"We stay married just for the kids..." I can't tell you how many times I heard that from really good people; couples who were willing to endure almost anything for the sake of their children. They only wanted to save their marriage so their children wouldn't have to suffer from the mistake they made when they got married to each other.
They were willing to live with the marriage trouble for as long as it took to get their kids all set in life and then part. They just wanted me to help them work out some plan for them to make it a bit more tolerable. "What good people," I thought! But how sad! They had given up on their marriage because they felt they were incompatible yet they both demonstrated uncommon nobility in their willingness to sacrifice for the kids.
Have you considered Making your Marriage a Happy One?
My thinking is if you are agreeing to live together and just want me to help you have a pact, why not come up with a pact that creates happiness. Did that seem reasonable? "Yes," they all said, "but our therapist said we never should have been married in the first place and we figured he/she knows what they are talking about..."
I told every couple the same thing:
- The approach western psychologists have towards marriage is counterproductive
- They don't give helpful advice
- Western psychologists have the same rate of divorce as everyone else
Western psychology started out as a system intended to treat diseases of the mind. They never should have jumped into trying to save marriages ; there is no reasonable connection. Troubled marriages are not the result of troubled minds. If anything, troubled minds are the result of troubled marriages.
Troubled marriages are the result of misunderstandings. People don't understand:
- What marriage is
- What friendship is
- What good listening is
- What good communicating is
- The differences between men and women
- What intimacy is or how it has nothing to do with sex
I can go on, but the point is good people who should have great marriages simply do not have the knowledge necessary. When I gave them the knowledge, and I did it in short order, they were not surprised by the quick turnaround they experienced in their marriage and never contemplated anything less than a great marriage ever again.
They saw that it is simple and pretty easy to have a great marriage and they followed the logical suggestions I gave them. More importantly they understood what it took to have a working marriage so they became their own expert advisors.
Most importantly they learned a functional marriage means a joyous marriage.
People aren't stupid and they aren't masochists. People are mostly good and want to do the right thing; they just need to know what the right thing to do is.
You can have a great marriage; it isn't that hard. Don't think your own situation is beyond fixing. Some folks who wade through the mud of struggles get pretty crusty; but that washes off. You can leave the past behind pretty quickly when the future looks real sweet, that's for sure. There is hope for you, and your odds are great, so don't give up. Why would you want to save your marriage just to have endless marriage trouble ? You can have a really good marriage and never have to settle for less.
