems to remain unchanged: Getting married and sharing life with a loving partner remains one of the most important and compelling dreams for young people. A recent survey found that 96% of those people who were polled say that they want to get married someday despite the fact that so many marriages continue to fail each year (Harrar & DeMaria, 2007). After questioning 1,001 people about their attitudes and beliefs about marriage, Harrar and DeMaria (2007) found 93% of them said that having a happy, healthy marriage is an important personal goal for them and 85% of those surveyed said that marriage is fundamentally a partnership between two people.

A loving partnership is an important life dream for a vast majority of people in the United States. According to Northrup, Schwartz and Witte (2012) the quality and vitality of that relationship also remains the greatest source of happiness for both men and women.

References

Harrar, S. & DeMaria, R. (2007). The seven stages of marriage: Laughter, intimacy, and passion, today, tomorrow, and forever. Pleasantville, New York: Reader’s Digest.

Northrup, C., Schwartz, P., & Witte, J. (2012). The normal bar: The surprising secrets of happy couples and what they reveal about creating a new normal in your relationship. New York, New York: Random House, Inc.

Many couples today are challenged with balancing work and life. When Martha and I are feeling out of balance, the first casualty is our playfulness. When the demands of our work and the commitments we’ve made put us into overwhelm, often what gets crowded out is play. When we step back, get a little perspective and make time for “us,” naturally and spontaneously, a sense of playfulness returns in our marriage.

Typically, when I think of play, I think of what Martha and I are going to do for fun, for amusement or for pleasure. Another definition of play is “freedom of movement or having greater elbowroom or leeway.” Whenever Martha and I are putting a priority on play in our lives, we feel less constricted by our schedules and responsibilities, we give ourselves greater permission to swing out and we feel free to have fun.

That experience of being playful together is what often attracts a couple to each other in the early days of their relationship and, throughout marriage, it is often that shared experience to which a couple is always returning. When Martha and I make sure there is play in our lives, we don’t take life so seriously, we can laugh at ourselves and we are a lot more fun with others. Curiosity, experimentation, exploration, risk-taking, humor, laughter and love abound.

If your lives feel like “all work and no play,” consider how the quality of your marriage will be in three months when you have taken no action to put play front and center in your lives. Spend 20 minutes with each other considering the following questions:

• What do you love doing together?
• What recreational activities give you both a feeling of being free?
• What gives you pleasure or joy?
• What activities give you greater elbowroom in your lives?
• What are some fun activities you’ve always wanted to do and haven’t?
• What are you committed to pursuing together in the next three months?

Together take out your calendars and put times for play in your schedules. Or better yet, if you can, put your calendars away and go do something just for fun!

Have you ever wanted to know what husbands really want in their marriages with their wives? Neil Chethik (2006) in his book, Voice Male, presented the results of his interviews with 70 husbands and surveys with another 280 husbands to find out. Most husbands whom he interviewed:

• Considered their relationships with their wife as most important in their lives and were committed to the quality of their marital relationships.
• Valued the physical, emotional and intellectual companionship of a woman and wanted a lifetime partner.
• Took their marital responsibilities seriously.
• Expressed their love to their wives through getting things done and side-by-side companionship, rather than talking face-to-face about issues or sharing their feelings with each other.
• Expected that most big problems in their marriages should be resolved to the mutual satisfaction of both partners.
• Rated managing the finances, balancing their family and careers, parenting their children and taking care of the household tasks as higher than having sex as aspects of the marriage that required mutual focus.
• Admittedly found it hard in the early years to have their children become the center of their wives’ attention, but, with time, found ways to accept their new role as a father.
• Became more interested in being at home as they got older in contrast to their wives who became more interested in being outside the home, developing new interests or building their careers.

The men he interviewed represented 8000 years of marital experience. Chetnik (2006) asked them what advice they would give younger men who were thinking of getting married. Here is some of the advice these men offered:

• Make your marriage a top priority. Your commitment to your relationship with your wife is key to a healthy and satisfying life together.
• Your wife cannot fulfill all your needs. Find other avenues for your happiness.
• Learn to negotiate and resolve problems so that you both win. Marriage takes both partners being 100% responsible for the quality of the relationship. Marriage is about creating a relationship in which you both feel loved and appreciated.
• Stay connected throughout all the stages of your marriage. Listen to each other, treat each other as equals, keep your commitments with each other and don’t take yourselves or your relationship too seriously.
• Create a shared future together. Nurture your partner’s dreams as well as your own. Invest emotionally and financially in reaching your personal and professional goals.
• Choose partnership as the model for your lifelong relationship.

One final note: Chethik (2006) found that couples who are successful in working out household chores in an equitable way have sex more often, are less likely to seek marital therapy or consider divorce and are happier than married couples who don’t!

Reference

Chethik, N. (2006). Voice male: What husbands really think about their marriages, their wives, sex, housework and commitment. New York, New York: Simon & Schuster.

The poem below by e.e. cummings is my favorite love poem. I was thinking about my 42 years with Martha the other day.  When she got her Ph.D. a couple of years ago, she manifested not only her vision for her life, but also my vision for her. Martha has always has been at my side when I have fulfilled my dreams.  Maybe that’s what e.e. cummings means when he says “you are my fate, my sweet.”  This poem reminds me that love, like life, is a mystery. Yet, love is real. Love connects me to Martha heart to heart. My father-in-law, Jeff Freymann, has for years said that love is infinitely divisible. Love seems to be what holds all things in the universe in relationship, like the moon, the sun and the stars, including your heart and mine.

i carry your heart with me(i carry it in

my heart)i am never without it(anywhere

i go you go,my dear;and whatever is done

by only me is your doing,my darling)

i fear

no fate(for you are my fate,my sweet)i want

no world(for beautiful you are my world,my true)

and it’s you are whatever a moon has always meant

and whatever a sun will always sing is you

here is deepest secret nobody knows

(here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud

and the sky of the sky of a tree called life;which grows

higher than soul can hope or mind can hide)

and this is the wonder that’s keeping the stars apart

i carry your heart(i carry it in my heart)

I was born an identical twin, one of two. My childhood and early teenage years orbited around my relationship with my twin brother, Wendel. We were “the twins,” a twosome, a couple, before we became individuals. As young adults, we went to very different colleges, moved to different areas of the country, pursued different careers and married two extraordinary women. Wendel was my first partner in life.

I’m now writing a book about how couples can create an enduring and fulfilling partnership in their marriage. Much of what I’ve learned about being a good husband and partner I first learned in childhood as a twin. Even though our “sameness” was most prominent to others, I knew early on that we were also different from each other. Although we were identical twins, we never saw each other as the same. We saw ourselves as equal. We made sure that we each had the same opportunities as the other. We took turns. We always considered what the other wanted to do. We didn’t try to dominate one another or deliberately try to be better than our twin.

Fairness and choice defined our relationship. On our birthday, I might cut the cake and Wendel would choose the first piece. What one of us received, the other got as well. We enjoyed being together. I had a built-in playmate. I had a built-in partner. We were not all that competitive. If we played on the same sports team, we loved to win together. It was much harder when one of us won a sporting contest and the other lost. Our yearbook quote was, “United we stand, divided we fall.” Equality, fairness, choice and winning together were all important lessons that I learned growing up. We also learned that we are distinct individuals. Each of us has made our own unique contributions in our careers and to those people in our lives. Today, we celebrate our individuality as much as we do our twin-ship.

Upon reflection, my wife, Martha, and I have created a relationship that rests on the same set of values. The challenge for me as a twin was to forge my own identity distinct from Wendel, while ultimately being able to celebrate our twinship. My challenge with Martha has been to create a fulfilling and enduring partnership in marriage where we both could express our individuality to the fullest. We learned that our very different contributions to the health and well-being of our marriage have equal value. We learned to care about fairness in our relationship. We learned to consider each other’s needs and wants in making our own choices. We have learned that for our marriage to work, it has had to work for both of us, individually and collectively.

In his extensive study on equality in marriage, Steil (1997) expressed his vision of the potential benefits of marital equality for husbands, wives and their relationship this way:

“In equal relationships, men have the opportunity to relinquish the mantle of total economic responsibility and family dependency, to involve themselves in parenting and to more fully express their emotional and nurturing selves. Women have the opportunity to develop themselves professionally, develop a sense of self independent of their husband and their children, and achieve economic independence and higher self-esteem (Gilbert & Rachlin, 1987). Finally, men and women together have the opportunity to be part of more intimate relationships based on mutual reliance and respect that is so important to a satisfying relationship and to both husbands’ and wives’ well-being.” (p. 115)

Since the 1970s, many husbands and wives, like Martha and me, have been reformulating their marriages in the spirit of equality, fairness and choice. Thanks to my relationship to my twin brother, I feel that I got a good head start.

References

Gilbert, L. A. & Rachlin, V. (1987). Mental health and psychological functioning of dual-career families. The Counseling Psychologist, 15, 7 – 49.

Steil, J. M. (1997). Marital equality: Its relationship to the well-being of husbands and wives. London: Sage Publications.

Sometimes, it is easy to think that a happy marriage is a problem-free marriage. Well, let’s check that out. Engage in the following little guided tour:

Imagine being together over your entire lifetime. Envision all the things that are going to happen over the next 5, 15, 35 or 50+ years. Imagine all the bills you are going to pay, all the shopping trips, all the vacations, all the activities with children, all the times you might move, all the jobs you might have, all the people you are going to interact with, etc. Now, imagine that entire time with your spouse. Envision the perfect life together, problem-free. During your very long life together, imagine your marriage having no problems whatsoever. 50+ years together and no problems in your marriage! You have done it! You have the perfect, problem-free marriage! Isn’t that absolutely ludicrous?

You may now find the idea of having a problem-free marriage ridiculous, but it is also worth considering that, when you and your spouse are experiencing a set of circumstance that are problematic for you, you sometime think that that problem should not be in your marriage. The good news is that you have the power to shift the way in which you view those circumstances, thereby, potentially taking a problem and disappearing it as a problem for you.

First, consider that one way that you create problems is to use the words “but” and “because” in your conversations about circumstances in your lives. An example might be, “We want a new car, but we have only $500 dollars saved in the bank.” Another way to say it is, “We can’t buy a new car because we only have $500 saved in the bank.” Using “but” and “because” will most likely always take a set of circumstances and make them appear to be problematic.

Now consider a way you can make a problem disappear or a set of circumstances appear much less problematic is to use “and” instead of “but” and “because” when you talk about those circumstances. For example, “We want a new car and we have only $500 dollars saved in the bank.” Both of those statements are simply true about the situation. Said this way, “We only have $500 saved in the bank and we can’t buy a new car,” allows you to see that maybe the second part of that sentence is not so true. You and your partner are the ones who are making the assumption that you can’t buy a car.

Using “and” when talking about a set of circumstances allows you to see what is “true” about a situation and what you may be saying about it that is not as true as you first thought. For instance, it may be true that you only have $500 saved in the bank. You might feel as though you can’t buy a new car, though, as you discuss it further, you may see that, if buying a car is important enough to you, you could take out a loan. Additional ideas may present themselves as well. You may consider buying a used car as a good short-term solution or reconsider whether or not you even need a new car. A fixed set of circumstances that were initially viewed as a problem can transform into circumstances that are an opportunity to explore together rather than a problem to be fixed. You likely will have greater freedom in having a conversation about a set of circumstances that, at first, seemed challenging, difficult and problematic.

Many married couples today have very busy and demanding lives juggling two careers, attending to their family and managing numerous other responsibilities. Doherty (2001) suggests that couples must continually find ways to foster their connection with each other. Successful couples put connecting with each other high on their priority list.

Doherty (2001) suggests that there are at least eight areas in which you can nurture your relationship by creating ”time for us.” More specifically, these areas include:

• Times to simply check-in with each other throughout the day are very important to the health and well-being of your marriage. Examples include saying goodbye in the morning, saying “Hi” when you return home after work, going out for coffee together or finding times to catch up on the day’s events.
• Times to share your love and be intimate with each other allow you to express your affection and passion for each other. Having sex is one expression and is important for many couples. Other examples include finding times to share your personal feelings and insights, your hopes and dreams and your appreciation for each other.
• Times to celebrate special occasions include your wedding anniversary, your birthdays, Valentine’s Day, the day you met or got engaged and other important dates that hold special significance for you. These times honor those special moments that are uniquely yours.
• Times to play together can take a whole host of forms, from going to a local fair, visiting antique shops or playing golf together to sightseeing or hiking in the woods. The purpose of these times is to quite simply have fun together.
• Times to relax together at home can include putting together a puzzle, playing a board game, watching a favorite TV show or hanging out by a fire while reading or playing games on your tablets.
• Dating allows you to connect emotionally through conversation and pleasurable activities, like going out to dinner, seeing a movie, going to the community theater or taking a drive into the countryside.
• You can also nurture their relationship by getting away for weekend for rest and relaxation, for sport and rigorous activity or for exploration and adventure. Such weekends away might involve staying in a bed and breakfast, going skiing or camping in the mountains.
• Lastly, nurture your relationship by getting away for vacation by taking a cruise into the fjords of Norway, camping in a national park, renting a cabin on a lake in New Hampshire or taking a week to ski in the Rockies. Get away from your daily concerns and renew yourselves and your relationship.

How well are you putting your relationship first and finding time to enjoy each other’s company?

Reference

Doherty, W.J. (2001) Take back your marriage: Sticking together in a world that pulls us apart. New York: The Guilford Press.

In a successful marriage, a couple learns to solve issues and problems effectively and, in so doing, they strengthen their marriage. Along the way, though, it is safe to say that they also periodically experience obstacles to effective conflict resolution. Here are just a few:

• Blaming your partner is most likely the greatest obstacle for effective conflict resolution. It usually leads to defensiveness from your partner.
• Personalization is a form of judgment by attacking the other person in some way. Rather than separating the person from the problem, the other person “becomes” the problem. The two most common forms of personalization are labeling (“You are irresponsible”) and generalization (“You never listen to me”).
• Another obstacle to effective conflict resolution is leaving the topic of the discussion by bringing up another problem unrelated to the issue at hand. This is often done to defend oneself and to go on the offensive.
• Lastly, another way to stymie effective conflict resolution is to use polarizing language, such as expressing things in language that is “black and white,” “all or nothing” or “always vs. never.”

Fisher and Uri (1981) suggest that the purpose of negotiation or conflict resolution is to serve and reconcile each person’s interests, not their positions. Couples who engage in effective conflict resolution tend to focus on mutual values, rather than individual positions. Examples of common values are safety and security, economic well-being, a sense of relatedness, recognition, a sense of control over one’s life, quality of life, etc.

Adopting a point of view and being right about it actually tends to evoke a positional way of being from your partner. When this happens, any discussion may become a battle of wills over who is right and who is wrong. Such interaction tends to escalate a conflict rather than move it toward a mutually satisfying resolution.

An effective strategy for achieving conflict resolution starts with each partner communicating what’s important to them. It works to keep the focus of discussion on specific and concrete behavior, maintain an open and receptive stance to feedback and be flexible in seeing different ways of resolving the issue at hand. It also works to agree on specific outcomes and make requests and promises of each other for effective action.

Couples who resolve conflicts effectively see themselves as partners and view resolving conflicts as something that will strengthen their marriage.   When a couple has an effective arsenal of conflict resolution skills, there is no problem they cannot solve.

 Reference

Fisher, R., & Ury, B. (1981) Getting to Yes: Negotiating agreement without giving in. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company.

We all have different ideas and notions about marriage. We form beliefs and judgments about marriage by what we watch on television and at the movies, by what we read in newspapers and magazines and by witnessing the success or failure of the marriages of our own parents, family members and friends. We form all kinds of beliefs about what marriage is and what it can be.

People may think that marriage makes you happy. There is good evidence, in fact, that people who get married and stay married are happier than single or divorced individuals (Waite & Gallagher, 2000). But does marriage make us happy? On the surface, it is a prevalent belief that seems to be true. We have to stop and think, though, that with the very high divorce rate in this country, marriage, in and of itself, will not “make” a couple happy. I may think my marriage or my partner will make me happy, but deep down, I know that isn’t quite how it works. I must bring my happiness to my marriage.

When Martha and I got married in August of 1971, we didn’t examine our beliefs or ideas about marriage or what kind of marriage we wanted to have. Like most couples, we learned about being married by the seat of our pants. Scott Stanley (2005) suggests that it is a really good idea that couples talk about the kind of marriage they want to have together prior to getting married. He advocates that married couples should regularly discuss the vision of their marriage and the kind of marriage they want.

Many couples once they are married may find out they have very different ideas about how to have their marriage work. They may have been told that marriage is really hard work, but have no idea about what that means in having a strong marriage. Newlyweds may think that a good marriage is one that doesn’t have any problems. In other words, you should strive for a problem-free marriage. Other ideas or beliefs about marriage are:

• Once married, you will live happily ever after
• Marriage is for soul mates
• Marriage is broken
• Marriage is a trap
• Marriage may spoil a perfectly good relationship so why get married
• If marriage doesn’t work, you can simply get out of it by getting a divorce

With all of these beliefs, ideas and judgments about marriage swirling around, often unexamined, it is a good idea to spend time with your betrothed or your spouse talking about what marriage means to you and what kind of marriage you want to have. What’s your vision for your marriage?

From time to time, it is valuable to explore your unexamined ideas and expectations about marriage with each other and to talk about what you want in your marriage. You can have a great conversation using the following questions to open up the inquiry:

• What are your ideals about marriage?
• What are your beliefs about marriage?
• What are your expectations about marriage?
• What do you want in your marriage?

You may find that you both have a good solid foundation in how you think about your marriage. You also may find areas where you disagree. As you share with each other, you might also consider:

• From whom did you get your ideals, beliefs and expectations about marriage?
• What are some of the values or attitudes prevalent in our society that have shaped your view of marriage?
• What are the some of beliefs or assumptions about marriage in our culture today?
• What are some myths that you know about marriage?
• What is the purpose of marriage?

These questions are designed to assist you and your fiancée or your spouse to connect with each other around what marriage means to you.  Your marriage is unique. Take the opportunity to talk about and design the kind of marriage you want to have together!

References

Stanley, S.M. (2005) The power of commitment: A guide to lifelong love. San Francisco, California: Josey-Bass.

Waite, L.J. & Gallagher, M. (2000) The case for marriage. New York: Broadway Books.

When I go into a bookstore and pick up books on marriage, I will often go right to the index to see if I can find the word “partnership”. It always surprises me when that word is not there. When I go on the Internet and search for “partnership,” I find many links to websites for domestic partnerships or for business partnerships. If you are partners in life, you must either be gay or lesbian or you must be building a business together! The conversation that marriage is fundamentally a lifelong conversation for creating a fulfilling and enduring partnership seems to be missing in the national discourse!

Fowers (2000) writes that a great myth about marriage today is that marriage itself will make us happy. While many people hope that marriage will fill their lives with lasting love and meet all of their emotional needs, it not guaranteed. When happiness or emotional gratification can’t be reliably achieved in marriage, people more often than not give up and end their marriage in divorce.

Fowers (2000) suggests that happiness and emotional gratification are not the main purpose of marriage. He posits that a strong marriage is built on a shared vision of the future, shared goals, sacrifices and teamwork around all the mundane tasks of sharing a life together. He suggests that couples who are committed to a good and strong marriage ultimately shift their focus from emotional gratification to the quality of their partnership in life.  Partnership is an important context for marriage today.

• Partnership is a context for the marriage of two people who see themselves as responsible for making the choice to get married in the first place. Being responsible for that choice forges a sense of personal responsibility for the health and vitality of one’s marriage.
• Partnership is a context for the marriage of two people who love each other and understand that love must be freely given and shared with each other. As partners, couples hold themselves responsible for keeping the love they have for each other alive in their marriage over the long haul.
• Partnership is a context for the marriage of two people who see themselves as fundamentally equal human beings with the same rights and opportunities to pursue their aspirations in life. As partners,  a couple honors commitments with each other and works together to create a life where the roles and responsibilities are equitable. If their agreements are not, they will talk and work out their household arrangements so that each person feels their contributions are fair and appreciated by the partner.
• Partnership is a context for the marriage of two people who support each other in fulfilling their dreams, both individually and collectively. As partners, a couple grants each other authorship or agency in their lives to pursue what is important to them individually. Their partnership also allows them to dream together and create a joint vision of their life together.

A partnership marriage ultimately is an ongoing conversation for sharing values and a vision for the future, for mastering life’s challenges together and for creating an enduring love in one’s marriage. A partnership marriage in this respect is not for the faint of heart. While it will take everything you’ve got, it will also be immensely satisfying.

Reference

Fowers, B. (2000) The myth of marital happiness. San Francisco, California: Jossey-Bass, Inc. Publishers.