Qualities of a Good Marriage

Note: This article was first published in Life in the Delta's Wedding Issue in 2006.

For so long the trend has been to fall in love, marry, and just hope for the best. The truth is, most engaged couples prepare more for their wedding than they do for their marriage. Somehow they think that marriage will just magically happen and they will “live happily ever after.” But the alarming statistics are that marital dissatisfaction is happening sooner than ever before, with many couples experiencing serious problems within the first two years. But it doesn’t have to be this way. Having a good marriage can become less of a mystery if people would become more purposeful in educating themselves and preparing for marriage. Also, after marrying, if couples would seek help sooner, at the first signs of marital distress, rather than later, they could avoid having unhappiness set in with the accompanying desire of one or both partners just to leave the marriage.

Often if you ask people what makes a good marriage, nearly 90% of them say “being in love.” But if you ask them to list the essential ingredients, in a survey of 1000 people, no single item was mentioned by at least half of the group. In other words, most people can’t agree on what love is. Or they don’t know. In past centuries the topic of love used to belong to the poets and philosophers. Chaucer even said, “Love is blind.” But today that is not an excuse. The blindfolds have come off and the subject of love has been researched and put to scrutiny in the laboratory. Dr. John Gottman of the University of Washington, perhaps the premier authority on communication skills today, has used high-tech equipment and a team of researchers to study marriage for more than twenty years. His team is able to predict which marriages will improve and which ones will deteriorate with a 95% accuracy rate. Dr. Gottman can spot and track a couple’s marital breakdown by observing how they handle conflict.

So what are the qualities of a good marriage? Robert Sternberg, a Yale University psychologist, has developed what he calls the “triangular model,” which I believe is one of the most encompassing views of marriage to date. In his view, love is a triangle with three foundational sides: passion, intimacy, and commitment. I use this model often in a first session with married couples. I usually get both spouses to rate themselves in each category on a scale of 1-10, with 10 being the highest level of each, in order to gauge the current condition of the marriage.

According to Sternberg, passion is the motivational side of marriage – that intense desire for physical affection that draws a couple together initially. Passion can be almost possessive, fostering a fascination that borders on obsession. It drives couples to an extreme level of preoccupation with one another, to the point they can’t bear to tear themselves apart. In the February 2006 issue of National Geographic, the lead story is “Love – A Chemical Reaction.” It has actually been proven that a chemical reaction takes place in the brain involving the release of dopamine. And brain scans of people in love match those of people who have obsessive-compulsive disorder. However, this effect is shown to wear off in everyone, usually in approximately 1 ½ years. So for the couples who believe they have found their one true love and nothing can break this magic spell, great disillusionment can set in when this stage wears off. However, the article offers hope. It says that the couple can move “from the dopamine-drenched state of romantic love to the relative quiet of an oxytocin-induced attachment.” Ocytocin is a hormone that promotes a feeling of connection or bonding. It is released when we hug each other, when a mother nurses her infant, or when someone has an orgasm. In relationships that fail, “chances are the couple has not found a way to stimulate or sustain oxytocin production.”

The second leg of Sternberg’s triangle is intimacy, which is the emotional side of love’s triangle. Pure passion is self-seeking until it is linked with intimacy. One cannot sustain a relationship over the long haul without really knowing a person. Intimacy has a “best friend” aspect to the marriage. In fact, the lack of intimacy is the number one enemy of marriage. Without it, people can live under the same roof and lead parallel lives but will be isolated and lonely. Intimacy hinges on sharing deep thoughts and feelings, on good communication, on honesty and support.

The third leg of love’s triangle is commitment, which is the cognitive side of marriage. Commitment looks toward an uncertain future and says “for better or worse” and promises to be there “until death.” It also is a decision to “forsake all others.” Commitment gives our partner security, which is essential to married love. Without commitment, people can wander aimlessly and helplessly in and out of relationships, which unfortunately many do.

These three essential qualities vary over time and from person to person. Two partners can even be out of sync with one feeling loving towards the other while the spouse feels unloved. But it is so important to know, especially early on, that the passion that begins a marriage cannot sustain a marriage. Love will undergo numerous changes and evolve into many different forms over a lifetime together. Accepting love’s ebb and flow can allow you to relax and enjoy its many manifestations. But it is important to know that all three qualities are necessary to have a consummate love, which should be the goal of marriage. It is a goal to attain and then maintain, giving attention to each side of love’s triangle. It usually occurs later in the marriage and is worth working and waiting for. You know when it happens because at those graceful moments, both partners experience the same rhythm, like in a dance, of passion, intimacy and commitment at the same time.

Advice to Couples Planning to Wed

Note: This article was first published in Life in the Delta's Wedding Issue in 2005.

As a marriage counselor I have noticed how much time and attention have been devoted to the preparations for the wedding but how little have been devoted to the preparation for the marriage itself. In fact, the wedding plans can seem to take on a life of their own and the couple can easily lose perspective of their future relationship.

Recent statistics show that marital satisfaction begins to drop in the first 4 years of marriage and by the end of 5 years of marriage, 19% of couples will be divorced. One survey found that 40% of newlyweds found marriage harder than they had expected and also felt that their partner had become more critical after marriage. It is becoming more and more evident that couples not only need pre-marital preparation but an on-going support system to make marriage work. (Prepare-Enrich, 2003)

One reason for some post-marital distress is the marriage myth that you can take all positive things from your family of origin and leave behind all the negative things and in effect have a fresh start. Wrong! In actuality, you bring it all into the marriage. In fact, the sources of much of the conflict or unhappiness are what I call pre-morbid factors, such as crises, poor relationships, and unresolved conflicts from the past. Another reason for distress is that the rose colored glasses come off that have filtered in the positive things about the other person and filtered out the negative things. When these glasses come off, the true person emerges, warts and all. Sometimes this is immediately, even on the honeymoon, or in the few months that follow. This is even true of live-in couples, who think they have gotten to know each other well, but they have just postponed this process of letting their guard down completely because the uncertainty of the commitment. An additional reason for distress following marriage is the myth that another person can make you whole. Unless a person is happy being single, it is unlikely he or she will be happy being married. The best thing a person can do to prepare for marriage is to become an emotionally healthy individual.

I like to recommend pre-marital counseling at least six months prior to the wedding. This way the relationship of the couple can be explored without the competing pressure of the wedding plans. Also, if a couple discover that they need to break or postpone the engagement, they usually have not made such extensive plans that they find it almost impossible to back out of them. A good pre-marital counselor will usually explore the couple’s goals and expectations of the marriage, their families of origin and how they plan to blend them, their personality and gender differences, their communication skills and ability to resolve conflict, and their financial plans and how they view money. Even with good pre-marital counseling, the most important benefit is that they have someone to whom they can return if they encounter difficulty a few months or years into the marriage. The expectations of marriage rarely match the reality of what is actually experienced. So if you do not have pre-marital counseling, do get counseling after the marriage if you encounter problems – the earlier the better. If problems are allowed to fester, they can become worse as time goes on with the couple becoming polarized in seemingly entrenched stances.

So much of what we see and hear about marriage these days is negative. It seems the “for better or for worse” takes on the “for worse” part. But the “for better” part can be a wonderful relationship that can provide our most basic need of a loving attachment to another human being. The commitment aspect of marriage underlies this secure attachment. The sexual aspect of marriage sets it apart from other relationships and can be a continual source of pleasure and a way of connecting for years to come. And the intimacy aspect of marriage can be that of soul mates who know and are known by each other. This is where communication skills are so important. Some couples are so afraid of conflict, especially if it was not modeled properly in their families, that they avoid it at all costs. But conflict handled in the right way can actually increase intimacy.

It was once thought that the ability to resolve conflict was the best predictor of marital satisfaction. But the most recent research indicates the best predecitors to be the wife’s ability to be soothing and have a “softened start-up” when approaching her husband and the husband’s being able to tolerate and respond to his wife’s negative emotion. (Journal of Marital and Family Therapy, July 2003) It is vital that couples stay emotionally engaged and actively responding to one another. It seems the age old biblical principles still work – “wives, respect your husbands” (translated, do not nag or attempt to control them) and “husbands, understand your wives” (translated, listen to them, do not withdraw from them or just try to fix their problem).

In conclusion, couples who are planning to marry, please work on the relationship. A good relationship will not just magically happen. Think of being married as becoming a team together, with each fitting their plans to one another. If each selfishly lives their own life without regard to how it effects the other, they miss out on the marvelous support and comfort that marriage can provide.

(Note: If you cannot obtain adequate pre-marital counseling, I recommend you do some reading on the subject. Some books I would recommend are Saving Your Marriage Before It Starts, by Drs. Les and Leslie Parrott, and Fighting for Your Marriage, by Markman, Stanley, and Blumberg.)