Successful Marriage: Together Out of Love, Not Insecurity

What do some couples have that other couples don’t? Successful couples are together out of love. They enjoy being with each other. They genuinely like spending time with their spouse. They may do some activities together that they both enjoy. They may feel safe and secure when their spouse is around. They may look forward to being intimate and sexual with each other. They may like talking and listening to one another.
Most relationships start in Romantic Love. In this first stage, couples come together because they are in love and because they love being with this person. Yet, even then, they were together because of how the other made them feel. This new boyfriend or girlfriend made them feel loved, cherished, desired, elated, and ecstatic. Other feelings were alleviated or disappeared: loneliness, isolation, feeling unloved, unwanted, or afraid. In this stage, we are not only in love with our new partner, we are in love with how we feel.
As I’ve written about before, Romantic Love fades and all relationships move into the next stage. Imago Relationship Therapy calls the next stage the Power Struggle. Here, the high of being in love has worn off. The couple has their first fight or begins to feel some of those difficult feelings again: loneliness, isolation, unloved, unwanted, and/or afraid. Each person’s old defenses come back and each person may react by blaming, shaming or criticizing or with silence or withdrawal. Couples who choose to explore what these conflicts are about move into the next several stages: Re-Commitment, Doing the Work, Awakening, and Real Love. These are couples who stay together because of love.
Other couples remain in the Power Struggle. These couples are together, in part, to alleviate their own insecurities. Even though the relationship they’re in is incredibly difficult at times, this feels preferable to feelings connected to insecurity: fear, loneliness, isolation, powerlessness, and shame. This can show up in a number of ways. Perhaps your spouse provides financially, so you remain to avoid the fear of being poor and deprived. Perhaps your partner cares for you by keeping the house or preparing the meals, so you remain to avoid having to learn to do these things for yourself. Perhaps your concerned that family or friends or your community would frown on divorce, so you stay in the marriage to avoid feeling ashamed. Perhaps you feel physically safe living with someone, so you stay to avoid living alone and fearing for your safety. Perhaps you like having a sexual partner, so you stay to avoid having no rewarding sexual outlet or to avoid dating again. Perhaps your spouse brings you social status, so you stay to avoid isolation or anonymity.
Are you in your relationship, in part, to avoid feeling these things? If you ended the relationship would you feel ashamed, lonely, afraid, or uncared for? If you entered couples therapy and were willing to explore these conflicts with your spouse, would you feel scared of, vulnerable in front of, and/or angry with your spouse?
As the gifted therapist Chloe Madanes wrote, “The couple has to make the shift from wanting to be together because it helps each partner with their difficulties to wanting to be together because they enjoy one another.” Couples therapy helps couples shift from being together out of their own insecurities to being together out of love. Couples therapy is a chance to explore what you are concerned or insecure about. Many couples find that just saying out loud what their concern is alleviates its intensity. It just doesn’t sound as bad as they told themselves it would be. Plus, by saying it aloud, the concern comes into your conscious awareness where it can be effectively dealt with. Each person then moves to finding a way to take care of themselves or rely on others, not only the spouse, to get this concern met. This process, together with another important feature of Imago Relationship Therapy: increasing fun and appreciation, shifts couples to being together because they genuinely like begin with one another. Enjoying one another is an important feature of a successful marriage.