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.

Open to Love: Freeing Yourself From Being Protected, yet Isolated

Let me tell you a story I heard from a gifted Imago therapist and trainer named Maya Kollman. The story is about a woman who loves walking on the beach. The woman’s bare feet sink into the warm sand with each step. Without shoes, she feels free and natural. The woman walks like this every day, until she steps on a sharp shell and cuts her foot. The woman is surprised. Her foot is bleeding and it hurts. The next time she walks on the beach, she wears flip-flops to protect her feet from shells. After several days, the side of her foot brushes against a beached jellyfish. The woman’s foot stings and itches. So, the next time she walks on the beach the woman wears sneakers. This works for several days, until the woman stubs her toe on the rocks of the jetty. Frustrated, the woman decides to wear boots for her walks on the sand. She has been hurt so many times and she has finally found a way to keep her feet safe. However, the woman has become so concerned with protecting her feet that she has lost the wonderful experience of feeling the sand beneath her feet and between her toes. She misses feeling the texture, coarse and dry or silky and cool, and she misses feeling the connection to nature.

As we walk through life, both joy and hurt are part of the journey. Yet, it is our natural reaction to pull away from the things that hurt us, whether they are physical or emotional. Although it is extremely scary to be vulnerable to these hurts, the alternative is even worse: isolation. While others can’t hurt us when we isolate ourselves, we also cannot receive love and caring. This is a profound conundrum. Our hearts are protected, but they are also closed to love. And what greater pleasure is there on this journey than to love and be loved? As M. Scott Peck says, to love is to be fully invested in the spiritual growth of another. How divine to love and to be loved in this way! It is exquisite.

So, how do we live with this paradox? We must open our hearts by carefully choosing a person who feels safe. If this person is your spouse, how wonderful! It is important to realize, though, that the person who feels safe may not be your spouse at first. This may surprise you, especially coming from a marriage counselor. However, if your marriage has a history of many hurts that have not yet been talked about and worked through, your partner may not feel like a safe person. You might feel safer being open with your therapist or a trusted friend. This first experience will teach you what it feels like to be open. Through this experiment, you can come to know in your heart that you can be open, survive it, and even relish it. After that, you can begin to open your heart to your spouse.

It is important to recognize that there will be hurt sometimes, even with someone who is safe and even with your spouse. This is because the other person is human, too, makes mistakes and has faults of his or her own. He or she may unintentionally do or say something hurtful. When this happens, and it will, allow yourself to feel the hurt and to talk about it with him or her. Part of a close relationship is being able to discuss everything that happens between you. If you both feel heard and understood, talking about a hurt can move the relationship or marriage even closer. Only then, with openness and vulnerability, can love grow in your marriage. As humans, we need one another. We need to love and to be loved. By opening yourself to love, you will feel the divine joy that you deserve.