Married couples are facing significant challenges. The following will be my honest, unfiltered opinion and perspective on marriage. This post is not about SEO or marketing or for any other purpose other than offering a word from a therapist.
At the center of marriage is love. Love, by nature, is sacrificial. Love is selfless, self-giving, and self-emptying. It is at the core of genuine relationships and is at the center of most world religions. Love, though, and to most couples' detriment, is a misconstrued word and one by which different people have their own perceptions. Unfortunately, it is often the case that people have adopted this word, which is supposed to be at the center of their marriage, to mean something according to their own image.
What Love and Marriage is not
Love is not self-seeking. Love is not "good feelings" and warm fuzzies. Love is not what happens when someone makes me smile, or even makes me happy. Love is none of these things. This surface level definition and understanding of love is more in-line with the word infatuation or fondness or pleasure. These things are not bad, let me clear. We want these in our relationships, friendships, and in our marriage, but this is a shallow view and is not sustainable for a long, healthy, and fulfilling marriage.
This sort of "I love you" translated into "you bring me pleasure" is what dominates society and a lot of people's marriages. I can say "I love a television show" and mean the same thing. "Oh, I love that restaurant!" This translates into nothing more than "that show, restaurant, food, experience, place, person, activity, movie, entertainment, art brings me pleasure." These things bring about some type of desirable experience or state of being. These things make me feel good. These things are interesting. These things makes me forget about my troubles. These things may even inspire me, they may motivate me, they may cause me to feel a spark of creativity. And, these are not bad things, in fact in many cases they are good and fine and something we want to associate our spouse with. However, this is not love.
When we reduce our orientation toward our spouse into this type of "you bring my pleasure" we are doing nothing more than serving our own ego. It is self-seeking. We are chasing some feeling, some emotion, some other object or whatever serves our need to feel good, to escape, to feel some type of emotion. Unfortunately, this type of love is not in any way part of the recipe of a healthy and long-lasting marriage. It is flimsy, fragile, and unstable.
What happens when our spouse gets sick, is in an accident, is incapacitated, ages, has a bad day, struggles, acts against our wishes, etc.? What happens then?
The Required State of Love for Marriage
True love is true self-sacrifice. Love is compassion, attention, self-denial, thinking of the other first, seeking to bring the other joy, empathy, listening, giving, and sharing. There are of course Biblical definitions which I choose not to mention because this article is intended for everyone and so therefore I shall omit Christian references for the time. This also is to show that Love is universal.
Going back to Love. Love is an act of self-offering and of dying to our ego. Love is the choice to suffer for the sake of another. To want to take another's pain and so you are willing to the pay the price yourself to free the other. This is Love. This is what makes the world go 'round, this is what is necessary for humanity to survive, to thrive, to create, and to evolve.
Love is really nothing more than humility. Where we are willing and able to do whatever is necessary in order to serve the other, to put the other first, to think about and only think about the other. This is true humility. These souls are the ones who attract grace. When we are humble we forget about ourselves, we lose track of "I", we cease to exist, we die, we are nailed to the cross. I know I said I would omit Christian references, but, oh well. oops.
This is the only thing that will save a marriage, sustain a marriage, make a marriage worth staying in. This is what is needed when our spouse gets sick, ages, is incapacitated, has a bad day or week or month, needs us to listen, is in pain, is suffering, is requiring our presence. Only Love can do this, and True Love, agape.
Why Marriages Fail Today
There are many reasons for this, but ultimately, beyond everything else it is because, and just being brutally honest here, it is because people are selfish and are more concerned about themselves than they are their spouses. This obviously manifests in a lot of different ways, but it can also manifest in the form of arguments and "hot startups" to use a term from Gottman Method Couples Counseling. When we think we are right all the time and when we are full of ego and pride we start to call out our partner on things. We are hurt and we attack and lash out. We think we are so perfect so we need to correct the other. We are so full of ourselves that we begin to disrespect the other.
Likewise, we get bored, our spouse stops pleasing us. They become a burden, they are someone who doesn't bring me good feelings all the time. They are demanding. They call me out. They pop the balloon of my own ego. They ask me to do things I don't want to do. They are an inconvenience. They hold me responsible. Now, the honeymoon is over, and here are the dishes.
We lose our pleasure because real life comes and slaps us in the face. We are forced to face reality and that is that the world does not revolve around us. Neither do we have all the answers. So this person who at first I understood was someone who is going to make me smile, to make me feel not alone, to share a good time with, to do nice things for me, to send me sweet texts, to share physical intimacy with; now this person no longer brings me the warm fuzzies. I no longer associate this human being as an object and source of my own pleasure. They become the opposite, and we fall apart.
We start seeking our thrills and searching for good feelings in other places and we resent our spouse. We flirt with others, we spend time apart, we are no longer interested. We don't treat them with sweetness and respect because now they are a hindrance to own happiness. We start criticizing them and complaining. We find all the reasons why this person is making me miserable. Why nitpick on every little thing they do that isn't perfect. Resentment builds, arguments happen, and we are miserable.
The Cure to Marriages
In short, we have to commit ourselves to actually loving our spouse. The answer is quite simple. We have to humble ourselves, look inside, and choose to love. We have to learn to sacrifice, to give, to stop caring so much about ourselves.
This may involve counseling and therapy. This may involve learning communication skills and all of the other practical things we can do. But, those things are not the ends in themselves. Those tools and workshops and exercises and all of that stuff is only a means to an end which is choosing to love. It is a choice.
I have couples come to me and we can go through all of the exercises, all of the therapy things, and yet they don't get better. They do not get better because they have not chosen to love or have become so cold, ego-centric, or callous that they just quite simply do not want to love. So they choose themselves over their partner. They choose some thrill, some feeling, something or someone else over the person in front of them. These poor souls have not chosen love. They cannot get over themselves. They cannot look inside, reflect, and take an honest look at who they are and why they exist.
So, they may choose to move on. They can come up with any reason in the book - blaming the other person. Saying this thing or that thing. This relationship is no longer serving them so they give up.
What needs to happen is actually the exact opposite. We have to say Yes to love. We have to choose to pick up our cross. We have to be courageous enough to step into the unknown of an ego-death. We have to take a chance on what happens when we stop thinking about ourselves. We have to listen to what the other wants, needs, and expects of us.
In Conclusion
Couples need to stop thinking of themselves as the most important person in the world. They have to understand that marriage is hard, difficult, and requires humility. We have to learn to seek what is best for our spouse, what they want, what they prefer, what they need. We sacrifice ourselves and we find real and true freedom and happiness. We are full and we are complete. We find true joy. There is no other way as this way is lasting and sustainable. This is the path to a healthy marriage.