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The Relationship Pathway
The relation between any two decently married people changes profoundly every few years... every change causes pain, even if it brings a certain joy. Marriage is a long event of perpetual change in which a man and a woman mutually build up their souls and make themselves whole.
—D. H. LAWRENCE
WHY ARE you married?
Your answer to this question has everything to do with the longevity, happiness, and fulfillment you can expect from your relationship. While there are many possible responses, they all break down into discernible categories or themes, if you will, which guide the overall course of the marriage. For example some couples build their marriage around the theme of escape, hoping to use each other to avoid dealing with a world which they believe is either too overwhelming or too uninteresting. Other couples build their lives around achieving their basic needs, attempting to guarantee financial or emotional security for themselves—often at the expense of true intimacy or love. For most conventional couples, the primary motivation for marriage is companionship, cheering each other on as both partners seek their place in the world at large. Finally, there are those Exceptional couples who construct their marriages around fulfilling a marital imperative, a deeply held, clearly defined set of values, ideals, and goals. Over the next few pages, you will become more aware of the advantages and disadvantages of your own marital theme and discover the incredible benefits of building your relationship around a marital imperative, the only theme which all but guarantees the lifelong relevance, happiness, and success of a marriage.
That different marriages revolve around different themes is a fairly well established fact, but to date, no one has been able to show a meaningful connection among these themes. For example, based on available research, a marriage therapist could probably identify your marriage as, let’s say, a “blue marriage” and likewise tell you that it was not as desirable as a “green marriage.” But the same therapist would be hardpressed to tell you exactly how to move from your marriage into the more desirable one except perhaps to suggest that you need to “communicate better” or, “hope for better luck the next time you marry.” Until now, there was simply no meaningful way to tell couples what specific issues they needed to address to move to the next, more satisfying, stage of their lives together.
The Relationship Pathway is a model I have developed to explain how marital themes (and, in turn, marital satisfaction) can evolve over the life of a marriage. The Relationship Pathway illustrates the skills, attitudes, and behaviors a couple must learn in order to move from one major marital type to another. Further, it suggests that most marriages are basically good and can likewise become exceptional if a couple takes the time to learn what to do and practice what they know.
The Relationship Pathway (Figure 2.1) organizes five major categories of marriage (and a few subtypes) along a continuum of identity strength. (Readers with some psychology background may note the correspondence between the Relationship Pathway and Abraham Maslow’s “Hierarchy of Needs.”) Each marital type on the pathway is rated as being Impoverished, Conventional, or Exceptional, and as a couple moves up the pathway, the potential for marital happiness and longevity increases. Though every couple starts out at a different point on the Relationship Pathway, they all move along it one stage at a time. There is no skipping grades because not only does each stage of the pathway represent a shift in relational attitudes and the mastery of different skills, but each stage also reflects a change in the way the couple view their whole life. As such, it often takes a major crisis—the kind that makes us say, “I don’t know anything, anymore”—to motivate us to make the personal changes necessary to move from one relationship stage to the next. A person can move up the pathway without going through such a crisis, but he would have to be seriously and consistently attentive to his psychological and marital growth. Frankly, most of us are too lazy and distracted to do this, and it takes our lives falling apart before we are willing to take the steps necessary to move toward greater identity strength and deeper intimacy with our mate.
As you search for your own marriage on the pathway, try to keep the following in mind. First of all, resist the temptation to canonize yourself while demonizing your mate. Some people try to place themselves at the top of the pathway and their mate at the bottom: This is not the way it works. We all marry people whose identities are built around similar things to our own. Chances are, if you married a rotten apple, you’re not so shiny yourself.
Also, because it takes so much energy to move from one stage to the next, and because these stages are organized along a continuum, don’t be surprised if you find yourself between two stages. Most people are. Simply choose the stage or marital theme with which you most closely identify and start working on the recommendations listed in that section first, even if all the specifics don’t apply.
In order to help you understand the progression from one stage to the next, we’ll start at the bottom and work our way up.
Impoverished Marriages
Impoverished marriages get their name from the lower levels of intimacy, satisfaction, and longevity couples in them experience. The two major marital types that fall under the Impoverished rating are Deadly marriages and Shipwrecked marriages.
Deadly Marriages
MARITAL THEME: Escape from a world that is perceived as being either too overwhelming or too uninteresting to deal with.
In the Impoverished marriage category, the first stop is the Deadly marriage. A Deadly marriage occurs when two people build their lives around a self-destructive attempt to escape the world, which they have deemed either too overwhelming or too uninteresting to deal with. Deadly marriages come in two varieties: the Chaotic marriage and the Codependent marriage.
The Chaotic marriage exists when two people, equally bent on their own self-destruction (think of the movie Leaving Las Vegas), get together and become each other’s drinking buddies, sex partners, and possibly, punching bags. This couple is content to have just enough money to numb themselves through their day. These relationships rarely last, nor should they. If they do, it is often because one person (usually the woman) fears that leaving would jeopardize her life. The only way to have a worse marriage is to marry a serial killer, but the good news is you can really only go up from here.
A Codependent marriage exists when one person (it is usually a man), bent on his own self-destruction, marries someone (usually a woman) who intends to save him from himself. “Codependent” is probably the most overused word in pop psychology, and in the popular culture it has come to mean anyone who does anything for someone else that she really doesn’t want to do. This is unfortunate because it blunts the true, insidious nature of codependence.
Perhaps an example would help explain what I mean. Some people enjoy watching soap operas because, for an hour or so, they can forget about their own problems and lose themselves in the entertainingly hopeless problems of the characters on-screen. The true codependent person lives her entire life this way. The codependent has a whole laundry list of personal problems from which she distracts herself by becoming involved with someone whose daily existence is a life-or-death drama. The logic goes like this: “I can’t solve my own problems, so I will save this unsavable person, after which, he can save me.” Perverse as this may sound to any normal person, for the codependent this logic represents a win-win opportunity. Either the crazy prophecy will come true and the unsavable person will save her (this never happens) or the unsavable person continues to be hopeless, providing endless hours of wonderful, heroic distraction from the codependent’s own problems. Codependent marriages tend to exhibit a fairly high degree of longevity (due to the codependent’s tenacity) although, understandably, they are extremely unsatisfactory for the couple.
Recommendations for Deadly Couples
Relationships in the Deadly category are the only marriages which research strongly and consistently suggests would be better off dissolved. But if a Chaotic or Codependent couple wishes to remain together, they will have to accomplish one major mental shift (besides sobriety) before they can hope to move to the next marital stage (the Shipwrecked marriage). Specifically, they will have to learn to demand at least basic safety and basic financial security from their lives and relationships. Depending upon the specifics of the couple, AA, Al-Anon, and individual psychotherapy may all be indicated. Marital therapy per se is useless at this stage because there are barely two whole, functioning people here, much less a marriage.
Now let’s examine the next marriage type on the pathway, the Shipwrecked marriage. Though this type also falls into the Impoverished category, it is a breath of fresh air compared to the relationships you just read about.
Shipwrecked Marriages
MARITAL THEME: Providing the basics (financial security; safety and quietude) needed for a “comfortable life.”
Shipwrecked marriages represent the second stage of the Relationship Pathway. Once people become convinced that they cannot escape life, they begin to learn how to meet their basic needs. This is the primary work, the marital theme, of the Shipwrecked marriage.
The identities of husbands and wives in Shipwrecked marriages are still in their infancy. Lacking a solid sense of self, they use each other and their relationship to define themselves. Essentially, Shipwrecked husbands and wives view the world as a stormy sea into which they were cast with only the driftwood of their marriage to keep them afloat—hence the name. Shipwrecked couples either married too young to know they could expect more from life beyond the basics or were raised in homes where their material and safety needs were never guaranteed. Because of this, they distinguish themselves by how much of their lives revolve around pursuing the basic needs of life (financial security; safety). While all couples desire and even need these things, Shipwrecked couples never seem to know when enough is enough. They are either constantly pursuing more and more financial security or working to lead quieter and more stress-free lives until there is nothing left except the pursuit of these most basic of goals.
Shipwrecked marriages usually deteriorate into “brother and sister” relationships through the years because they are not so much founded on love as they are on functionality: paying bills, maintaining the house, raising the children. Likewise, the basic differences between men and women are most keenly felt here. Shipwrecked husbands and wives spend a great deal of time staring at each other saying, “I don’t understand what the hell you want from me. Why do you have to be such a (wo)man?”
Historically, Shipwrecked marriages lasted a lifetime, though they were less than happy. In the present day, due to both the loss of the divorce taboo and the social and career opportunities available for women, they tend to have an approximate lifespan of ten years (including any years of premarital cohabitation).
The set of basics which are most important to a couple will determine to which of the three types of Shipwrecked marriages they belong: Materialistic, Safety, or Rescue. We will take a brief look at each.
The Materialistic marriage values financial security above all else. This can translate into either the obsessive pursuit of wealth, an extreme level of frugality, or both. Materialistic marriages tend to have a traditional structure and the roles of the husband and wife are defined in an extremely rigid manner. Compliance with these roles is strictly enforced. The husband in a Materialistic marriage may or may not have an important, well-paying, or glamorous career, but regardless, he does not gain satisfaction from his work so much as he gains satisfaction from the money he makes or the power and esteem his work may win him. Being thought of as a “great guy” is very important to the Materialistic husband who builds his life around overcompensating for his basic insecurities. He is the person everybody likes, but when you think about it, has no close friends. (Tom Cruise’s character in the movie Jerry Maguire is a good example of a man moving through the Materialistic stage of a relationship.) He is often gregarious with everyone except his family, toward whom he is either neglectful or abusive. He also tends to be fairly jealous, possessive, and controlling with his wife. The wife, on the other hand, fears more than anything else that she would be unable to provide for herself in the manner to which she has become accustomed. Because she feels unqualified for any other work, the role of wife and mother has fallen to her. Though she says she loves her children, this love may be mixed with a fair dose of resentment because she often feels trapped by her life. This is the housewife who has been said to lead a life of “quiet desperation.”
Both husband and wife are extremely dependent upon each other. As previously mentioned, the Materialistic wife is dependent upon the husband for her financial needs and social standing. The Materialistic husband, on the other hand, is dependent upon his wife to uphold his fragile ego and legitimize him (“I’m married. I can’t be all bad”). His dependency on her is not quite as obvious on a day-to-day basis, but it comes out in force if she ever tries to leave him. At such a time he will either make overblown promises to change everything in his life that offends her (though he would be hard pressed to identify those things) or, failing at this approach, he may threaten suicide or homicide (“If you leave me, I’ll kill myself. Who knows, I might just take you with me!”).
Around the ten-year mark, many wives in Materialistic marriages strike a blow for independence. This is often precipitated by the wife either finding a way to meet her own financial needs or taking a new lover on whom she can lean. The marriage rarely survives such a blow. Those couples who do not receive competent counseling but somehow make it beyond this crisis phase will remain stable—though depressed—until the children are grown, after which the marriage may be threatened with another war for independence.
The second type of Shipwrecked marriage is the Safety marriage, which is at the other end of the spectrum. Safety marriages occur when a woman who has had a deprived or traumatic past marries a nice, quiet man who will not threaten her. The main theme of this marriage is safety, in the form of avoiding conflict and pursuing a completely stress-free life. By her choice of a husband, the wife is assured that any arguments are likely to be on her terms, although she is usually just as happy to remain quiet because, “Life is too short to fight.” The couple tends to have more than their share of financial problems—they are hardly the corporate killer types—although wives in these marriages are more likely to be employed out of the home (usually from necessity). Also, because of the wife’s influence, they are more likely to be churchgoers than their Materialistic counterparts, though their faith tends to be shallow, celebrating either feel-good spiritual vagaries or rigid religiosity.
This relationship goes along just fine until about ten years into the marriage when the wife finally becomes sated with safety and quietude and expresses a desire for more passion in her life and marriage. Unfortunately, she discovers that the same man who could not threaten her also lacks the skills and motivation to love her as well as she would now like. From this point on, there will be tension in the marriage—though it may not be voiced—as the wife drags her husband to therapy, church, support groups, anything that will “fix” him, and get her the husband that she needs. Even when it works, it is a painfully slow process.
Finally, the Shipwrecked Rescue marriage is the more satisfying hybrid of the two Shipwrecked marriages you have just read about. Identified by Dr. Judith Wallerstein in her book, The Good Marriage (1995), both the husband and wife in a Rescue marriage usually come from severely neglectful, abusive, or deprived families of origin. But unlike other Shipwrecked couples who eventually come to desire more intimacy or greater identity strength (thus inviting the tension that either propels them toward the next stage on the pathway or destroys the marriage), Rescue couples are just happy to have survived their traumatic pasts and never learn to ask for anything more from life. As one Rescue wife told me, “I suppose I love him. Not like most people mean it, but, you know.... He doesn’t beat me. He doesn’t drink too much or sleep around. He makes a good living. What do I have to complain about?”
Despite the relative “satisfaction” of Rescue couples, these marriages belong in the Impoverished category because they are still only about achieving the basics in life, are still seriously lacking in intimacy, still exhibit unhealthy levels of mutual dependency, still depend upon lives that are too sheltered from the world at large, and—generally speaking—are not marriages that anyone with a healthy upbringing would aspire to.
Recommendations for Shipwrecked Couples
In order for Shipwrecked couples to move to the next step on the pathway (Conventional marriages), they need to look at the following in their lives.
1. Expect more from life. If you are in a Shipwrecked marriage, you have learned that it was either foolish or selfish to want more than “the basics” from life. To a large degree, this is what caused you to create a marriage that resembles the alien houseplant in the musical Little Shop of Horrors. That is, it sucks the life out of you to sustain itself. A healthy marriage is not a drain; it is a life-giving thing that empowers you to become the person you were created to be. The first step toward this marital ideal is to stop thinking of your dreams, goals, ideals, and values as something to take up one day after you win the lottery. Finding work or roles that are personally meaningful—as opposed to merely practical, well-paying, or even important—is essential to entering the next stage of your identity development and married life.
2. Learn to meet your own needs. In order for love to blossom in your marriage, you have to rout out your dependency. What do you rely on your mate to do for you that, at this point, you are unable or unwilling to do for yourself? Earn a living? Clean house? Cook? Discipline your children? Make friends? Feel good about yourself? Get the training, practice, or counseling you need to overcome your neediness, because need chokes off love.
3. Relate to your mate. Shipwrecked spouses spend far too much time standing around wondering what their mate wants from them. You have no excuse for this. Books like John Gray’s Mars and Venus series, Gary Smalley’s Hidden Keys to a Loving, Lasting Marriage, or Deborah Tannen’s You Just Don’t Understand, and programs like Promise Keepers, PAIRS, or Retrouvaille, etc., were meant for you. Take advantage of them. Also, seek individual or marriage counseling to help you be accountable for the changes you want to make.
4. Challenge your addiction to comfort. If you have a chaotic past, you may feel you are now entitled a bit of peace and quiet. Unfortunately, this may make you obstinately unwilling to give any more to your mate than you decide is necessary. You may be blatantly dismissive toward, or passively ignoring of, your mate’s requests for more time, more attention, more anything. Likewise, you may tend to nag your mate about his or her faults as a way to escape dealing with your own. Both are recipes for disaster. If you wanted comfort, you should have bought a lounge chair, not a marriage license. Get to work on fulfilling your and your mate’s destinies now.
If you are currently in a Shipwrecked marriage, I want to encourage you to do the work necessary to move to the next stage. The crisis these marriages encounter around the ten-year mark is not so much an interpersonal problem as it is an identity problem. Stop blaming your mate for your misery and begin working to find your own place in the world. Your mate may disapprove of your efforts, but in many ways, this is just the tension your psyche requires to build some identity strength. Let your spouse be the stone against which you sharpen the sword of your identity. For now, let your marriage meet your basic needs while you pursue your growth. In the meantime, try to encourage your spouse to grow as well. If he or she does, great. If not, then you can reevaluate your decision to stay in your marriage after you have achieved a position of greater personal, social, and financial strength.
The next stage on the Relationship Pathway accounts for most marriages and represents what the Shipwrecked couple will graduate to if they successfully complete the work I outlined above.
Conventional Marriages
The marital theme of a Conventional marriage is generally to support and maintain a couple’s place in the world. Once people are capable of meeting their own basic needs, they become interested in finding a group with which they can identify and they are ready for a Conventional marriage. Even though Conventional couples exhibit some of the same qualities, attitudes, and skills as those couples farther along the pathway, they have not yet mastered them. Depending upon how the couples marital theme is played out, the Conventional couples will find themselves in either a Storybook or a Star marriage. Basic requirements for admission into either type of Conventional marriage are as follows.
1. Both husband and wife must be relatively sure of their own ability to provide for at least their basic financial needs, even if they are not currently employed.
2. Both husband and wife must have found personally meaningful work or social roles to play. For example, a physician whose identity is in the Shipwrecked category enjoys medicine because of the money, power, and prestige her work affords her, while a physician whose identity is at least in the Conventional category truly enjoys the art of medicine. In a similar way, to qualify as a Conventional stay-at-home mom (as opposed to a Shipwrecked stay-at-home mom), the woman must sincerely believe that by training or experience she is qualified to do something else, but has chosen to stay home because she finds the role personally meaningful and socially valuable.
3. Both husband and wife must have at least a casual identification with, or membership in, some significant “values group”; for example, church or synagogue, professional organizations, political/community organizations, men’s/women’s groups. Such identifications are important because, as Abraham Maslow pointed out, being accepted by and belonging to the world at large is a necessary step on the road to actualization. Likewise, analyst Erik Erikson showed how identification with some form of values group (even a conflicted identification) is a necessary part of developing healthy identity strength.
The Conventional husband and wife will use their membership or identification with such groups to sharpen their self-concept, clarifying the values that are important to them (although “values” at this stage tends to mean a particular political/social agenda rather than a marital imperative or a personal mission or code). Much of the Conventional couple’s involvement in their respective groups will involve the husband or wife comparing themselves to other members in the group to see how they measure up, a kind of psychosocial “keeping up with the Joneses.” This activity plants the seeds of accountability in the marriage (“I’m at least as good a spouse as so-and-so is.”) which, if allowed to blossom, will be the most important catalyst for moving the couple to the next stage on the pathway.
4. Both the husband and wife must have negotiated at least the most basic communication differences between men and women. Conventional couples may occasionally fall into that “it’s a guy thing” or “it’s a girl thing” trap, but this is the exception, not the rule as with Shipwrecked couples.
These are the most important attributes distinguishing Conventional marriages from their Shipwrecked counterparts, who are still struggling to figure out what to do with themselves apart from their marriage, and tend to have a mildly paranoid, self-protective attitude toward the world at large, especially organized groups.
Conventional marriages are the first relationships on the pathway that are founded on love. The love here is warm and comfortable, though the degree of intimacy can be a bit shallow due to the Conventional husband and wife’s tendency to get lost in their own little worlds and do not attend enough to their marriage. In fact, the ultimate success of the Conventional marriage is dependent upon the couple’s ability to maintain their priorities and perspective. Doing this will prevent the number one threat to Conventional marriages: “growing apart.” (See chapters 5 and 7.)
Besides growing apart, the other two problems that all types of Conventional couples encounter are domestic scorekeeping (whose turn is it to do what chore or how much of a contribution is a “fair” contribution to the marriage), and a game I call marital chicken. Marital chicken is reminiscent of the old game of chicken played in cars, in which two people drive toward each other at high speeds in an attempt to see who veers off first. Marital chicken is played when a husband or wife says, “I would be more romantic/sexual/attentive/ helpful/emotional/reasonable if you would only be more romantic/ sexual/attentive/helpful/emotional/reasonable, but I know you, you’ll never change.” Marital chicken serves the dual function of excusing spouses from changing anything about themselves while allowing each to feel self-righteous at the same time. As you might guess, marital chicken can be addicting.
Conventional couples are susceptible to these games because, though they have a fair amount of identity strength, their identities can be said to be more in their adolescence. As such, Conventional husbands and wives fear “losing themselves” to the marriage and employ such games as self-protective measures. What Conventional couples must learn as they mature is that a truly strong identity cannot be lost or stolen. Such fears tend to say more about the weakness of the individual than they do about the potentially “oppressive” nature of either a marriage partner or of the institution of marriage itself. Considering all these factors, Conventional marriages tend to be moderately stable and moderately satisfactory.
Now let’s explore the two varieties of Conventional marriages: Storybook and Star marriages.
Storybook Marriages
MARITAL THEME: Finding their place in a world of conservative values.
This couples’s search for their niche will eventually lead them to seek greater involvement in groups such as community organizations or religious institutions that are considered to reflect traditional values. The marriage itself has a traditional structure to it, however. Unlike the Shipwrecked Materialistic wife who had no choice but to stay home, the Conventional Storybook wife has other options available to her but chooses to stay home because she believes that role is important. Her employment before marriage was usually thought of as something to do until she achieved her primary goal of marriage and family. (“Someday my prince will come.”) Though the Storybook wife may be publicly deferential to her husband, she definitely sees herself as the “woman behind the man” and will not hesitate to push him if she feels he is falling below his potential. The husband, for his part, is ambivalent about this pushing. On the one hand, he doesn’t like to be told what to do. On the other hand, he doesn’t mind being mothered.
The Conventional Storybook husband is the breadwinner of the family, but he tries to be careful not to lord his position over the family like a Shipwrecked Materialistic husband would. One major issue the Storybook husband deals with is that since he gets so much of his identity from being a (insert family name/cultural identity here) he may have a difficult time standing up to mummy and daddy, even when his marriage depends on it.
Spousal roles could best be defined as “semipermeable.” The Storybook husband usually solicits his wife’s opinions on the finances, but most of the time ends up explaining why his way is the best way to go. Likewise, the Storybook wife asks her husband’s opinions on the managing of the domestic front, but then explains why her way is the best. In general, the spousal roles in Storybook marriages are more distinct and well defined than those of more satisfied couples further up the pathway. However, they are not nearly as rigid and legalistic as the roles in Shipwrecked marriages.
As I mentioned above, the primary danger to all Conventional marriages is “growing apart.” For the Conventional Storybook marriage, this usually means that the husband throws himself into work, while the wife throws herself into maintaining the home and caring for the children. One day, the couple wakes up to find that they are living parallel lives. The only way to prevent this is for the husband and wife to at least maintain some interest in each other’s worlds. This is difficult for some Conventional couples who can get a bit lazy about pushing themselves to share in activities with their mate that are not of great interest to themselves. Often what propels a couple through these selfish tendencies are the examples of other, more attentive married couples in the groups to which they belong. Conventional couples may be willing to ignore their own mate at times but they despise being found wanting by other members of their group. It is this accountability that—when it works well—reminds Conventional couples to care for their marriages. Those Conventional couples who belong to “values groups” that do not specifically support marriage run a considerably higher risk of divorce
Now let’s look at the Storybook marriage’s estranged cousin, the Star marriage.
Star Marriages
MARITAL THEME: Supporting and maintaining each other’s place in the world.
The only real difference between Storybook and Star marriages is that Star couples build their marriages around more liberal political beliefs, including feminism. Likewise, rather than seeking more active involvement in traditional religious and community organizations as their Storybook cousins do, the Star couple often get involved in professional and political organizations and community groups with a more liberal social agenda.
The Star couple’s marriage is the thing from which the husband and wife can draw strength to go out and conquer the world. Proving themselves in the workplace is perhaps the single most important agenda for the Star couple. Their work may or may not be glamorous, but this is less relevant than the fact that “doing the best job possible” or “shining” at the office is personally important. The Star couple is susceptible to all the pitfalls of their Storybook cousins. Only the details differ. For example, the Star couple’s risk of growing apart is played out in both the husband and wife’s devotion to their work. If the couple is not careful to share some interests and schedule some time to be together, their home can become the place where they carry on a collective monologue as they work on separate projects, coordinate separate schedules, and pursue separate civic involvements, but rarely, if ever, relate to one another.
Also, the Star couple, being consciously or unconsciously more sensitive to the motto, “the personal is political,” is very attentive to domestic scorekeeping. Arguments about the “fair” division of labor are fairly common, especially in the earlier stages of the marriage. As for marital chicken, it is often played when negotiating work schedules. “You know I can’t go to your office party on the third, I have a meeting that night. I would never ask you to give up an important meeting for me!” or “Of course I’d love to come home early and go to a movie but the project committee is meeting for dinner. You know how important this is to me. Why are you being so needy right when I’m getting my chance to shine?”
Children are also a sensitive issue for the Star couple, who tend to fear both “losing themselves” to the parenting role and what having children may do to the balance of power in the relationship. As with Storybook couples, Star couples need to remember that a truly solid identity cannot be lost. To achieve greater identity strength, Conventional couples will have to develop a clearer sense of their own values, ideals, and goals which will then form the basis of their marital imperative. This, more than anything, will move the marriage toward Exceptional couplehood (see below).
Recommendations for Conventional Couples
To move beyond the Conventional stage, couples must concentrate on the following.
1. Solidify your value system. The most important challenge that stands between the Conventional couple and Exceptional couplehood is developing a marital imperative: a deeply held and mutually shared set of values, ideals, and goals that will guide the couple’s life and marriage. In order to become an Exceptional couple you must examine how your values can motivate you to give more of yourself than seems “fair” and make choices that might make you seem somewhat “unconventional” to others. For example, a more Conventional husband may excuse himself from acting lovingly toward his wife because he feels her present behavior does not warrant such generosity (and his friends may congratulate him for not being a doormat), but the Exceptional husband is more immune to such periodic lapses by his mate (after all, he has them too) and will continue to be loving even in the face of them because that is the kind of person he wishes to be when he “grows up.” The Exceptional person will not allow himself to become a victim, but he also knows that to be true to himself, he must first be true to the values he upholds.
One major aid to the process of clarifying and solidifying one’s values, ideals, and goals is pursuing a continually stronger identification with, and apprenticeship to, the specific ideals upheld by a particular values group (church or synagogue, men’s and women’s groups, political organizations). This is the method used by many “naturally occurring” Exceptional couples.
Up until now, the more Conventional couple has appreciated their particular values group for the comfort they receive, or sense of importance they derive, from being involved. For example, a Conventional couple might attend a particular church because, “even though we don’t agree with many of the teachings, it gives us comfort to go,” or they might belong to a civic organization because “it gives us a sense of purpose.” This attitude is fine up to a point, but good as it is, it is basically a self-centered approach to faith and works. To move to the next level, couples must ask not what their values can do for them, but ask what they can do for their values, to borrow a phrase. Apprenticing themselves to a values group can provide the clarification, accountability, and support most people need to be true to their own values when the going gets tough. By way of example, some prominent couples who I believe (based on their writing and reputations) meet the criteria for at least the first category of Exceptional couplehood (the Partnership marriages) include movie critic Michael Medved and psychologist and author, Dr. Diane Medved; businessman and motivational speaker Stephen Covey and Sandra Covey; and nationally known child-care experts, Dr. William Sears and Martha Sears, R.N. In addition to the many admirable qualities about these couples, each is an active member of a strong faith community (Judaism, Mormonism, and Evangelical Protestantism, respectively.) Similarly, one can also have an Exceptional marriage based on more secular values. Perhaps a good example of this would be the marriage of Democratic political strategist James Carville and Republican political strategist Mary Matalin. From a psychological perspective, the “ism” you subscribe to is not as important as the need to become a hard-working, faithful apprentice of that “ism” in order to ultimately clarify your own beliefs and sense of self.
The idea of apprenticing oneself to a particular, organized values group is admittedly distasteful to the Western—and especially, American—mind. But Erik Erikson and Abraham Maslow’s independent work on identity development, Lawrence Kohlberg’s studies of moral development, and James Fowler’s research on faith development all agree that often it is important for a value system to externally clarified before it can be adequately owned (internalized) by an individual. A person who would prefer to be his own moral compass (that is, who would attempt to develop a personal value system and marital imperative exclusive of a particular values group) would do well to remember that even the best compass needs a magnetic north against which to check itself. Faith communities and other values groups provide such a magnetic north.
All this aside, however you and your mate come to develop and practice your marital imperative, it will be your serious commitment to this shared mission statement that allows you to stop playing at both marital chicken and emotional or domestic scorekeeping, to no longer be loving only when your mate “deserves” such generosity, but also to be loving simply because that is the kind of person you wish to become when you grow up. This is often the single most difficult step for the Conventional couple to appreciate, but it is absolutely essential for Exceptional couplehood.
2. Come out of your own world. Even though Conventional marriages are founded on love, sometimes they can be a bit shallow with regard to intimacy especially considering the husband and wife’s tendency to carve out their own worlds and then live in them exclusively. Storybook husbands may know little if anything about the running of their Storybook home. Storybook wives may not wish to be bored with the details of their husband’s work. Star husbands and wives tend to be too wrapped up in their own work to take time to share their mate’s world. In short, Conventional married couples are often too busy to relate to each other as much as they need to. This must stop if a Conventional couple intends to move into an Exceptional marriage. Couples must find ways to become both interested and active in each other’s worlds. One well-known counselor asserts that a couple must spend at least fifteen hours per week working and talking together for their marriage to function well. How close do you come to this in your marriage?
3. Refine your communication skills. Even though Conventional couples are basically good at communicating their needs and emotions, there is always room for improvement. Conventional couples regularly experience communication breakdowns related to certain subtle but important stylistic differences. The chapters on Exceptional Rapport and Exceptional Negotiation will be especially helpful.
Having reviewed the most common marriages, let us move onto the two types of Exceptional marriages. As you read the following pages, you may be amazed by what a marital imperative empowers couples to become.
Exceptional Marriages
There are two major categories of Exceptional marriages. Each represents a different level of mastery of its marital imperative. The first type, accounting for the lion’s share of exceptional couples, is the Partnership marriage, which is primarily concerned with pursuing and increasing personal competence. The first thing a marital imperative does for a person is make him or her aware of the areas of personal deficiency—whether due to a lack of interest or a lack of talent—and work to become more competent in those areas. The second type of Exceptional marriage is the Spiritual Peer marriage (a.k.a. the Romantic Peer marriage). Once the couple has achieved a higher level of competency they can begin to focus on pursuing both intimacy and actualization as a way of life. Let’s briefly examine each of these.
Partnership Marriages
MARITAL THEME: The pursuit of competence and intimacy; the first fruits of a marital imperative.
After a couple clarifies their marital imperative, the first thing each spouse begins to do is ask, “What do I need to do in my marriage to be a better example of the positive characteristics and moral virtues (love, wisdom, integrity, creativity, etc.) that I hold dear?” The result of this first level of questioning is usually the person’s decision to pursue competence in areas he or she was previously uninterested or un-talented in. A husband may no longer wait to be asked by his wife to “help” around the house; instead he intentionally works to become more aware of the things that need to be done and does them. A wife may begin to ask herself what jobs or responsibilities she pushes off onto her husband simply because she doesn’t enjoy them, and then works to develop greater competence in these areas. (See chapter 6.)
In true Partnership marriages, no job is off-limits for either husband or wife. Both work to be equally aware of all the domestic, romantic, and financial responsibilities of marriage. Both expect. themselves to do a job if they happen to trip over it first or are more available to do it, even if it is not traditionally their area of expertise.
This pursuit of competence allows the Partnership couple to achieve three things: the victory of egalitarianism over mere equality, the removal of self-protective barriers to intimacy, and Exceptional Rapport and Negotiation.
1. Egalitarianism over equality. In her book, Peer Marriage, Dr. Pepper Schwartz noted that one factor which separated Exceptional (or as she called them “peer couples”) from Conventional couples was the preference of egalitarianism over mere equality. Basically, this is the difference between marriage as a “50/50 proposition” and marriage as a “100/100 partnership.” Conventional couples make a huge issue out of dividing up chores or spheres of influence into nice equal piles to safeguard both “fairness” and the “balance of power.” By contrast, Partnership couples don’t have the same need to divide everything up into equal piles to prove they are equal. Partnership husbands and wives know that they are equal without the aid of such games. They expect themselves and their partners to give 100 percent at all times, or at least as much as is humanly possible. No particular responsibility is beneath either one of them. This leads to what I call a dance of competence—the gracefully efficient and often selfless manner in which Partners accomplish the tasks of daily living.
The essence of marital egalitarianism is an equality of being, not just an equality of chores. This is an essential ingredient in the deepest form of intimacy, which Partners are on their way to attaining.
2. True intimacy. Being safe in the knowledge that no matter how much you give to a marriage you will not be taken for granted is a very freeing experience. This freedom allows couples to start letting down the barriers and stop playing games with each other. Now the two merely semipermeable worlds of the Conventional couple begin to come together as never before. Husband and wife are both beginning to become more interested and more competent in each other’s domains. As a result, everything they share, every chore of married life, presents one more opportunity to draw closer together, to become more intimate.
Likewise, having made a commitment to their marital imperative, the Partnership husband and wife are beginning to see each other as their best hope for becoming the people they want to be by the end of their lives. I will explain this process in greater detail in the chapter on designing your own marital imperative. For now, suffice it to say that as the Partnership couple moves through this stage, they become more and more convinced that the most important work of marriage is helping each other grow in identity strength and move toward the actualization of their shared spiritual values, moral ideals, and emotional goals. To this end, the Partnership couple, indeed all the Exceptional couples, consider themselves uniquely qualified to help each other fulfill their life’s mission and value system. This attitude lends itself to the extraordinary intimacy, gratitude, satisfaction, and longevity Exceptional couples enjoy. A husband and wife may meet more attractive, wealthier, or better socially positioned people along the way, but they are convinced that no one is better equipped than their mate to help them achieve actualization.
3. Exceptional rapport and negotiation. Chapters 7 and 8 will examine these qualities in detail. The intense interest in and sharing of each other’s worlds tends to remove the last major barriers to communication. The discussions that result from working side by side in almost every area of life lead to a deep level of rapport and understanding. Besides this, Exceptional couples are able to exhibit a high degree of respect for one another even when they disagree, and arguments, for the most part, are experienced as “deep muscle massages,” which may feel uncomfortable at the time but will afterward leave the marriage more relaxed and flexible.
Partnership marriages come in two varieties: Traditional and Modern. Traditional partners build their marriage around more conservative or religious values. The husband is usually the breadwinner, but he is expected—and expects himself—to be every bit as competent a parent and homemaker as his wife. He is attentive and intimately involved in the home life and domestic work. Likewise he and his wife are emotional and communicative peers. They both work hard to communicate their emotions well and their needs respectfully.
For her part, the Traditional Partnership wife is an active participant in financial planning. She feels it is very important to contribute to the family finances. Even if she is not employed out of the home, she may do things like homeschool the children or make other significant contributions of service and skills that give her family an economic edge. This stay-at-home mom is not likely to be found among the “ladies who lunch.”
Conventional stay-at-home moms tend to be torn. On the one hand, they feel that what they do is valuable; on the other hand, they struggle with society’s (and sometimes even their husband’s) general dismissiveness of women who work at home. Often they feel inferior to their Star wife friends. Traditional Partnership wives experience no such identity crisis. They are sure of the importance and financial value of their contribution to the family. And they find deep fulfillment in the hard work they do.
Like all couples in the Exceptional category, Traditional Partners-ship couples work to cultivate similar interests. Most times they would rather do something they don’t enjoy as long as they are doing it with their mate rather than do something they do enjoy with someone else. It is extremely rare for the Partnership spouse to say, “You know I hate doing such and such. Call one of your buddies/girlfriends.” But make no mistake: even though the Partnership couple is usually together, a Partnership husband or wife is always free to go out with his or her own friends. Personal boundaries and the need to be alone are respected. (Shipwrecked spouses, on the other hand, are always together because it is too much of a hassle to get permission from their mate to go out alone.)
Modern Partnerships, the second type of Partnership marriage, are built around more secular and liberal ideals, but the dynamics of the relationship are basically the same as their Traditional counterparts. They value egalitarianism, work to share in each other’s worlds, and they do not keep score over who does what because they are confident that each is doing as much as possible at all times. As far as marital structure goes, the only real difference between Traditional and Modern Partners is what they consider to be a more efficient use of resources. Where Traditional Partners’ values suggest that it is preferable to have one person more or less oversee the domestic responsibilities and one person more or less oversee the financial affairs, the Modern Partners’ values dictate that both the husband and wife should contribute as much as possible to every sphere with no one (at least in theory) exerting too much influence over any one area. On the downside, this tends to make Modern Partners slightly more harried than their Traditional counterparts. On the upside, this tends to eliminate the temptation to coast that sometimes affects Traditional Partners. Take your pick. Both marriages are fantastic, and people should consider themselves blessed to be in either version of Partnership marriage.
Recommendations for Partnership Couples
No doubt some of you are wondering what could possibly come after this. It is true, Partnership marriages are wonderful but there is one more step to take if a couple is so inclined (the Spiritual Peer marriage). To do this, the Partnership couple must work to accomplish two things:
1. Develop a truly spiritual sexuality. Strangely enough, the deep friendship and intimacy which Partnership couples share can, in some cases, put a temporary damper on the sexual relationship. How can this be? For all our claims that we are a sexually liberated lot, most people still speak of sex using derogatory terms. We refer to sex as “being naughty” or “getting nasty,” and we often use sex as a way to prove ourselves, or rebel against authority, or get in touch with our “wild” or “bad” side.
But in a Partnership marriage there is little that is negative, there is nothing to prove, and there is no authority to rebel against. As such, the negative concepts which define so many people’s sexuality no longer apply. As one Partnership wife said, “It’s hard for me to ‘get nasty’ with somebody I love and respect so much.” In her book, Peer Marriage, Dr. Schwartz refers to this phenomenon as an “incest taboo.” (The idea that two people can be so close and respect each other so much that sex no longer seems an appropriate way to relate.)
To overcome this problem, the couple must mine the spiritual core of their sexuality. This involves challenging the basic foundations of contemporary sexual attitudes and discovering how married sexuality is not only a celebration of goodness, but also an opportunity for actualization. Chapter 10 will deal with this issue further.
2. Exhibit a willingness to make financial sacrifices. The Partnership couple is already risking their basic acceptance by pursuing their value of intimacy and togetherness despite the disapproving comments of those more Conventional friends who keep saying “you need to take time for yourself. Don’t forget about yourself” Now, to move to the next level, most Partnership couples are going to have to deemphasize the importance of financial success. This is not to say that one must embrace poverty, simply that one must be willing to set serious limits on anything that distracts one from actualizing his or her value system. For most people, pursuing material success is a pretty big distraction. Those Partnership couples who are willing to scale back on their income, or at least decrease the energy they expend pursuing career success, have the best chance of achieving not only the highest known form of marriage, but also the strongest known level of identity strength.
Spiritual Peer Marriages
MARITAL THEME: The pursuit of intimacy, simplification, and actualization.
As far as current research goes, this is the top of the marital food chain. If both types of Exceptional couples (the Partnership marriages and Spiritual Peer marriages) were combined, they would total about 15 percent of all marriages (and 7 percent of first marriages). Spiritual Peers alone probably account for no more than 4 percent of all marriages.
Spiritual Peers focus on intimacy in the context of self-actualization. You will recall that to be “actualized” is to be a person who is a joyful, living, breathing example of a particular value system. For the Spiritual Peer couple, nothing is more important than helping each other live out a deeply held set of spiritual values, moral ideals, and emotional goals. While Partnership couples still struggle with how to apply their deeply held ideals in their unique circumstances, often seeking clarifying advice from an important involvement in a values group, Spiritual Peers have almost completely internalized—or “own”—their values. For the most part, they have incorporated the tenets of their values group into their lives and no longer have to check with anyone else to see if they are “doing it right” (though they are still open to criticism from credible sources and actively seek opportunities for continued growth).
Three qualities are the hallmarks of these marriages: simplification, competence, and egalitarianism. We have discussed two of the three in relation to Partnership marriages, but each is exhibited in a purer form in Spiritual Peer marriages. First, simplification: Both husband and wife are definitely off the fast track. They could work more, but they have come to the conclusion that the time and money isn’t worth the cost to their pursuit of intimacy and other values. Spiritual Peers aren’t deadbeats, they just have more important things to do. In particular, loving each other and their children. Spiritual Peers are not martyrs. They don’t give up anything they really need, but they know how to give up everything that is not valuable, like approval or more money than their needs and most important wants require.
Second, both husband and wife are competent at all aspects of family life. At this level, the dance of competence, which began around household responsibilities now extends to every other relationship task. Who works outside the home? Whoever feels their values calling them to do so at this time. Who takes care of the kids? They both do. Spiritual Peers are co-parents in the extreme. Who plans the social calendar and “couple time”? Both husband and wife are equally aware and skilled at handling their relationship and social calendars.
Third, they value egalitarianism over equality. Again, Spiritual Peers represent the refinement of this quality which was first witnessed in the Partnership marriage. You will recall that people who value egalitarianism know they are equal and don’t feel the need to prove it by dividing jobs up into nice even piles or by declaring certain tasks to be beneath them. As good as Partnership couples are at this, sometimes they still struggle with scorekeeping (albeit to a significantly lesser degree than Conventional couples). By contrast, Spiritual Peers are old hands at egalitarianism and the dance of competence. Through the years, both husband and wife have demonstrated their desire to never take each other for granted, and so scorekeeping and marital chicken are distant memories.
A silly example might help clarify how a couple going up the Relationship Pathway grows in competence and egalitarianism. The Shipwrecked wife might rather die a slow, torturous death than change a lightbulb if she considered it her husband’s job, but she would exhaust three hundred times as much energy nagging him to do it. The Conventional wife would change the bulb, if her husband didn’t get to it when she asked, but she would secretly resent his dereliction of duty for the rest of her life, or at least for the rest of the day. The Partnership wife changes the bulb without a second thought. The Peer wife would not only change the bulb without thinking about it, but also might have the whole house rewired—to code—by the time her husband came home.
Likewise, the Shipwrecked husband would consider watching his children “baby-sitting.” He is loath to do it and looks for the earliest opportunity to sack out on the sofa. The Conventional husband knows that he should want to watch his kids, but it would only be a matter of time before he got bored and sent them to play in the basement so he could get some work done. The Partnership husband would eagerly play with the children and would be happy to give his wife a break whenever she asked for it. And the Peer husband would be begging his wife to go out so that he could get some alone time with his kids (and the house would be immaculate when she got back).
This couple is so good at taking care of themselves and each other that to outsiders their marriage just seems to happen magically. They are the highest functioning examples of what Dr. Don Jackson and William Lederer of the Palo Alto Mental Research Center described as “collaborative geniuses.” Of course, a great deal of very hard work goes into making these marriages work, but it is most definitely a labor of love. Spiritual Peers are each other’s best friends, have virtually no secrets from each other, and have achieved a level of spiritual sexuality that is truly enviable. Unlike couples in less-good marriages who go through periods of boredom with each other, the Spiritual Peers’ relationship actually becomes more vital, exciting, fun, and fulfilling as the years go by.
If they struggle with anything, it is their relative social isolation. Spiritual Peers are too busy loving each other and living their own lives to have the energy for the Sturm und Drang that comes with having too many acquaintances. This is in contrast to Shipwrecked couples, who avoid others because they fear them, and Apprenticeship couples, who gorge themselves on a frenzy of casual acquaintances and social commitments.
Abraham Maslow, developer of the Hierarchy of Needs, researched self-actualizing people and his findings apply to all the Exceptional couples, especially to Spiritual Peers. They are accepting of themselves and others, are at peace when life becomes unpredictable, are spontaneous and creative, have a good sense of humor, value their privacy, can take care of themselves, are capable of deeply intimate relationships, and have an open, positive attitude about life. They are the couples—indeed, the people—we all want to be when we grow up.
Can Your Marriage Be Exceptional?
After reading about Exceptional couples it would be possible to despair of ever achieving such a lofty status, but be encouraged. This book is mostly concerned with helping you find your way into the first of the Exceptional marriages (the Traditional and Modern Partnerships). From that point, every couple must find their own way to actualization and Spiritual Peerdom. Likewise, it is important to note that the majority of Exceptional Partnership couples started out in more Conventional relationships. Only after developing their marital imperative and clinging to it through the storms of life did they find themselves—often unexpectedly so—at a more gratifying level of marital intimacy.
A perfect example of this growth through struggle would be Kenny and Bobbi McCaughey. They began life together as an average working-class couple with a strong connection to their community and church. Eventually they became parents of their daughter Mikayla and the famous McCaughey septuplets.
In one book, Seven From Heaven, Kenny McCaughey describes his dramatic walk down the road toward what I would call Exceptional husbandhood through the pregnancy and subsequent birth of the couple’s septuplets. While his wife was confined to extreme bedrest from the earliest weeks of gestation, McCaughey found himself challenging all the comfortable rules of Conventional married life. He was forced to challenge his competencies more quickly and more pervasively than you or I will probably ever have to, and through his labor he developed what I would consider to be Exceptional gratitude toward his wife, whom he reports he always loved dearly, but without really appreciating the full value of her gift to the marriage until their blessed crisis compelled him to walk in her shoes for an extended period. Through that tumultuous pregnancy and the chaotic months following the septuplets’ birth, the only thing the McCaugheys had to hold on to was what I would call their marital imperative, the theme of their marriage, summed up by a line in song they sang to each other at their wedding: “And the world shall know that we are a household of faith.” As the world today can attest, they are.
Not knowing the McCaugheys personally (and considering that their book was mostly about their children and not their marriage), I cannot say if they would consider themselves to be an Exceptional couple as of this writing, but I can say with confidence that they are traveling down that road, and if they continue to cling to their marital imperative as a way of life, they will surely reach their destination.
And so will you, because as difficult as the journey to Exceptional couplehood is, it is also the journey for which each and every one of us was made. Every particle of every human being—body and soul—cries out to made whole by love: by being loved by others, by loving others, and by love itself. What better opportunity to pursue this most natural of callings than the opportunity presented by your marriage, which is nothing if it is not a “school of love” in every sense of that phrase.
The remaining chapters of this book will help you discover the skills and resources you will need to complete your journey up the Relationship Pathway toward Exceptional couplehood. I invite you and your beloved to begin your adventure with the next chapter by developing a vital, compelling, and challenging marital imperative.
