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A few years back, we talked about how the social and cultural changes of the past few decades may have made marriage more difficult today, or at least made it easier to end one. We talked about the adoption of no-fault divorce laws, liberalized attitudes toward sex, and a rise in secularism, greater gender equality allowing women more control over their lives, and the blurring of marital roles resulting in less interdependency, to name a few.
We can add to this the idea that earlier generations thought differently about marriage, and more to the point, about themselves. They tended to regard the institution as sacred and their marriage as permanent, and they stayed married regardless of how each partner felt about each other. Their happiness and personal needs were sublimated to the needs of the marriage. It’s not that love wasn’t important, but couples in the past may have been more concerned about preserving their families intact rather than expanding their own horizons.
While the social changes over the last 50 years have fostered social equality and free-thinking, a by-product has been a shift away from conformity and a greater focus on personal growth and exploration. People today spend more time searching for ways to achieve their own emotional well-being and establish personally satisfying lifestyles. In short, we think more about ourselves and our personal needs today than did past generations.
Paying attention to our psychological needs is a good thing. However, it’s possible that a few of us have gone too far. Some social scientists argue that our quest for personal growth nowadays looks a little too much like narcissism.
Narcissism is the tendency to focus on one’s self and to put personal needs above all else. To be sure, highly narcissistic people have a few positive qualities. They have higher self-esteem, are more extroverted, are less prone to depression, and are generally happy with how they live.
However, narcissists also exhibit quite a few negative characteristics, some of which are especially counter-productive when it comes to personal relationships. They don’t often develop emotionally close ties to other people. They tend to lack empathy, so they have a hard time understanding or caring about the issues or problems of others. They also prefer to establish relationships with others who validate that they are very important people, and generally look to exploit personal relationships to their own advantage. When they feel insulted, criticized, or rejected, they tend to react with aggressive or verbally abusive language.
If narcissism is more prevalent and we’re more self-absorbed, it’s easy to see how that can work against marriage. We’re likely to put our personal interests ahead of those of our relationship. If we feel our own interests are threatened or unsatisfied, we may be more inclined to think the relationship isn’t working rather than adjust what we expect to get out of it.
Here’s an anecdote provided to us by a marriage counselor that illustrates how a couple’s individual’s goals and needs can interfere with the quality of their relationship:
Dave and Maria had been married for less than a year. Typically, couples who come to marriage counseling need some coaxing to uncover their problems. Not so with Dave and Maria. Within 15 minutes of the first session they were on the attack, accusing each other of a range of misdeeds and disappointments.
Their issues for both came down to unfulfilled needs and expectations. Each was highly protective of their personal well-being, and believed it was extremely important to achieve their individual goals. All that Dave and Maria had to say focused on what each was not getting from the other. Their expectations as to what each was personally entitled were strongly embedded in their belief systems, so they could only react with anger at the hint of those expectations not being satisfied. Interestingly, not once did either talk about their relationship in terms of “we”, nor did they talk about what each was getting from the other.
The truth is both Dave and Maria felt emotionally supported by each other, were connected and involved with each other’s lives and families, and had an active and enjoyable sex life. However, their personal needs overwhelmed and clouded their thinking, and that made it difficult for them to see that their marriage was actually providing a lot of benefits. These weren’t apparent because they dwelled mostly on how disappointed they were in each other because they focused on themselves and not their marriage.
Looking at things broadly, many couples today really have two goals they pursue simultaneously. They want to be married, but they also want to fulfill their own personal needs. Such a perspective is certainly reasonable, and in fact is psychologically healthy, but it can also put a relationship at risk. When our personal goals and the demands of our marriage are at odds with each other, we find it easier, and probably regard it as a personal responsibility, to walk away. Many of us are just not willing to sacrifice our individual goals for the sake of the institution. Author Stephanie Coontz sums it up pretty well: ‘‘Marriage has become more joyful, more loving, and more satisfying for many couples than ever before in history. At the same time it has become optional and more brittle. These two strands of change cannot be disentangled.”
As with most things in life, balance is the key. Dedicating attention to one’s personal needs, but at the same time attending to the interests of the relationship, is essential for making a marriage work. Sometimes you can focus on yourself, but at others, you should sublimate yourself to the couple.
