The State of Marriage

The state of marriage and its success rate have constantly declined in the last decades. Based on recent data, the marriage rate in the West has felt somewhat 40% over the previous 30 years. While data shows the rate of divorce felt, the data is misleading as it represents a crude number that does not take into account the marriage decline rate. To make it simple, if the number of divorces stays the same while the number of marriages diminishes by half, it means that the true amount of failing marriages doubled. Based on recent stats, half of all first marriages end in divorce, and the rate of second and third marriages is drastically higher.

Moreover, a recent study shows that nearly 25% of kids under 18 grow up in single-parent households in the US. In her book “You Can Be Right, or You Can Be Married,” Dana Adam Shapiro wrote that as few as 17 percent of couples are content in their marriage. Vicki Larson, journalist and co-author of “The New I Do, Reshaping Marriage for Skeptics, Realists, and Rebels,” cites that six of every 10 married couples are unhappy, and four out of 10 have considered leaving their partner.

This by itself is troubling. It reflects a deep problem in our current Western society. One that affects the level of happiness and productivity of our adult generation and will directly impact the next one. The reasons given for reaching this point vary. Women's liberation, the fall of Christianity, the internet, and the general Disney model of love contribute to this trend. Couple therapy became a flourishing industry together with lawyers who specialize in divorce. YouTube is full of channels that cover all topics related to these issues, giving each unhappy person the exact answer he or she was looking for to validate their perspective. As a person who took part in numerous couples therapies and spent some time searching for answers online, I can attest to that fact. It is an industry of misery, one that is probably based on a lot of good intentions and some profit-seeking.

After hearing many professional talking points about the subject of couple problems and the web of possible solutions, I realized that most, if not all, of the current conversations on the topic are based on the capacity of couples to develop healthy communication. One that will allow them to share and accept each other, feel safe, and become one happy cell. The focus on this topic is normally more demanding from men as, by nature, women have a higher capacity to connect to their emotions, give names to them, and speak about them. Some new development psychology movement has started recently to popularize the topic of attachment problems, promoting the idea that by understanding and focusing on this topic, couples could understand each other better and heal together into a better-shared future.

After giving it some thought, I came to realize that the main issue with our current mating world can be referred to as a “Problem of first principle.” Let me explain. In essence, people today don’t enter into relationships knowing consciously what they are searching for. Most of the generation that grew up on Disney just want to be in love, search for a magical mystic connection, and want to be understood. By itself, those are all noble causes, but there is no clear understanding of what a person wants and needs in a relationship in the long run. Many people will search to be understood and fall in love more for the sake of being in love than anything else. Disney and Hollywood's dream of happiness ever after played a big part in this. Eventually, in most of the movies, the story concentrates on the meeting process, the shared struggle of two people against the world, and finishes at the wedding. Doing so made us all unconsciously programmed with a clear vision of how things should look from the start. We all search for and create it by acting as closely as possible to this model. By doing so, we concentrate on the wrong thing. We choose our mates based on an emotional reaction based on a fictional dream nobody lives in.

Like all the good magic stories, it is a question of time until the magic disappears, and we are left with the reality we put ourselves into. It is part of any long-term relationship. For some, it requires time, and for others, a baby or a misfortune. Eventually, all relationship reaches this point. It is the moment one realizes that the person he is spending his time with is no longer reflecting the image one has built for himself in his head when the magic is up. This happened for several reasons. First, when we fall in love, we do so by creating an image of the other person that is half based on the actual reality and half on what we would like and want the other person to be. It is never really based on the actual person. We develop feelings toward a representation that mixes what we need, dream, and wish for. Secondly, as time passes, people change. It is part of life.

Sometimes, people change in a manner that fits the other person's mental image. Those are by far a minority of cases that do not represent the experience of most couples. This change process repeats itself many times during any long-term relationship, building one on top of the other. In this process, not only does one partner change, but the person itself changes simultaneously. As both partners are changing, it is just a question of repetition before the couple reaches a point in which they can no longer be recognized as the one at the beginning of the process. It is an inevitability of life. Third and most importantly, we are creatures that excel in adapting to living in a world where we get bored very easily. The good and exciting traits that we find so unique in a person become the norm, and we start taking them for granted, making only the problematic aspect of the other person float. This is all part of a normal relationship that started based on emotionally Disney-structured love.

Eventually, after a certain period of marriage, many couples reach a point where they see their partner for who they are. Not because they were hiding it but because the magic of being in love diminishes. In many cases, a person will become highly aware of the other person's true nature and mainly focus on his partner's undesirable traits. It is a kind of Bias to the negative. At this point, sentences such as “You changed so much,” “Where is the person I married,” and “Why are you so…” start to appear. In reality, those are natural stages of any long-term relationship. It is the hard part. The part that actually builds strength and true meaning in the relationship itself. Only by overcoming it can a couple start to create a real relationship built on trust, appreciation, and acceptance. One that is not based on uncontrollable feelings but meaning, shared purpose, and acceptance based on both partners' actual personalities and needs. It is part of any maturation process. One that is not easy requires courage and, as we see around us, fails many times.

Many couples divorce at that stage, while others live miserably together. Circling and spiraling around frustration with a hidden wish, the other side will understand and finally change. I will tell you something right now: your partner will not change and will not become the person you wish him or her to be. Not because he won’t but because he can’t. He or she was never this person and never planned to be. The memories of a different person are probably more of an inner construction of the story you told yourself when you were in the middle of the ecstasy stage of being in love. It never actually reflected the person standing before you – (well, on some metaphysical level). I will add a caveat and say that, in some cases, people actually change over time following a traumatic event. In these cases, pushing aggressively into the face of the person how unhappy the partner is with the change and insisting he should come back to what he was is genuinely destructive and unhelpful.

There is nothing wrong with growing apart. We all experience it in our life. Friends in the early period of life don’t always fit the person we become when we grow up. It is part of life and evolution. Regardless, it should be seen differently when it comes to marriage. Marriage is a different game with a different purpose. Especially when kids are involved. Marriage is a commitment. One that is built to maintain structure for the creation of a family. Divorce without kids is a bureaucratic hustle that should make any person think twice before entering into it if no wish for kids exists. Kids are the reason for the commitment to holding an accountable structure that will allow them to survive and even flourish. We enter into marriage for that purpose, which should be the most important reason to ensure it works well.

When presenting this topic to many people, the argument I encountered many times was – “It is better for kids to have a happy divorced marriage over unhappy married parents.” While I agree with this argument on many levels, it is not what this conversation is about. As parents, we are the first and most important example kids grow into. They absorb and imprint some unconscious ideas. The parents' structure, love, availability, and happiness will guide kids into adulthood and be their north star. Without a true example of responsibility, happiness, and good communication, kids grow up in a world where they are unaware of what a healthy relationship looks like. Moreover, The idea that life is hard but that it can and should be handled with the utmost courage and responsibility is lacking in a divorced family. Concepts such as compromising for the greater good, overcoming difficulties, and the notion that life is not perfect can all be learned from parents who manage to create a healthy and stable household, regardless of all the hardships.

Good things are hard to get and require hard work in the process. Marriages are not different. We can choose the wrong people for the right reasons or the right people for the wrong reasons. Marriage is not about what we did and who we were, but what we have right now and how we can make it work. It is unavoidable that a couple will grow apart at a certain point in time. The needs of both of the people involved will certainly change. It is undoubtedly true that in certain periods, it will feel as if it will be better to be alone than together. But this is not the game played in a long-term marriage. Love is something you build! There are no bad reasons to fight for love. It is hard, demanding, and sometimes seems impossible. But nothing worthwhile is easy, and children are the biggest, if not the only, real responsibility we have in life.

If you find yourself unhappy in your marriage, please remember that it is normal. It happened to all married couples. The difference between the one that survives and the one that fails is not that hardship doesn’t come their way. It is all about their capacity to understand what they are fighting for and their willingness to sacrifice for it. Your partner will not change in the way you wish for just because you do, but if you are lucky, he or she will be willing to listen to your needs, express their own, and find a way to make it better together. In the long run, you deserve a good marriage worth fighting for. And if you don’t find it to be true, your children definitely do. This is the purpose of marriage in the first place.

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