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Whether couples are married or not and opposite sex or same sex, their relationship is like church buildings. Ancient church buildings were supported and held together by many external arches, while modern churches are supported by steel beams within the walls that usually are unseen. Until the last century marriages were held together by external "arches": laws of property ownership, customs, religion, traditions, and extended-families nearby that supported newly weds. All these external “arches” brought couples together and kept them together. In addition many wives died long before their husbands, so building long term relationships was rarer. Since those external, supportive “arches” disappeared, how can our relationships be supported by internal strength? This internal strength also must be flexible. For one of the wonders of a steel framework is that it lets structures flex with strong winds. As steel structure provides both strength and flexibility, couples benefit from developing qualities that bind them and have give and take. We have deep needs for relationships and intimacy; we want to share our deepest selves — heart, mind, soul spoken and unspoken — with our closest friends to find deep satisfaction. We want to avoid being isolated and lacking honest and open communication in our closest relationships. “A solitary individual lives on the frontier of vulnerability. Marriage creates kin, someone whose first 'job' is to look after you. Gay people, like straight people, become ill or exhausted or despairing and need the comfort and support that marriage uniquely provides. Marriage can strengthen and stabilize their relationships and thereby strengthen the communities of which they are a part.... society benefits when people are durably committed to love and serve one Does this mean couples need to spend time building and developing mutual trust and love, enjoying each other, and developing the "us" as well as their individuality? Relationship building When your relationship is tense, purposefully and tenderly massage each other's back, while breathing deep, slow breaths. Find ways that you as a couple can spend time together apart from children after assuring that children are safely cared for. Communities have parents nights out or couples care for each other's children so they have time together. An excellent book that explores many facets of developing relationships and intimacy is Dr. Dean Ornish's Love & Survival. In the past couples often came from the same community, but now each may come from a different place, has different habits, assumptions, and values, and different experiences. Differences need to be patiently confronted and worked through — never papered over. If a man responds positively to his wife's request for change, that is one of the best indicators they will stay together and have a happy relationship, according to research by John Gottman; let's openly recognize each other's needs. A critical difference is our assumptions about men and women. Many men acquire cultural traditions about being a man and being a woman. These feelings appear within the psyche of many boys before they know there are alternatives. Many boys learn from parents and culture to dominate, to control girls. Unfortunately, some churches support male dominance. Decades ago when a woman was asked what she did, her answer was usually wife and mother. Today many wives will answer as men have with a profession or trade. Both men and women must come to terms with views of themselves and each other as spouse, parent, and worker. Males must confront their attitudes and practices that fail to support and respect women’s autonomy. American women pilots have shot down enemies, women are firefighters and work in many other professions and crafts. If men are to accept and respect women as fellow humans with the same rights, then men must confront their own anxieties. Some men use women to bolster their feelings about themselves in many ways including jokes. Dr. T. Walter Herbert calls these cultural assumptions “code manhood” that must be conquered at the “bed and board frontier” — by pioneering new attitudes and actions in kitchen and throughout our shared life. For centuries domestic violence has scarred women and men. That dominance may be physical or psychological, but always there are scars in the heart and soul. Batterers have a hard time facing the realities of why it happens and how to stop this mindless compulsion. Those who are victimized must face why they let it continue before becoming survivors. Dr. Judith S. Wallerstein studied couples married many years; she found those successful couples worked on these tasks:
Couples must work on their mutual relationship, just as we work on friendships and professional relationships. Our relationship building benefits the couple’s mutual love and trust as co-workers in a relationship. This is life work. It can continue though changes in professions, friendships, and neighbors. Our relationships can grow as we work on the inner steel that gives our relationship both strength and flexibility. Economic and cultural forces can stress couples when each builds business, trade, or professional networks. If one is offered new opportunities elsewhere, how can a couple respond — including children? Early in being partners learn flexibility and two-way communication. In Synergetic Parenting are suggestions about ways to build common bonds of strength and flexibility — the invisible steel beams. Couples being together for so long a time requires that we nourish our trusting and loving each other. With time our interests and preferences change. Societal changes affect us; they may force the one who stays at home to consider work-for-wages and develop skills in a trade or profession. Both must be caregivers. Over time health changes often force uncomfortable changes. Only our internal steel like relationship of strength and flexibility that both partners work on and develop can build a relationship that grows deeply satisfying and enriching. Friction between couples is normal. Couples can learn skills that resolve disagreement in ways that strengthen their relationship, and build up each other. George Robert Bach in his book The Intimate Enemy offers many useful suggestions. One we can often use is to avoid the "gunny sack." Couples pitch their minor grievances, irritations, and angers away. But they don't disappear; they fill a large gunny sack until it gets so full that a small problem splits it open explosively. He said couples must talk about grievances soon after they occur, when they are clearly remembered and often easily resolved. Focus on one grievance and its situation while you remember it clearly. If you cannot resolve it, then make an appointment with each other to take the time to work it out soon. Be careful irritations don't pile up into a gunny sack. My dad’s second marriage to Lucie was a wonderful, interactive relationship. After dad died of emphysema our small family was reminiscing in the warm evening when Lucie asked if we’d like ice cream, and asked each what flavor they wanted. When she opened the freezer, she laughed, saying, “All I have is chocolate.” I instantly remembered that dad always wanted chocolate, yet my mother always had other flavors, and asked what flavor he wanted. Notice your partner's preferences that are always the same — their chocolate ice cream so you go with the flow. Eliminate small grievances and frictions. If divorce seems inevitable and children live at home, please be certain to talk with a therapist who has experience with divorce. Many problems children are likely to have can be reduced or eliminated by a skilled therapist. |
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One couple shared their rules that they worked out together for their relationship:
When thinking of yourself as part of a couple, think about two different words: therapeutic and toxic. In a therapeutic relationship persons think about what will embrace and support the other, will give greater life and love and joy to the other. To be therapeutic is to use your imagination to think how to give satisfaction and joy to the other, and to be alert for things — often small things — that irritate and anger and hurt. Like a bit of gravel in your shoe, resolve those irritants. Toxic words and actions belittle and hurt. Talk with your partner about being therapeutic and being alert to any toxic feelings or actions. Being a couple is above all romance — a give-and-take attraction between two who support and strengthen each other, that like a tree must be nourished and tended with loving care, so that it continues to grow into a tree that is strong enough for birds and children to play and gives with the winds that threaten to uproot the tree. Grow your relationship as you nourish a great tree. Copyright © 2003, 2006 John F. Yeaman
Stephanie Coontz in her excellent Marriage, a History reports: "For centuries, marriage did much of the work that markets and governments do today. It organized the production and distribution of goods and people. … It orchestrated people's personal rights and obligations in everything from sexual relations to the inheritance of property. Most societies had very specific rules about how people should arrange their marriages.… Kin, neighbors, and custom exerted far more control over people's choices and behaviors than is possible today. Most important, people's political rights, jobs, education, access to property, and obligations to others all were filtered through the institution of marriage." (pages 9, 11) The book has significant insights into the history and present pressures on marriage. Another summary of changing marriage is in John C. Morris' First Comes Love?: the ever-changing face of marriage.
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