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Key points
- If couples committed as much skill training as money that went into a wedding, bliss might endure.
- Maintain good familial connections with both families to foster objectivity and a good marriage.
- Unrealistic expectations, bad arguing tactics, and wanting one's own way should be rectified.
- Happiness comes and goes. Fulfillment takes daily work on your relationship.
Months after save the dates were sent, menus and flowers planned, cake sampled and the dance floor trampled, we like to say the happy couple settles into married life. The work is done. Hold on! It’s only begun.
Connection and Complaints
Wedding registries would really aid newlyweds if they offered marriage resources, books, and retreats. Think the Gottman Card Deck App, at the very least. We all rarely think of unhappiness amid great planning, anticipation, and festivities.
As time goes by, wives feel lonely with a lack of emotional connection and husbands dislike that wives complain about them, says Scott Haltzman, MD, whose books feature secrets of happy marriage.1 Women are endowed with relationship radar, and a bit more of the bonding hormone oxytocin, which helps problem solving.
When inevitable conflict arises, a man’s instinct may be to win at all costs. Things can get ugly, Haltzman reports, but using detailed communication, reflective listening, and becoming an ally not adversary is key.2
As for where to seek advice, Haltzman says to beware of bias. Make sure those you confide in, preferably trained therapists, are friends of the marriage. Family members, adult children, lifelong best friends may be the least objective. When the going gets tough, a lawyer’s built-in incentive profits from putting marriages asunder. These options carry real and figurative costs.
Often, merely talking with your spouse to check out the evidence for your automatic thoughts clears up misunderstandings. Of all professionals, an effective counselor can teach this cognitive-behavioral tool and how to soft-start conversations if you need help.
Rules to Live By
Harriet Lerner, Ph.D., writes about anger and intimacy in Marriage Rules and provides over 100 easy-to-read tips.3 Her section on listening deficit disorder is spot-on. Forget about being right, draw the line at insults, and lower your defensiveness. Lerner provides 12 steps to tackle that last one, which looms large for most couples.
All experts agree that defensiveness poisons. John and Julie Gottman, both Ph.D. psychologists, refer to defensiveness as one of the four horsemen of the apocalypse.4 Lerner calls defensiveness the archenemy of listening because it interrupts, attacks, and countercriticizes. In Overcoming Passive Aggression, there’s a chapter on sabotaged romance and relationships characterizing defensiveness as indirect, void of respect.5 It veers to polarized thinking when you need to be curious about your partner’s position to grow and connect.
Maintaining Familial Ties
Lerner writes from a systems perspective, which is valuable as a couple differentiates from family of origin. “Don’t allow your partner to define your relationship to your own family,” she writes. “No matter how hard your partner makes it for you to stay connected to your family, the responsibility is 100 percent yours.” Lerner urges conversation, without trying to change or convince, to even out misunderstandings and find mutual respect.
Draw any family tree and you’ll find good and bad players. “If you think your little nuclear family is a hotbed of pathology, make it a special point to find the more functional relatives in your extended family and get to know them,” Lerner writes. “The more connections you make, the more objective you’ll be able to be about your family, yourself, and ultimately your marriage.”
Fulfillment Is More Achievable Than Happiness
Psychiatrist Gregory Scott Brown, M.D., author of The Self-Healing Mind, reports that patients use key events like their college graduation or wedding date as the template of happy times. That’s like a moving target, and happiness is an emotion, not a state of being. The more achievable goal comes with fulfillment. And it helps to accept who you are, make the most of what you have, and be optimistic about the future.
There's a tendency when married to only focus on the couple, followed by the family you create. Of course, time alone together bonds partners. Family time away from scheduled events is crucial, too. Yet don't get lost or isolated in only what you create anew.
Quality relationships of all kinds remain one of the best investments in your long-term mental health, according to a Harvard study of adult development.7 Experts agree that counseling for the premarital couple, newlyweds, and throughout marriage should be seen as a strength rather than a patch in weakness.
Copyright © 2023 by Loriann Oberlin, MS
References
2. Marriagetrac
3. Harriet Lerner
4. Gottman.com
6. Gregory Scott Brown, M.D., author of The Self-Healing Mind.
