Whether it's those lurking peak wedding months or the daily talk of royal nuptials, marriage is a subject we're hearing a lot about lately. Feelings about this trend seem to range from wild enthusiasm to mild resentment. Forgetting for a minute the adversity surrounding the institution of marriage and setting all ceremony aside, stripped down to its barest of bones, marriage is really just a long-term commitment to a serious intimate relationship.
Regardless of one's feeling about marriage, the idea of a lasting romantic relationship is of much significance to most people. So, despite this post's provocative name, what I really wish to offer here isn't so much a lecture on why a person isn't married but an explanation of why many people aren't able to form a lasting union with someone they love.
For many couples, the honeymoon phase is over before they even make it down the aisle. The reasons for this can be many, but one of them is a prevailing fear of intimacy. In nearly 30 years of research into the psychology of interpersonal relationships, both I and my father, psychologist and author Robert Firestone, Ph.D., have closely followed hundreds of clients and case studies of couples. In our research we have found overwhelming consistency in certain behavioral patterns that systematically sabotage real intimacy.
First off, the search for a partner to whom we feel a real attraction and deep connection is a challenge that it would be foolish to underestimate. The idea of a soul mate is a pleasing way to maintain faith that there is that perfect someone out there just waiting to complete us. The trouble is that when we seek this someone, we don't just look for a person who enhances our every attribute; we also look for people who match with our negative traits or fill holes leftover from our past.
If we are used to taking control, we may seek someone who is passive. If we are used to being a wallflower, we may seek someone who dominates conversations. Though the match may seem to work well or make us feel secure in the beginning, eventually we grow to resent our partners for the very quality that drew us to them in the first place.
As I wrote in my recent blog "Why You Keep Winding Up in the Same Relationship," the romantic choices we make are heavily informed by our early life experiences. If we grew up being treated as incompetent, it's very likely that we will seek out a partner who perceives us as incompetent. If we were intruded on, we're likely to choose someone who is overly attentive, focused or jealous. Conversely, we may seek someone who compensates for our pasts by acting distant or aloof. These often unconscious negative motivators reside within us like mis-attuned matchmakers, driving us toward destructive partners.
For example, a woman who grew up feeling rejected by her parents found herself choosing men who were distant and resistant to commitment. When she finally met someone who showed a real interest in her, however, she struggled to accept his affections. Even though her partner possessed the traits she'd thought she wanted, in many ways it was more comfortable to her to choose a more rejecting personality that fit familiarly into her previous self-image and past experience.
Going against our negative instincts and choosing someone who brings out the best in us is the first step toward finding lasting love. Yet, even when we find someone who is "good for us," there are many things we do to push love away.
In "Committed: A Skeptic Makes Peace with Marriage," author Elizabeth Gilbert wrote, "I mean, once the initial madness of desire has passed and we are faced with each other as dimwitted mortal fools, how is it that any of us find the ability to love and forgive each other at all, much less enduringly?"
Every human is flawed. Perfect soul mates don't exist, because perfect people don't exist. We have all been hurt in very particular ways that then allow us to hurt those close to us in other very particular ways. One of the ways we hurt our relationship is by distorting our partners. The flaws that drive us away from a loved one don't just appear the minute we move in or say "I do." They were there from the beginning when we weren't as likely to blow them out of proportion.
Yes, it is true, that often the closer we get to someone, the more driven we become to push them away. This is also a side-effect of a fear of intimacy lingering below the surface and warning us not to be too vulnerable or too intimate. However, this fear also motivates us to react to our partners in ways that are excessively controlling, critical and unkind. We start to read negative intent into our partner's actions and seek hidden meaning in their words. We can take a behavior as simple as a delay in unlocking the passenger door to a car as insensitive, or we can feel hurt by something as natural as our partner choosing to spend an evening out with friends.
When we sense ourselves becoming mean and critical of our partner, we should take note of how we may be distorting him or her. It's important to be aware of an internal coach informing us of our many faults as well as those of our partner. Be wary of a critical inner voice telling us to be upset, suspicious and mistrusting.
That voice may be saying things like, "Where is he tonight? I can't believe he didn't call you. He's so insensitive." Or, "All that she ever does is nag at me. Why won't she just leave me alone?" These thoughts are rarely entirely accurate representations of our partners. Still, the more we react to them, the more we actually provoke these characteristic in our partners. Worse yet, we accomplish the very goal of our critical inner coach; we create distance from our partner by failing to relate to him or her in a way that is sensitive or attuned.
In one of my father's books, "Fear of Intimacy," he wrote, "The average person is unaware that he or she is living out a negative destiny according to his or her past programming, preserving his or her familiar identity, and, in the process, pushing love away. On an unconscious level, many people sense that if they did not push love away, the whole world, as they have experienced it, would be shattered and they would not know who they were."
Though people claim to seek real love, when they find it, they are often unprepared for the many challenges that ensue. When we find someone who makes us happy, it often shakes us to our core. Our perception of ourselves and our lives is turned on its head, and we are forced to expand our capacity for love and closeness. Feeling another person's affection for us challenges any defenses we've grown accustomed to in the course of our lives. When these defenses are challenged, we tend not only to turn against our partners but to provoke them into acting in ways that fit in with our past.
For example, a friend of mine often tells stories of growing up feeling intruded on by his mother. Whether she showered him with excessive praise over small accomplishments or erupted at him when he neglected to study, he rarely felt appropriately seen or sensitively treated by her. After years of dating women who showed similar controlling patterns, my friend fell in love with a woman who he felt respected him as an individual.
After a while, however, he noticed himself having trouble making decisions and starting to make out-of-character mistakes like losing things around the house or getting lost on the road. His behavior started to provoke his partner, who found herself both literally and figuratively taking the driver's seat in their relationship. My friend then also grew annoyed by what he saw as his partner's new know-it-all attitude. By talking through it, the couple was able to gain a foothold on what was operating under the surface to cause the conflict in the first place. Though his motivation was entirely unconscious, my friend understood how he himself had provoked his partner's more dominating behaviors.
This pattern is shockingly common among couples. People who fear rejection find ways to push their partners away. People who feel aggressive find ways to control their partners, then feel critical for qualities they perceive as weak. We must be careful not to stage the scenarios that we later feel victimized by in our relationship. Manipulative acts like testing our partners with seemingly innocent questions about how we look or what they really think is never appropriate if we are hoping to provoke a certain response or to punish them for their answer.
If we are lucky enough to choose someone who inspires real feelings of love or passion, we must be wary of how we can try to alter that person to fit the phantoms of our past. It may be a struggle, but by getting to know ourselves and having compassion, we can show patience with ourselves and with our partners throughout this journey. We can share our stories and know each other as the individuals we truly are. By letting our guard down and revealing our soul, we may even find a soul mate.
To read more from Dr. Lisa Firestone on relationships, visit "PsychAlive: Alive to Intimacy."
Follow Lisa Firestone on Twitter: www.twitter.com/PsychAlive
Margaret Paul, Ph.D.: Fear of Intimacy
1) you compromise and adjust your expectations so you can be married. Love is secondary: what matters are the securities that come from marriage. A lot of people get married for the sake of getting married and take an ok relationship over a great one because it beats being alone. Also look at places like India where arranged marriage is common and where personal feelings are secondary to the unit that is formed. This is the most likely case of marriage and the adult version, the real version. Stories of everlasting passionate love are for the silver screen and people who can afford it, like Liz Taylor and Richard Burton. Yes over time emotional bonds can form and people can learn to "love" the other - but it happens over time and not beforehand.
2) you are lucky, just sheer lucky, that you found someone who is as you need them to be and to whom you are as they need you to be. This is sort of like winning the lottery. There are no rules. I know bi*&es who got themselves the best men and i know really amazing girls who are still single and are used by men and dumped. If you do happen to find someone whose heart, interests and personality are in alignment with yours, great, but that should no be the driver. Most of us have to go with no 1
To me, this was a more important statement than the title. The title kind of took the conversation in a unintended direction from what I see. It's kind of a shame it turned more into a discussion about "marry or not to marry". Not that that isn't an interesting topic in itself.
But I did not read this as being about marriage per se; but rather about long-term relationships. Otherwise I wouldn't have participated. All but the last three of our 38 yrs together have been lived without civil or church sanction, and neither of us ever cared one whit.
What was important to us was that we considered what we saw in each other to be important enough to work things out when they got tough instead of quitting. We saw more benefit in being together than not (though we did try that for one year many years ago), and worked out the issues in the context of that over-arching POV.
Whether the relationships are officially sanctioned or not, is the least important element of Ms Firestone's article from what I read.
Congratulations. Fanned for having such an open and truth-seeking mind. Cheo
There are many reasons why two people get together, be they good, bad or indifferent.
If you are not able to love yourself, then you are not truly able to love anyone. In other words you cannot give away something you do not have.
One might get involved behind, “Once we are married they will change.” Or “He/she is really going to enhance my life and make me much happier.” If you depend on someone other then yourself to make you feel complete it’s a very selfish reason for getting together.
Just my thoughts on this matter.
I have never wanted to be married and have never gotten married. I have had several long-term relationships and a number of offers. Not all little girls dream of finding Prince Charming, becoming a "mommy" or spend their young days playing house. For whatever reason, the idea of getting married has never been on my wish list. My closest friends are also unmarried and like it that way.
To those who desire being half of a couple, I salute you! Choose wisely.
I found marriage to be utterly boring, stifling and very unhealthy!
However, it does not mean automatically that a person is doomed to live alone, a hermit. A person can find some form of semi-permanent relationship, to use the current vernacular, a committed relationship. Both parties recognizing that it is not permanent and enduring, that it can be ended by a mutual agreement. Such a relationship can have any number of parameters that are acceptable to both parties. The idea that a relationship should go on forever is really not realistic. We live longer, we expand and grow intellectually, we all change. We are not the same person who entered the relationship at the beginning after the passage of time.
I guess I should drop my subscription to Match.com and stop going to strip clubs.
My guy and I just got married three years ago. For tax purposes--we moved to a state that didn't recognize common-law and we always file jointly. So we hied ourselves down to City Hall.
We were together, had kids, owned houses, worked in a home studio together--for 35 years before we got married. If not for tax issue, we'd likely have never had the ceremony..
We stayed together not because it's been easy or pain-free. Far from it. But a long time ago we both realized that we DID keep finding the same relationships over and over. Why? We concluded that we were looking for a partner who challenged us to look within ourselves--get beyond our comfort zones. And it was definitely uncomfortable sometimes.
At first (after the 'honeymoon period') we just crudely pushed each other's buttons. But as time went on and we consciously worked on it, (in a context of "the relationship is bigger than the events which happen in it"). We even took a break for a year to look at from there. Also had some counseling.
If you are asking yourself why we would work so hard, all I can say is some people you find are worth the struggle. We decided that about each other.
We're in our sixties now; it's still hard sometimes. And it's still worth it.
He has learned not to provoke me in order to prove he's right that I over-react, while I have simultaneously learned more and more not to over-react and to keep a sense of homor. The games we play in relationships can be pretty funny if you can step back from it.
It's been a matter of learning to communicate more effectively, and sooner, without blaming, or letting it build up. And we have learned to accept each other as we are. After all, a lot of those things are the reason we chose each other in the first place.