What are the chances that your marriage will last a lifetime? Not good. In America, 50% of all marriages end in divorce. To make matters worse, 90% of non-divorced couples report that they are unhappy with their marriages.
How do you explain the above? The most frequent answer is “The Top Ten Marriage Busters”:
1. Poor communication: “He’s a turtle who hides in his shell and never talks.” “All she does is yell.”
2. Sex: “He wants me to be intimate when he has done nothing to make me feel close.” “She withholds sex for power over me.”
3. In-laws: “He puts his mother’s wishes over mine.” “She spends more time with her parents than me.”
4. Money: “He hordes like a miser.” “She spends like a drunken sailor.”
5. Child-rearing: “He tries to be a friend, not a father, to his kids.” “She destroys my parental power by over-ruling my punishments of our kids.”
6. Infidelity: “He betrayed and lied to me.” “She cheated on me — my trust is shattered.”
7. Falling out of love: “I still love him, but I’m not in love with him.” “The chemistry is gone.”
8. Addictions: “When he drinks, he gets angry.” “She drinks to hide her problems.”
9. Abuse: “He is emotionally abusive, I can’t take it anymore.” “She started slapping me, it’s over.”
10. Poor selection: “He married me because I was pregnant.” “She married me for my money.”
I hear, over and over, that these “Top 10” have caused a marriage to fail. As soon as I tell the couple, “you have just described the symptoms, not the cause, of a bad marriage,” an avalanche of confusion rolls over them. It is at this point that I begin to teach couples the real cause of a failed marriage. I do this by explaining human development:
1. Humans develop in stages, from childhood, to adolescence, to adulthood. Healthy child development leads to a healthy adult.
2. Children are born with genetically inherited traits which will interact with how their parents raise them.
3. If the parent’s style of parenting aligns with the child’s inborn traits, the child will develop smoothly and without emotional bumps and bruises.
4. But life can throw a monkey wrench into even the best of parenting systems. For example, a child born with two genetically inherited traits, shyness and super-sensitivity, and who is also raised in a parenting system which is a good match for these two specific traits (supporting, structured and non-harsh parenting), then the child’s development will be smooth. But, what happens to this same child if there is a mismatch? A shy, sensitive boy who is raised by a chronically angry father will experience severe developmental disruptions, which leads to an anxious, insecure, and deeply worried young boy. To make matters even more complicated, adverse life events — illness, death, moves, job loss, financial stress — all alter the parenting systems, which in turn, further alters the development path of the child.
5. The child-parent mismatch occurs at a developmental stage (under the age of 10) when a child is incapable of knowing why this bad event is occurring to them. This leads to an incorrect belief system where the child says to themselves, “My dad yells at me because I am a bad kid.” This belief system is called an “emotional injury,” and if not corrected, it persists into adult life.
6. Children try to fix their own emotional injuries by what is called, “coping strategies.” In the example of the shy and sensitive child with an angry father, the child tries to cope by becoming good, perfect, and industrious. These strategies will grow and grow into adulthood.
7. In the same way that learning how to play a sport becomes automatic, so to do emotional wounds and coping strategies. That is, they go under and stay under the radar of our awareness.
In every relationship, each adult carries their own, specific emotional wounds. However, lacking a clear understanding of the developmental features discussed above, couples end up unintentionally re-wounding each other. They do this by fighting over the “Big 10.” The purpose of counseling is to identify emotional injuries and each partner’s old coping strategies. Once the couple has achieved a clear awareness of how old coping strategies no longer help them, new strategies can be built. Finally, couples are then free to find ways, through their love, of helping each other heal and grow.
The content of this article is for educational purposes only, and should not be used as a substitute for treatment by a professional. The characters in this story are not real. Names and details have been changed to protect confidentiality.
Dr. Richard Elghammer contributes his column each week to the Journal Review.
