Imagine being married to yourself!
By Robert Fontana
I know! It sounds like a nightmare! However, after being married for 45 years this August, and having now worked for many years as a therapist for couples, married and co-habiting, it is my experience that most spouses and partners would, at one time or another, say they would prefer to be married/partnered to oneself. This actually happened to Lori and me.
We were going through some conflict, nothing major mind you. I was working hard to be a good listener. It was a little challenging since I was standing outside in the howling winds of a snowstorm, the door double-locked, and Lori talking to me from the other side. Those details are unimportant. What’s important is that we were eventually able to sit down and talk. We each wrote down what we needed from the other.
Lori’s list was (and I am not making this up):
Þ When you say you’ll be home at 10 pm, Mr. Youth Minister, you’re home at 10 pm.
Þ When you come home at 10 pm, you do not wake the small children to play with them.
Þ If there are mounds of diapers to be folded and dishes to be washed, there is NO ROMANCE!
Þ If you write a check, record a check.
Þ If you record a check, record it correctly.
Þ If you balance the checkbook…JUST DON’T!!
My list was much shorter:
Þ Don’t sweat the small stuff. (Remember the book of the same name?)
Þ Let’s be flexible.
Þ Let’s play more.
Þ The dishes and diapers can wait…
We each read our list to the other and then started to laugh. Basically, Lori was saying she would prefer to be married to her, and I was saying that I would prefer being married to me. At that point, I heard a voice in my head, and I’m sure it was the Holy Spirit, say: “Now real love can happen in this marriage.” We knew right away what the voice meant. We really needed to accept each other as the other is. And if our needs are not being met, we had to learn how to communicate this to one another and negotiate to get to some common ground so that the marriage would always win. We had to stop the tug-of-war of “I’m not you, and you’re not me,” of pulling against one another; and we needed to do the hard work of pulling together by finding unity in all things.
John Gottman, a University of Washington researcher on love and marriage, wrote in his book, The Seven Principles for Making Marriage Work, that 69% of the conflicts between couples have nothing to do with “right or wrong.” They have everything to do with “I’m not you, and you are not me.” Couples who never learn this truth, remain in a tug-of-war, pulling against each other, until divorce or “death-do-they-part.” They convince themselves that their issues are really about “right or wrong;” but in truth, it’s mostly about “this is what I want, how I like it, how I was raised.”
This tug-of-war marriage leaves one or both spouses feeling hurt, dismissed, and unloved. I have clients who are devout Christians, who have been married for 25, 30, or 40 years, and yet they are miserable in marriage. If their faith helps them at all, it is only to bear the cross of the other; it doesn’t seem to help them find unity, love, and friendship. Rather than learning to accommodate their differences and work for unity, these couples create a negative pattern or “dance” of interaction that they step into anytime they have a disagreement or conflict. Their negative dance reinforces the hurt, distance, and disconnection.
Successful couples learn that this tug-of-war must end. They learn through conflict that they are bumping into their differences. What is needed is effective listening to understand the other, and empathy to validate one another’s emotions. Healthy couples learn to say to one another, “I won’t let you win at my expense, and I won’t try to win at your expense. We are going to find common ground so that the marriage wins.”
Through different issues that have surfaced in our marriage, Lori and I have learned to desire unity over what each of us may prefer. This ranges from simple issues like how we are going to spend our evenings to complex issues like navigating a difficult topic within the family. We are motivated to find unity with whatever the current issue is because tomorrow there will be another issue…and the next day another one. Working for unity day-in and day-out creates a positive pattern or “dance” that reinforces love, friendship, emotional safety, and belonging. After almost 45 years of marriage, we go to bed at night with a profound sense of peace. We don’t have a perfect marriage, but we do have a successful one. Are there times when we don’t quite find unity on an issue, when we misunderstand one another and have hurt one another? Absolutely! But because of the positive dance we have created in our relationship, we are quick to repair, talk things through, learn from our mistakes, and forgive one another.
Unity does not mean uniformity. After all these years, we are still night and day different from one another. On our day off, Lori would prefer to begin it with a cup of coffee, time for prayer followed by time to work the crossword puzzle in the paper. I prefer to begin my day, after coffee, with a long quiet walk in the park. So we compromise, with coffee and prayer together, then her crossword puzzle, my walk. Seeking unity in all things means we strive for agreement on an issue. It also means that one or both of us might say, “I don’t like this decision, but I can live with it without resentment.” And the positive dance goes on!
I would hate to be married to me. Being married to Lori is way better!
