11. The Couple: Architects of the Family

      Why did you get married? Why did you marry the person you did? Why did you marry when you did? Chances are, whatever you answer, your reasons for marrying represented an opportunity to add something to your life. Only the unusual person and for very unusual reasons would knowingly go into a marriage thinking it would make his or her life worse.

      You had great hopes, I am sure, that things would be much better for you after you married. These dreams are part of the architecture of the family you set out to create. It is when something happens to these hopes that the stirrings for divorce begin. And they often continue unless the individual involved decides to resign herself or himself to duty or death——or change. This chapter talks about joy in relationships as well as the kinds of things that can threaten or even destroy the couple.

      In our western culture I believe most of us would say we married for love. We probably also expected our lives would be enhanced by whatever we thought love would bring us: attention, sexual fulfillment, children, status, belongingness, being needed, material things, and so on.

      I believe in love——in loving and in being loved. I think that love, including sexual love, is the most rewarding and fulfilling feeling any human being can experience. Without loving and being loved, the human soul and spirit curdle and die. But love cannot carry all the demands of life; intelligence, information, awareness, and competence are also vital.

      Our feelings of self-worth have much to do with how we label what a love experience is and what we expect of it. The higher our self-esteem, the less we depend on continual concrete evidence from our spouse that we count. Conversely, the lower our sense of self, the more we tend to depend on continual assurances, which lead to mistaken notions about what love can do.

      Truly loving means, “I put no strings on you, nor accept them from you.” Each person’s integrity is respected. I like the description of love and marriage as written by Khalil Gibran in The Prophet:*

      But let there be spaces in your togetherness,
      And let the winds of the heavens dance between you.
      Love one another, but make not a bond of love:
      Let it rather be a moving sea between the shores of your souls.
      Fill each other’s cup but drink not from one cup.
      Give one another of your bread but eat not from the same loaf.
      Sing and dance together and be joyous, but let each of you be alone,
      Even as the strings of a lute are alone though they quiver with the same music.
      Give your hearts, but not into each other’s keeping.
      For only the hand of Life can contain your hearts.
      And stand together yet not too near together;
      For the pillars of the temple stand apart,
      And the oak tree and the cypress grow not in each other’s shadow.

      *From The Prophet, by Khalil Gibran. Copyright 1923 by Khalil Gibran; renewal copyright 1951 by Administrators C.T.A. of Khalil Gibran Estate and Mary G. Gibran. Reprinted by permission of Alfred A. Knopf, Inc.

      Go back in time and try to remember what you hoped would be better for you when you got married. What were your hopes?

      Let me review some hopes people have shared with me over the years. Women’s hopes often center around having men who, of all people in the world, would love only them, would respect and value them, would talk to them in such a way as to make them glad to be women, would stand by them, would give them comfort, and sexual satisfaction, and who would be on their side in times of stress.

      Men mostly have said they wanted women who would see that their needs were met, would enjoy their strength and their bodies, would regard them as wise leaders, and who would also be willing to help them when they ex- pressed their needs. They spoke of wanting good food and good sex. As one man put it, he wanted someone "who is all for me. I want to feel needed, useful, respected and loved——a king in my own house."

      Not too many women or men have seen these kinds of things materialize in their parents’ relationships. Actually, few models exist. The hopes are those of the heart. We have been both awkward about and resistant to letting the heart be open about what it wants. Many people regard the heart as weak. They think only the head is strong. We forget that good architecture requires both: we can design relationships that function and that please us as well.

      In the early years of my career, 1 was puzzled that so many people somehow could not get what they wanted, no matter how hard they worked. I have come to learn, sadly enough, that most failures are due largely to ignorance——ignorance that is due to naive and unrealistic expectations about what love can do, and the inability to communicate clearly.

      To start with, people often marry partners they really do not know as people. Sexual attraction may bring people together, but it guarantees neither compatibility nor friendship. People who are congruent realize they can be sexually attracted to many people. Being able to make a satisfying, creative life with someone requires compatibility in many other areas. We spend relatively little time in bed. Lest I be misunderstood, I am saying that sexual responsiveness is important in intimate adult relationships. However, I am also saying that satisfying day-to-day relationships require much more than sexual attraction. It may even be that at some point, for various reasons, the sexual part is inactive. The relationship can still flourish.

      I think few children grow up with healthy, satisfying sexual models as far as their own parents are concerned. What they saw going on between their parents as they were growing up probably did not come close to the romantic ideal publicized in our western culture today. I have heard adults express wonder that their parents ever got together in the first place. They had difficulty imagining their parents in bed together, much less ever having had a romance.

      It’s sad that children cannot know their parents when they were younger: when they were loving, courting, and being nice to one another. By the time children are old enough to observe, the romance has all too often faded or gone underground.

      Without necessarily knowing it, parents are the architects of their childrens' romantic and sexual selves. Familiarity exerts a powerful pull. What we have observed and experienced day after day exerts a powerful influence. Most people will choose the familiar, even though uncomfortable, over the unfamiliar, because of that power. Haven’t you seen women whose fathers were cruel end up with cruel husbands? And haven’t you also seen men who had nagging mothers end up with nagging wives? People often work out marriages similar to those of their own parents’——not due to heredity; they are simply following a family pattern.

      We’re getting pretty close to talking about parenting, and I want to reserve that very important subject for a later chapter. Right now I want to focus on coupling.

      Every couple has three parts: you, me, and us; two people, three parts, each significant, each having a life of its own. Each makes the other more possible. Thus, I make you more possible, you make me more possible, I make us more possible, you make us more possible, and we together make each other more possible.

      Whether the initial love between a couple continues to flower depends on how the two people make the three parts work. How these three parts work is a part of what I call the process, which is crucially important in marriage. For example, couples need to reach decisions about things the two of them now do together that they once handled alone——such as money, food, fun, work, and religion. Love is the feeling that begins a marriage, but it is the day-to-day living——their process——that will determine how the marriage works.

      I find that love can truly flourish only where there is room for all three parts, and no one part dominates. The single most crucial factor in love relationships is the feeling of worth each person has for self. In turn, this affects how each person expresses self-worth, what demands are made of each other, and how each acts toward the other as a result. I speak of this more fully in the chapter on positive pairing.

      Love is a feeling. It cannot be legislated. It either exists, or it doesn’t. It comes without reason. For it to continue and to grow, it has to be nourished. Love is like a seed that man- ages to germinate and poke its head above the ground. Without proper food, light, and moisture, it will die. The loving, caring feelings of courtship flower in marriage only if the couple understands that their love needs nurturing every single day.

      All couples stumble and bumble at times. All have some pain, disappointment, and misunderstanding. Whether they grow beyond this again depends on the process that exists between them.

      I have seen many couples who started out with love feelings but later became mixed up, angry, and helpless. Their love faded into the background. When they were helped to understand and change their processes, love again became evident. On the other hand, some couples have endured so much that they are dead to one another. Since I

have not had much success in raising the dead, I think the best policy in these cases is to have a good funeral for the relationship and start over. If this has happened or is happening to you, use the experience as a learning and benefit.

      The chances of spouses having things in common are about 100 percent. Likewise the chances are 100 percent that they will find differences from one another. Bringing up children highlights these kinds of differences. So does making decisions, which is a major part of any coupling process. For many couples, making decisions becomes a battle, either quiet or noisy, as to who has the right to tell whom what to do. When this is the case, each partner feels worse about the other as well as himself or herself every time a decision is made. Each begins to feel lonely, isolated, victimized, angry, betrayed, and depressed. Each lays his or her self-worth on the table every time a decision is pending. After enough battle experience, the feelings of loving and being loved are gone.

      Sometimes couples try to avoid these problems by agreeing to let one partner be boss, and having the other go along with the decisions. Another out is to let a third person decide——an in-law, perhaps, or a child, or some trusted person from outside the family. Eventually all decisions get made. But how? And what happens as a result?

      Let’s pick up on some of the responses we talked about in the chapters on communication and apply them to how you and your spouse make decisions.

      Do you do it by placating? Bullying? Lecturing? Distracting? Acting indifferent?

      Who makes the decisions? How? Do you meet each decision squarely, realistically, and using everybody’s talents?

      Do you show you know the different between competence in handling money and self-worth? (Writing a check is writing a check. It is not a way of showing love or not showing love.)

      Using communication responses and stances, act out some of your recent and/or important decisions. Next, try to remember exactly how the decision was actually reached. Were there any similarities?

      Here is an example. Before marriage, Manuel managed his money and Alicia managed hers. Now they are married, and they want to handle it together. This calls for a big decision, probably the first big one they make after the wedding.

      Manuel says confidently, “Well, I am the man of the house, so I will handle the money. Besides, my father always did.”

      Alicia’s response is slightly sarcastic. “Manuel, how can you? You’re such a spendthrift! I naturally assumed I would do it. Besides, my mother always did it that way.”

      Manuel’s answer is very quiet. “Well, if you want it that way, I suppose it’s all right. I naturally thought that since I’m your husband, and you love me, you would want me to handle the money. After all, it’s a man’s place.”

      Alicia is a little frightened. “Oh, Mannie! Of course I love you! I wouldn’t want to hurt your feelings. Let’s not talk about it any more. Come on, give me a kiss.”

      What would you say about this decision-making process? Where do you think it will lead? Will it make for more or less love?

      Five years later, Alicia says angrily to Manuel, “This company is threatening to sue us! You didn’t pay the bill! I am tired of dodging bill collectors. I am going to take charge of the money, and I don’t care what you think!”

      Manuel snaps, “The hell with you! Go ahead, and see if you can do any better!”

      Can you see their problem? They can’t differentiate between their feelings of self-worth and the issue of coping with their finances.

      Probably nothing is so vital to developing and maintaining a love relationship (or killing it) as the decision-making process. The difference between the issue in question, and the sense of self-worth around the issue, is worth learning.

      Let’s go into something a little different now. Let’s consider some of the basic differences between courtship and marriage, and some of the problems implicit in those differences. During courtship, two prospective mates see each other by plan. They arrange their lives to make time for one another. Each knows the other has made being together a priority. This naturally gives each the feeling that the other sees him or her as a Very Important Person.

      After marriage, this feeling is subject to drastic changes. In courtship it is easy to forget that the loved one has family, friends, work responsibilities, special interests, and other obligations. Courtship is a rather artificial situation as far as life is concerned. After marriage, these other life connections reappear and compete for attention. When one partner has felt he or she was everything to the other person and must now share with a lot of outside persons and responsibilities, trouble can begin. It is very hard to accept that you are not the center of someone else’s life, as the courtship experience may have implied. Revelations such as “I didn’t know you were so attached to your mother,” or, “I

didn't think you liked to play bridge so much” are bound to occur and often lead to more serious disappointments. A good remedy for this is to sit down and talk about what is happening.

      Frequently, one facet of a spouse is uppermost in the partner’s attention. A man I know married a woman who always looked neat. In contrast, his mother always looked sloppy, which he hated. When his wife later looked sloppy at times for one reason or another, he began treating her with the same negative attitudes he had shown his mother. It is as though partners are not aware that they are married to people who do people things.

      Many couples bank on the illusion that since they love each other, all things will happen automatically. Let’s compare this situation to someone who, say, wants to build a bridge. An engineer isn’t about to attempt this simply by liking or loving bridges. He or she has to know a good deal about the process before a real and successful bridge will be erected. The analogy applies to relationships.

      Couples need to know about the process of relating as partners. Fortunately, many couples realize this today and are taking advantage of couple and family-life education classes which are becoming much more common. We need love and process in family architecture. Neither works by itself.

      Let’s carry our analogy a little further. The bridge builder who loves the work is going to endure the struggles and frustrations that are bound to occur in learning the job much more than one who is indifferent to bridge building or who doesn’t expect problems. Even so, the devoted engineer still needs a sense of progress to persist in the job.

      So it is with couples. If the “how” in their marriage doesn’t fulfill their hopes and dreams, love goes away. Many people are aware that their love is disappearing without being aware in the slightest degree that it is their process——the “how” in their marriage——that is shoving love out.

      Do you remember the love feeling you had for your spouse when you got married? Can you remember how you thought your life would be different? Do you also remember thinking certain problems would be solved by loving? Can you share together what some of these feelings and problems were and what has happened about them? Can you now form a new, more realistic basis for your relationship?

      Marriage reveals much more about each partner than did the courtship. Lots of times sweethearts don’t let themselves know too much about one another’s defects, perhaps feeling that if they did, the marriage might not go through. Nevertheless some defects are obvious. Some sweethearts have plans for changing them; others accept them as part of being human and live happily with them.

      It’s impossible to live in close contact with another person without encountering less desirable traits eventually. This is the basis for cruel disappointment for many people. Disillusioned mates often say to me, “You certainly never know a person till you marry!”

      Examples of faulty reasoning that lead to these kinds of post-wedding disappointments include a woman who tells herself, “He really drinks too much, but after we’re married, I’ll love him so much he won’t drink.” A man might say, “I really think she’s a little ignorant, but after we’re married, she’ll go to school to please me.” A man I knew said, “I can’t stand the way she chews gum, but I love her so much I’ll tolerate it.”

      Two people living together as one family unit is difficult at best. To do it successfully is very rewarding. An unsuccessful job can be dreadful. I often think of marriage as being similar to setting up a corporation: whether it succeeds depends on its organization, the “how” of its endeavors, its process.

      I know plenty of people who loved their partners very deeply at the time of their courtship. However, they could not then make a marriage work because they couldn’t get along with one another. Again, mutual attraction is not enough. How you get along with someone, what you expect from marriage, and how you communicate with each other are strong factors in what kind of marriage you create together.

      One basic problem is that our society builds the marital relationship almost completely on love and then imposes demands on it that love alone can never fulfill:

“If you love me, you won’t do anything Without me.”
“If you love me, you’ll do what I say.”
“If you love me, you’ll give me what I want.”
“If you love me, you’ll know what I want before I ask.”

These kinds of practices soon make love into a kind of blackmail that I call the clutch.

      More specifically, if I do not feel I count for very much and if you and I have a relationship based only on love, then I can easily depend o your compliments, your attention, your agreement, your money, and so on, to make me feel good. If you are not eternally showing me that you live for me, then I feel like nothing. This practice can soon strangle the relationship.

      Where are you now in your experience of loving and being loved? Facing this question squarely may help you reshape what you are doing and may well extend the life of your love. If you put both your questions and answers into words, your partner can see what’s happening with you.

      Another danger is practicing the crystal ball technique. In this one, you assume that because someone loves you or you love someone, each should know ahead of time what the other needs, wants, feels, or thinks, and act accordingly. Not doing so is the same as being unloved or unloving. The fact is that, no matter how much you and I may love each other, love doesn’t tell me a thing about whether you like spinach or how you like it cooked.

      I remember a couple who came to me because they felt very discontent in their marriage of about twenty years. As I talked with them, it became evident that each had tried to second-guess the other using the crystal ball theory: “If we truly love one another, we will always know what the other wants.” Since this was their premise, they couldn’t very well ask each other questions; that would cast aspersions on their love.

      Their guessing had proved all right in a few areas but was now the crux of their being at odds with one another. They were not always guessing right. As we worked together, the couple accepted my invitation and encouragement to talk more openly. When we got to the part where I asked each of them to say openly what he or she resented about the other, the husband cried with a burst of emotion, “I wish you wouldn’t always serve me that goddamned spinach!”

      After his wife recovered from the shock, she answered, “I loathe spinach, but I thought you liked it. I just wanted to please you.”

      As we backtracked over the issue, it came out that, early in the marriage, the wife had asked her husband what he liked to eat. He told her whatever she fixed would be fine. She did considerable private research to find out what pleased him. Also, she once overheard him reprimand his young nephew for not eating his spinach; she interpreted this as a zest for spinach on her husband’s part.

      Her husband didn’t recall this incident but did remember how sloppy he thought his sister-in-law was for not making her child eat right. Of course, I brought up the question of how come the husband made no comment and kept eating the spinach if he hated it. He said he hadn’t wanted to hurt his wife’s feelings. “Besides,” he added, “if she liked it, I didn’t want to deprive her of it.”

      He then turned to her. “But didn’t you notice that I kept eating less and less?” “Oh,” she said, “I thought you were reducing.”

      This episode gave rise to a slogan they used when they realized they were crystal-balling: “Remember the spinach!”

      Probably no other couple in the world has had this particular experience, but my guess is nearly all of you have had something similar. Looking back, such an incident seems utterly absurd. And yet it happens again and again.

      Another myth that corrupts and destroys love is the expectation that love means sameness. “You should think, feel, and act as I do all the time. If you don’t, you don’t love me. From this perspective, any difference can feel threatening.

      Let’s consider sameness and differentness a moment or two. I believe that two people are first interested in each other because of their sameness, but they remain interested over the years because of their ability to enjoy differences. To put it another way, if humans never find their sameness, they will never meet; if they never meet their differentness, they cannot be real or develop a truly human and zestful relationship with one another.

      Differentness cannot be handled successfully until sameness is appreciated. Although each human is unique, everyone has certain qualities in common.

      Each human being:

came into this world conceived through the union of sperm and egg, born from the body of a woman;
is encapsulated by skin which contains all the machinery for maintaining and growing;
has a predictable anatomy;
requires air, food, and water to survive;
has a brain capable of reason and the ability to see, hear, touch, taste, smell, speak, feel, think, move, and choose (except those born incomplete);
is able to respond; and
feels all through life.

      Now as to differentness. Many have been taught to fear differentness because they saw it as the beginning of conflict or a fight. Fighting means anger; anger means death. So to live, avoid differentness.

      A good, healthy fight does not have to mean death——it can bring closeness and trust. Yetta Bernhard and George Bach have done some excellent work on clean fighting,

which every couple needs to be able to do when the occasion demands it. I put the emphasis on clean fighting. We all know about dirty fighting, and that is scary and can end in death.

      We have in common those attributes previously named. We are also different from everyone else, and this is a natural consequence of being human. Over five billion people now live on this earth, and each one can be positively identified by her or his fingerprints. There are no duplicate sets; every human being is unique. So any two human beings, no matter what their similarities, are going to find differences. And vive la difference! Think how boring and sterile life would be if we were all the same. Difference brings us excitement, interest, and vitality. It also, of course, brings a few problems. The challenge is to find ways to deal with our differences constructively. How can we use differences as opportunities for learning instead of excuses for separation and war?

      The wise couple will strive to learn about their differences early. They will try to see how they can make their differences work for them rather than against them. And as family architects, their example will exert unparalleled influence on their children.

      If your self-esteem is high, you will have to come to know certain things:

No two persons are exactly alike; everyone is unique.

No two persons are going to have exactly the same timing, even in ways they are alike. Two people may like steak, but not necessarily fixed the same way; nor are they always hungry for it at the same time.

      A further important learning is that you won’t die because you’re alone. Periodic aloneness is a natural outcome of being a separate person.

      As I come to the end of this chapter, I am aware that I have talked a great deal about the complexity and potential pain involved in developing a satisfying, growing relationship between mates. I hope I have done it in such a way that new lights have come on for you to see new possibilities and accomplish them.

      The ways of dealing with all this complexity generally fall in the following directions. The first has to do with one’s beliefs about what people are like. Realizing that people seldom achieve perfection in their pursuits, and that few people behave destructively by design, can help you to see your mate as just an ordinary human being, like yourself.

      The second direction has to do with becoming aware of yourself, getting in touch with yourself, and then being able to say where you are. This awareness helps you establish trust and confidence.

      The third has to do with knowing within one’s bones that each person has to stand on her or his own two feet. No one else can stand on your feet for you. This goes for the nitty-gritty as well as the juicy parts of life: no one person can carry another at length without both becoming cripples. In the coupling process, we have infinite opportunities for enjoying each other through our bodies, intellects, feelings, and interesting tasks.

      Our challenge is to develop a sense of high self-worth, the willingness to risk, and the stimulation to create new possibilities. We will never run out of possibilities as long as we keep our eyes open and the rest of us ready.