The three chapters of marriage
Contrary to popular opinion, marriage is one of the best, if not the best, personal growth opportunities you can ever embark upon. Let me tell you why, in three chapters...
Chapter One: Attraction
We generally marry people we’re attracted to. It’s called romantic love, or eros, as the ancient Greeks put it.
The message of erotic love is: ‘you are beautiful to me and I want you for myself’. It’s the kind of love that inspires poets to rhapsody and despair. It’s wonderful. It’s exciting. It makes us feel as if our lives finally make sense.
Erotic love draws us to someone. It may even get us as far as the altar, but probably not a great deal further.
We are attracted to people, often without realising it, because they have something we want. We want safety, or attention, or status, or someone to care for, or whatever. And we search for someone who will fulfil our needs. But once we find ourselves married to them, it inevitably begins to dawn on us that they will not live up to the expectations we originally had for them. They can’t give us the perfect safety, attention, status, approval, or success we hoped they would. No one can.
Chapter Two: Struggle
At this point many marriages turn into power struggles. We try to extract the love we believe we’re entitled to from the person we’ve married. Our initial willingness to do anything for one another chills to a more calculated assessment of give and take. Sometimes it’s played out over domestic questions like who washes up or cleans the bathroom. Quite often it manifests as a dimming of passion in the bedroom.
With romantic love taken out of the equation, we seem to be left with a stand-off for the rest of our life together. If this was the end of the story, then marriage for life would be a silly and self-sabotaging notion.
But the story doesn’t end there.
Chapter Three: Growth
The truly beautiful aspects of marriage emerge from the power struggle, when we start to see through the demands we make of each other. We begin to realise that our partner’s lack of giving is actually a gaping hole in ourselves. The very things that irritate us most in our spouses are the very things we need to love in them.
So, the wife who accuses her husband of being lazy finds herself loving his ability to switch off and relax, something she’s never allowed herself to do. And in loving ‘rest’ in him, she grants herself permission to rest too.
The husband who accuses his wife of being bossy starts loving her strength and determination, and finds his own ability to direct and take charge awakening as he loves it in her.
As long as we cling to our ultimatums (“If only he’d do more”; “If only she’d stop nagging”) the power struggle continues. But, as we start to love what we least like in our partner, we slowly grow together into the people we’d most like to be. The relationship gets ever deeper, the sex gets ever better, and the needs that first brought us together are actually and finally fulfilled.
That’s why marriage is one of the best sources of growth and healing around. It starts with the desire to be loved, but it leads us to learn the skill of loving. And as we learn to love, we grow. And as we grow, we become the people we feel we’re meant to be.
Roger is a Clinical Psychologist and Senior Lecturer of Psychology at the University of Lincoln.
Written by Roger Bretherton. Posted on 10th August.
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