When Good Marriages Go Bland: How the Dangers of Monogamous Desire Create the Need for Boredom

Romantic love is not for cowards. There are few things as dangerous as allowing someone to become so vitally important that life without them is unimaginable. You are rarely as vulnerable as when you allow one person to simultaneously become the object of your deepest emotional yearnings and your most delirious erotic longings. Add to that the desperate wish that he or she admire your strengths and accept your weaknesses. To depend on such a person is to embark on one of life's most risky adventures.

And the danger is not just imagined; it's real. Your lover could die, stop loving you, or, in numerous ways betray you. The intimate secrets and shameful insecurities with which you entrusted your partner could, in the middle of an emotional firefight, become weaponized and used against you.

Couples have ways of attenuating the terrifying risks of romance. One of the most ingenious is the unconscious creation of boredom. Partners imagine one another to be dull, predictable, and thereby safe. They co-conspire to hobble their destabilizing excitement with the delusional certainty of routine.

Sometimes, to hold onto both a sense of security and the thrill of adventure, excitement is projected onto someone outside the relationship. Whether a fantasy or an actual affair, being stirred by a stranger feels less risky. It seems like there is far less on the line, and one gets to return to the safety of the reliably dull partner at home.

Psychologists call this splitting. It's a defense mechanism we resort to when we have two or more seemingly incompatible feelings toward the same person, such as love and hate, or romantic idealization and animal lust. The infamous Madonna/Whore complex is probably the most familiar example of the latter. The fear is that one feeling will destroy the other. Or, we may worry that bringing these incendiary emotions together will somehow put us or our loved ones in danger. Sometimes we direct one of these feelings towards a third person, as if it could remain there for safekeeping.

As the late psychoanalyst Stephen Mitchell pointed out in his lucid writings on romance, there is a serious problem with this strategy of preserving relationship safety and adventure by splitting them apart. It doesn't work. Our partner can often turn out to be more complicated, unpredictable, erotically surprising, and changeable than we had ever imagined. And often, he or she will reject the role of the dull, safe spouse that we've assigned to him or her -- sometimes rejecting us in the process.

In the case of an affair, both our primary relationship and the short-lived fling can feel empty -- one is devoid of desire, and the other emotionally arid. In this situation, both relationships are likely to blow apart, leaving everyone devastated. So, the very perils we sought to avoid with this splitting -- abandonment, loneliness, humiliation, and loss -- are those we end up bringing about. Sadly, it is not until this point that many couples end up in my office.

The only alternative to this tragic scenario is to come to terms with the dangers and uncertainties that accompany enduring and erotically charged romantic love -- to summon the bravery needed to remain thrilled by someone to whom we are so deeply attached, and upon whom we are so frighteningly dependent. To make a commitment in the face of the very real insecurity that comes with letting another person matter this much, we must accept that love's risks cannot be disentangled from its rewards.

Stephen J. Ducat, Ph.D., is a clinical psychologist who works with individual adults and couples in the San Francisco Bay Area.

Comments

[valeryrockwell]

As a psychotherapist sees many couples,keeping desire alive in an ongoing intimate relationship is challenging. The concept of "splitting" actually starts inside ourselves. Each partner harbours both lust and boredom. These are parts of us within a , greater internal system, which psychologist, Richard Schwartz has written so eloquently about in his new book.

[carolinecantoo]

real love is never dangerous, only the idea that it comes from someone outside of yourself. It sounds like you are describing something else. Give yourself the validation that you think you need from your partner and see where that goes. I am married to me and I live with a wonderful man only because I see him that way. This realization has made life pretty damn sweet. Be what you want.

[MerhabaAbi]

HuffPost's Pick

Thank you for knitting together some oft confusing contadictory emotions. As much as I love my wife, I think the reason we argue is the knowledge of the very risk you mentioned. She and I have to trust each other so much with very important parts of our emotional selves. It can be quite frighteneing at times. But the thought of not having her in my life conjures such a profoundf sense of emptiness that it is unbearable. I'll try to remember this next time we argue and just tell her that I love her.

[Mezcalero]

That is touching

[carolinecantoo]

." the thought of not having her in my life conjures such a profoundf sense of emptiness". I would suggest questioning your thoughts as it appears those are what is causing or conjuring up these painful feelings.

[RobinSeattle]

People are so complex that we have to be careful about overgeneralizing (did I just do that?). Each couple is its own unique case.

On a History Channel show about human sexuality, they indicated that the four year mark is one that is dangerous to the continuation of a monogamous relationship because women often subconsciously go looking for different (or better?) genetic material to mate with. Moreover, married women, when they go out, tend to be more sexually forward than single women. I'm suire for some women, they have a need to have their attractiveness revalidated by engaging in that behavior.

Women also often lament the disappearance of spontaneity and mystery as their current relationship wears on into a more and more routine format.

It would be interesting to see what everyone thinks about all this.

[amylase]

Nice ideas. Thank you for bringing psychoanalytic writing to the mainstream. I am a psychologist in training and can use these ideas in my work. I will send this article to my colleagues. I love Stephen Mitchell's Can Love Last? Maybe your readers will too.

[JustinThyme]

First off OTAYPANKY, If that's your real name, your rude excuse for what I'm sure you think is a clever comment, is off topic and inappropriate. You are truly snarking up the wrong tree.

I have to say that my initial reaction to this well written article is that it gives a relieving voice to the quiet angst that exists in any relationship that I have had or observed. This subtle terror is the foundation, the groundwork for the inevitable sabotage that is instinctively laid at the feet of every new relationship while waiting for the delivery of the emotionally weighty baggage. In the case of my own ill fated marriage her luggage seemed to arrive seven months later. I will re-read this article and come back with a hopefully more lucid comment.

[OtayPanky]

Business not so good, eh?

Happy hunting!

[gfk]

Otay is often nasty to the professionals who write interesting blogs here. Psychologist do you wrong otay? Not all professionals are in it for the money. In fact, if you want money you do not go into the helping professions at all. Nasty, nasty, nasty.

Well written blog btw and interesting take on romantic love.