A lasting marriage does not always signal a happy marriage. Plenty of miserable couples have stayed together for children, religion or other practical reasons.
But for many couples, it’s just not enough to stay together. They want a relationship that is meaningful and satisfying. In short, they want a sustainable marriage.
“The things that make a marriage last have more to do with communication skills, mental health, social support, stress ”” those are the things that allow it to last or not,” says Arthur Aron, a psychology professor who directs the Interpersonal Relationships Laboratory at the State University of New York at Stony Brook. “But those things don’t necessarily make it meaningful or enjoyable or sustaining to the individual.”
The notion that the best marriages are those that bring satisfaction to the individual may seem counterintuitive. After all, isn’t marriage supposed to be about putting the relationship first?
“It’s not that these couples lost themselves in the marriage; instead, they grew in it”.
Yes, this is true. I wouldn’t even say that marriage is a “mixed bag”, rather it’s a complicated bag. You have to be similar enough to get along, yet different enough to keep each other interested and growing.
“Additional research suggests that spouses eventually adopt the traits of the other — and become slower to distinguish differences between them, or slower to remember which skills belong to which spouse”.
This is also true, and a phenomenon to be wary of. In excess, it’s the stuff of which unhealthy enabling/codependency is made. It pays instead when each spouse still has a strong sense of him/herself, but also who each is as part of the couple. I’ve seen a lot of this through a family member’s work; hard stuff at times–she’s a board-certified palliative care physician, and has much opportunity to counsel patients/spouses/families through end-of-life issues. She says all the time it can be much easier to counsel those who have not been married very long, as opposed to those married for a very long time–almost as if in the latter case there’s too much feeding off one another without any sense of individuality, limited ability to check-and-balance, and sometimes less reality-orientation than those married for a shorter time. My spouse and I try to bear this in mind every day–we very much want to love and support each other, but still want to remain healthy and open enough to be able to say when needed, “You know honey, I don’t really think that’s the best way to go about that”.
I thank God every day for the companionship, humor, sharing and widsom that marriage has brought to my life.
The above article is not half-bad, but the title is rather dumb and deceptive. True, “Me” is part of marriage(ie, two parts) and each looks to get their needs met, but the more important concept is a fulfilled synergism, which the article does address in a roundabout way.