Are You the Main Character in Your Marriage?

Healthy people think of themselves as the main character in their own lives, as I blogged here, but not as the main character in all of human history. In a marriage, where both parties think they’re the main character, this leads to conflict, one that Jane Austen famously solved with ironic humor at the prospect of two independent individuals trying to coordinate their autonomy. Irony about the far-fetchedness of the marital enterprise creates an effective vantage point, an affectionate and humorous context in which to resolve marital disputes.

There’s a tendency for couples who meet online to have a bit worse marital quality than couples who meet face to face (Sharabi & Dorrance-Hall, 2024), and for later marriages to last longer but without more satisfaction (Glenn, Uecker, and Love, 2010). According to the researchers, these findings may merely reflect the increased likelihood of online couples to be long-distance or to be more socially marginalized than people who meet face to face. People in later marriages may be more mature and less likely to see divorce as a solution.

Another explanation of these trends may be that meeting online and meeting later in life set the stage for treating oneself as the main character in the relationship. Online dating can treat potential mates as pictures and profiles and not as real people, mere images to swipe left or right. Later marriages may be populated by people who, as a result of living without a partner for longer, are more steeped in the sense that they do not share the romantic stage with someone else. Marital satisfaction may depend on coordinating the spouse’s sense of importance with one’s own rather than living as two main characters.

This reminds me of a story about George Roy Hill directing “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.” Supposedly, after the big-time movie star, Paul Newman, was cast opposite the comparative newcomer, Robert Redford, the producers wanted the script rewritten to prop up Redford’s presence. Hill, the story goes, insisted that he could solve the problem with the current script.

The film begins with a tense poker game that includes both title characters and ends with gunplay between Redford’s character and someone else. Hill keeps the camera only on Redford’s face while the conflict unfolds. By the end of the scene, the audience accepts Redford’s onscreen presence as equal to Newman’s.

How can we elevate our partner to co-star status in the story of our relationship? (This post is only for people who want a co-star; overly narcissistic or dependent people, who want a sidekick or to be a sidekick, won’t find much of interest here.)

1. We can keep the spotlight focused on them until it sinks in that they are indeed a co-star and not a supporting player. Every human is inherently interesting. Being boring is an adaptation to something, such as to feeling ignored or to hating one’s own vitality. Underneath, though, even boring people are fascinating.

Someone once said that real therapy can provide a sense of witnessed significance, and marriage can, too, if you listen closely to each other. Most mundane stories are boring, but if you’re fascinated by the narrator, they become interesting. There are some famous people who could tell mundane stories about how their day went that you’d find engrossing. Listen to your partner the way you’d listen to—fill in the blank with the celebrity or historical figure you’re most in awe of—and you’ll find that your spouse has become intriguing.

Once you have all the details of your partner’s daily life, you can use them to defeat the fundamental attribution error. This describes our tendency to ascribe our own bad behavior to circumstance and other people’s to character. They cut us off in traffic because they’re arrogant; we cut off others because we have to get to a bathroom. Contextual details help us avoid slipping into categorizing our partner, which makes them more like a whole other person and less like a minor character.

2. Use outside stimulation and relationships wisely. Porn is a good example. Whether porn means dirty pictures, Johnny Depp movies, or the Bloomingdale’s home furnishing catalog, keep track of whether it’s enhancing your connection to your partner or diminishing it. Find porn that feeds your romance; typically this means porn that complements rather than replaces your sex life. Ditto for other activities and relationships; scrutinize pickleball if it replaces rather than supplements spousal activities.

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3. Adapting to your spouse makes them important, someone worth adapting to. A shocking number of therapists, in my experience, think they are validating their patients by disparaging their patients’ spouses (and their patients’ parents, but that’s a separate problem). Good therapists and good friends create a context for resolving conflicts between spouses rather than one for winning such conflicts. Again, this does not apply to characterologically narcissistic or dependent spouses, but it does apply to the myriad spouses who occasionally act narcissistically or dependently.

Adapting to your spouse enhances their status and makes them a co-star in the marriage. Blaming your spouse and expecting them to adapt to you makes them an extra or even a prop in the story of the marriage. Find ways to complain that advocate for the relationship, not just for yourself. Find ways to complain that are affectionate and not derogatory, like two co-stars working out a scene rather than two divas upstaging each other.