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Spirituality
Are You Rational About Your Marriage?
Irrational beliefs are often the cause of martial problems.
Posted February 28, 2019
In an earlier article, “The Roots of Marital Conflicts”, we talked about how conflicts often spring from what we believe about marriage and relationships. “Marriage should be like this and not like that; My partner should think or act this way and not that way.”
Some of our beliefs are rational and we have a right to them. But some are irrational, such as, “My partner should love me no matter what I do or say.” You’ll be surprised how many people actually believe this one – it’s called unconditional love.
Problems that come up over and over again might stem from irrational beliefs held by one or both partners. That’s because needs, wants and expectations based on irrational beliefs can’t be satisfied. And when we’re left wanting, we feel angry and frustrated, and these negative emotions can infect other aspects of a relationship.
In this article we focus on how you can identify your irrational beliefs – we all have them. While you’ll never get rid of all of them, you can at least find the ones that are particularly detrimental, and you can fight against their damaging effects by replacing them with more rational ones.
In order to uncover our beliefs, we first have to examine the thoughts and emotions that emerge from a situation. Self-reflection is the key tool for gaining insight as to whether the beliefs behind our thoughts and emotions are rational or irrational.
Review in your mind a problem you repeatedly face with your partner and how you reacted to that problem each time. Think about the emotions you experienced and try to uncover what thoughts and beliefs triggered those feelings. Once you identified the reason, why you felt that way, ask yourself three questions:
1) Is the belief logical? A belief is not logical if it cannot be supported by evidence or falls outside the bounds of human experience. For example, any belief that contains ‘should’ or ‘must’ cannot be logical because these concepts are absolutes and do not describe human behavior.
2) Is the belief consistent with your experiences? There are likely to be many past occasions when your partner has not behaved the way you may have wanted them to. So, expecting them to do so clearly does not fit with our experiences.
3) Does holding this belief help me obtain my goals? Assuming that your goal is to have a good relationship, an emotion that prevents you from solving a problem works against your personal interests. The negative emotions you experience from irrational thoughts will interfere with your problem-solving skills.
We have to be careful when we go through this process because it’s not always easy to tell whether a belief is rational or irrational. We might think we feel a particular way because of a rational belief, but an irrational belief can actually be what’s causing our thoughts and emotions.
Suppose we’re angry because our partner did something we didn’t like. We might feel our anger is justified because what they did was hurtful or inconsiderate. But what’s actually underlying our reaction is that our partner’s actions make us feel insecure. We want them to act in a certain way so we can feel more secure. These are irrational beliefs because we can’t force other people to act in a particular way, and our fears of rejection may be of our own creation.
We’re not saying that we can't have preferences as to how we’d like our partner to behave. Nor are we saying we can’t be annoyed or that we shouldn’t confront our partner when we’re annoyed. We’re saying that demanding or expecting them to be a certain way is where the problem lies. When we prefer something, we are prepared for the possibility that we might not get it. When we demand something, we are not prepared for not getting what we want, and this lack of preparedness can lead to non-adaptive emotions, such as anger.
Even if we can identify our irrational beliefs and we agree that they should be discarded, sometimes it’s hard to put that into practice. The problem is, while we may agree that a particular belief is irrational for other people, we may not believe that for ourselves or for the situation in question. That’s because we all have reasons why we think and act the way we do, and we think our reasons are rational.
And even if we acknowledge that a belief is not rational, we might still hold onto it, claiming that we can’t help it, that’s just how we feel or what we believe. That, of course, doesn’t make the belief rational, but it does give us an excuse to hold onto it, even if it gets in our way.
To become truly proficient at identifying irrational beliefs, it takes careful personal examination and a lot of practice. In fact, it will probably be necessary to have the same talk with yourself over and over again for each belief you’re trying to change. Be honest and forceful with yourself, and at the same time, be patient. The old behaviors or emotions can return because the beliefs you’re trying to change are well-ingrained, and it will take time to get rid of them.
To reiterate, a clue to rationality is your emotional reaction. Once you identify an irrational belief, you give ourselves an opportunity to dump it and replace it with a more rational one. In doing so, you’ll be very surprised about how your emotional reaction will also be much different – a problem that once produced strong negative emotions will not do so any longer. You may still get annoyed, but your emotions won’t get the better of you.
In the next article, we’ll get into the step by step process for replacing irrational beliefs with more rational ones.
