What Makes Marriage Work ????

Marriage is the process by which two people make their relationship public, official, and permanent. It is the joining of two people in a bond that putatively lasts until death, but in practice is increasingly cut short by divorce. Over the course of a relationship that can last as many as seven or eight decades, a lot happens. Personalities change, bodies age, and romantic love waxes and wanes. And no marriage is free of conflict. What enables a couple to endure is how they handle that conflict. So how do you manage the problems that inevitably arise? And how can you keep the spark alive?

In pursuit of the truth about what tears a marriage apart or binds it together, I have experience  that much of the conventional wisdom--even among marital counsellors is either misguided or completely wrong. For example, some marital patterns that shows as a sign of a problem--such as having intense fights or avoiding conflict altogether--I have found can signify highly successful adjustments that will keep a couple together. Fighting, when it airs grievances and complaints, can be one of the healthiest things a couple can do for their relationship.

Many couples tend to equate a low level of conflict with happiness and believe the claim "we never fight" is a sign of marital health. But I believe we grow in our relationships by reconciling our differences. That's how we become more loving people and truly experience the fruits of marriage.

But there's much more to a successful relationship than knowing how to fight well. Not all stable couples resolve conflicts in the same way, nor do they mean the same thing by "resolving" their conflict. In fact, It is been observed that there are three different styles of problem solving into which healthy marriages tend to settle:

1.       Couples compromise often and calmly work out their problems to mutual satisfaction as they arise.

2.       Conflict erupts often, resulting in passionate disputes.

3.       Avoiding Couples agree to disagree, rarely confronting their differences head-on.

One of the first things to go in a marriage is politeness. As laughter and validation disappear, criticism and pain well up. Your attempts to get communication back on track seem useless, and partners become lost in hostile and negative thoughts and feelings. Yet here's the surprise.

What really separates contented couples from those in deep marital misery is a healthy balance between their positive and negative feelings and actions toward each other.

Some couples stick together by balancing their frequent arguments with a lot of love and passion. Such couples do spend a amount of time fighting versus interacting positively--touching, smiling, paying compliments, laughing, etc. Across the relationship there is equitant ratio that exists between the amount of positivity and negativity in a stable marriage.

• Tweet
• Share
• Share
• Share
• Share