Love Like You’re Middle-Aged

People often mate in their teens and early 20s, before their frontal lobes are fully matured and, often, while they’re still developing a vocational identity, a set of values to live by, and a way to balance commitment to others with self-care. In other words, many people mate before their own identities are reasonably consolidated.

Every couple is rife with conflict, because conflict simply means incompatible goals, and as long as you marry a human and not your laptop, there are going to be incompatible goals. (Freud said that there are incompatible goals even when we’re alone because of our own conflicting agendas.) When you’re young, your selfhood is at stake, not just the matter at hand; you have fights not only about what will happen next and what kind of relationship you’ll have, but you also have fights about who you are.

I was telling trainees the other day how much I like the marriage depicted in Andrea Savage’s TV series, I’m Sorry. Some said they wouldn’t want to be in a marriage like that, with its relentless, almost compulsive humor and its lack of tender concern. But Savage’s character on the show is compulsively funny and insensitive, so a marriage that fit her would have to be like the one on the show. It’s not a marriage I’d want to be in, but it’s a good marriage for the character and her husband (whose good-natured complacency is enlivened and invigorated by the marriage).

This got me thinking about the fact that the couple is in their 40s. If they’d met in their early 20s, it’s easy to imagine that he would find it annoying that she (a professional comedy writer) thinks he’s not funny, whereas it’s clearly a part of his identity that in his legal practice, he is the resident wit. In their 20s, she might well have found his steadiness a kind of prison. But in their 40s, he knows who he is and doesn’t mind living with someone who is livelier and funnier than he is. And she knows who she is, and she doesn’t mind living with someone who is steady. He sees her as a firecracker, not as a bomb, because he knows he doesn’t break; she sees him as a tether, not as a leash, because she knows she can’t be tamed.

Taking a Spouse's Behaviors Less Personally

In fact, a lot of second marriages are just more laid back than first marriages. Certainly one reason for this is that many second marriages involve only part-time parents, and it’s easier to be laid back, no matter how much you love your kids, if you don’t have to get them breakfast and dinner and keep track of their whereabouts every single day of your life.

But it’s also true that second marriages are often more laid back because the spouses have well-developed vocational, social, and spiritual identities that don’t depend on how the other spouse behaves.

In successful long-term marriages, I’ve noticed a relevant trend. It often happens that they fought about something intensely at the start. Maybe their political differences led to constant disharmony, or maybe her dominance constantly made him rebellious and his resulting unreliability constantly made her try to dominate him. In couple’s therapy, or on their own, she learned to be less domineering and he responded by letting her count on him more; or maybe he learned to be more reliable and found that it led to her being less of a control freak.

At first, she interpreted his disappearances as a reflection of who she was. They made her feel devalued or incidental or ineffective in living a certain way. He interpreted her efforts to control him as insulting to his manhood or his freedom or his ability to make a sandwich without adult supervision. But they worked it out, had their careers, raised their kids, found their hobbies, and grew old together. In late middle age, after the kids leave, she becomes a constant fussbudget, harping on him about how much exercise he needs, and he becomes a disappearing act, running an errand and coming back hours later. But now they interpret their spouse’s behavior not as an insult to themselves but as a feature of who the person is.

Learning to Appreciate a Partner's Weaknesses

I think the next step in elevating one’s spouse is not only to accept their foibles but to appreciate them. He may notice that he never has to worry about the housekeeping because she is a control freak, and she may notice that she never has to worry about the marriage getting stale because he is an adventurer. But even if all they do is stop taking it personally, the marriage can be a kind of paradise. (Not the paradise we’d design for ourselves, but one suitable for who they happen to be.)

But it’s hard not to take things personally when you are still creating the person who is affected by things. That person tends to get defined by events, not merely affected by them.

Do people convinced of their own worth accuse others of “disrespecting” them? I doubt it. I think they’re more likely to laugh or get exasperated and say, “You’re treating me like a child,” rather than implying that they need the partner’s help to convincingly portray an adult.

Relationships Essential Reads

Does Power Corrupt the Heart?

The Invisible Erosion of Self in Avoidant Relationships

When you lack a solid “life-CV” and a securely organized sense of efficacy, you demand “respect,” like a shavetail lieutenant demanding salutes from the troops. (In my experience, only psychologists unsure of their abilities make others call them “doctor.”) So many fights in young romance are about respect; it eases the burden on the relationship to secure your own. Good relationships are like ballroom dancing: there are occasional dips and lifts, but generally, each partner stands on their own two feet.