Getting married and staying married

I met with a couple I've been seeing for a while. Discontent has started to brew over the relationship. She's looking for an emotional connection, a meaningful "we" experience that, try as he may, her husband is not able to provide for her. She sees herself as having asked...and he sees himself as having failed... to meet her needs. Oh, and it's not that he's just insecure, she's all but told him: "You've failed to meet my needs."


And it occurred to me, at that moment, something that hadn't presented itself to me in quite that way of saying it before: getting married is a selfish act, staying married is a selfless act.

When someone gets married, he or she chooses a person because that person will "make me happy." Men and women go through the mental list, how nice is this person I'm thinking of marrying, how attractive, how rich, how thoughtful, how stable? What's the likelihood that this person will meet my needs? If the candidate falls short ("He's sweet, but will never amount to much" or "She's really smart, but she's not able to let go and have fun...") then the marrier-to-be takes a pass, and moves on to the next potential life mate. Let's face it, someone looking for a lifetime partner doesn't seek the person with the qualifications of "Who will be happiest in the world for my having chosen him or her," without taking into account his or her own happiness.

So, an individual picks out someone who will complete his or her needs, and there's nothing wrong with that! Then, he or she buys (or accepts) a ring, and they're off to a lifetime of happiness.

Not!

If picking the person that would make people happy would turn out as expected, I wouldn't have to write books about marriages and relationships. You see, while each partner A was plotting away on how Partner B would contribute to his or her happiness, Partner B was making the very same assumptions about Partner A. Once married, they both sit back and wait for all the happiness to rain down on them like candies from a busted piñata.

When marital problems begin, it often is in the form of unhappiness. When the discontent becomes excessive, one, or both partners, may decide it's time to bail out.

Staying married is a selfless act

Most people who are in long-term marriages have been through times when they weren't both happy. (Although many of them can't recall the time--which also tells you something.) The ability to stay in a marriage that is not bringing happiness, and shifting focus on keeping the marriage together, requires postponing the need for happiness, for at least one of the individuals, and putting an effort into finding a way to re-cement the bonds of the relationship. Often that means that one spouse must find a way to make another spouse happy, even if it is at the expense of his or her own happiness. It’s an effort that takes more than a few hours or a few days; often it can take years of sacrifice and building mutual trust.

I’ve written about many of the ways to help make marriage better, so I don’t think anyone who’s read my books would be surprised to learn that healing a relationship doesn’t come from sitting around expecting your mate to make things better. The subtitle of The Secrets of Happily Married Men, is “Eight ways to win your wife’s heart for ever.” In other words, I write about how to make a wife happy. And one need only have seen my recent interviews on “The Morning Show with Mike and Juliet” to know that, as I write about in The Secrets of Happily Married Women, wives in stable marriages understand how their husbands operate, and, rather than try to change them, strive to improve the relationship by making accommodations for their manly ways.

All of these things involve being selfless; and often these qualities and actions don’t come naturally. But they're essential to a healthy marriage.

Yet Karma does play a role. For, while being selfless in marriage is a blessing—and often a necessity—when you do shift from the selfish act of marriage to the selfless act of staying married, your relationship gets stronger and richer. And guess what? You end up getting the happiness you were looking for all along.

Gender Wars Alive and Well

Suppose you read a book that suggested that a man be kind to his wife, ask her if he could bring anything home on the way from the office, notice her new haircut, or to sit through a few hours of “American Idol” (if that’s what she likes) in order to build a better relationship. That hypothetical book (surprisingly one exists—called “The Secrets of Happily Married Men”—written, not coincidentally, by me) would be universally recognized as a useful instrument in the toolbox of marriage.

But what if your read a book that asked a woman to greet her husband lovingly when he came home every night, express heartfelt appreciation for his little acts of service (like bringing in the groceries) and warm up some leftovers in the oven if he comes home late from work. That’s much of what I write about in “The Secrets of Happily Married Women,” and it caused a heck of a firestorm when I discussed it on the “Morning Show with Mike and Juliet.” If you look at the >100 responses to a clip of my show on the popular women’s issues site “Jezebel”, (http://jezebel.com/5037660/mike--juliet-guests-purport-to-have-the-secret-to-a-happy-marriage) you’ll see that I’m not too fondly loved by people who have seen the clip.

I can understand why. Out of context, it sounds like women must do a whole list of things to make marriage better. The context, of course, is that men also must do a whole list of things to make marriage better. From my point of view, the issue isn’t “who’s doing more,” for the other sex. It’s whether we can conceptualize marriage as a place where we learn about our partner, and strive to make him or her happy. If a man has a deluded idea that his working makes a genuine difference in the life of his family, then his wife can spend her life trying to take him down a few notches, or she can say, “Thank you, Dear, I appreciate it.” Do you really think her life will be happier if she spends her energy proving to her hubby that she works just as hard as he does? I don’t see how she loses out by expressing appreciation, or doing nice things. I have found that such an approach makes her husband is more likely to want to come home, and want to do things for her. It irks me that my suggestions of seeing what your partner needs and speaking his or her language is characterized as “manipulation,” by some psychotherapists, and that somehow this approach is the opposite of “trust and respect.”

So, go to the clip show on Jezebel and take a look at the comments. Then tell me what you think!