– Discovering False Beliefs about Happy Marriages in Marriage Counseling

Last Updated on May 4, 2023 by Chris Roberts

MARRIAGE COUNSELING CAN HELP US LEARN INEFFECTIVE WAYS TO MAKE HAPPY MARRIAGES

References “The Seven Principles for Making Marriage Work.” By John M. Gottman, Ph.D.

In a previous article about marriage counseling, we began listing some common false beliefs about ways to foster a healthy marriage.  It is not always that these false beliefs can be detrimental to a marriage.  And really, any intentional effort to make your spouse happy or to build a solid marriage will go a long way to ensuring you and your spouse live a long, happy life together.  But, there are certain beliefs that if continually enacted in order to fundamentally make your marriage happier could lead to a rut of ineffectual effort and connection.  These repeated, ineffectual actions for creating a happy marriage could turn into frustration and distance that without interruption could create more harm than good.

Marriage counselors have a dearth of information for working with couples in marriage counseling.  One such helpful resource is Dr. John Gottman’s book, The Seven Principles for Making Marriage Work.  In this book, Dr. Gottman lists some age-old beliefs about marriage that may not be necessarily as true as once thought.  Dr. Gottman has done extensive research with married couples and has created scientific data for understanding why marriages succeed or fail.  In his efforts to understand and be able to explain how marriages succeed, he has also found certain actions couples take that don’t make a marriage more successful.  Below are some common beliefs about happy marriages that may not actually make them more fulfilling.

“Avoiding conflict will ruin your marriage.” (p. 15)  It has become more commonplace in recent years for couples to actively engage in conflict rather than sweep it under the rug.  But simply engaging in conflict is not the answer to sweeping disagreements under the rug.  A couple can become stuck in a similar rut of always needing to hash out everything that isn’t working.  The best rule of thumb is to keep things fresh, and to make sure each partner is continually working on healthy ways of relating to each other.  If a couple has always swept conflict under the rug, and their relationship seems to be deteriorating, maybe talking more directly about their problems could be beneficial.  Of course, the opposite is just as true.  Some couples need to learn to let things go and to trust their spouse has the best for them, even if it doesn’t feel so in the moment.

“Affairs are the root cause of divorce.” (p. 16)  Dr. Gottman summarizes this false belief well, “In most cases, it’s the other way around.  Problems in a marriage that send the couple on a trajectory to divorce also send one (or both) of them looking for intimate connection outside the marriage.  Most marital therapists who write about extramarital affairs find that these trysts are usually not about sex, but about seeking friendship, support, understanding, respect, attention, caring, and concern—the kind of things that marriage is supposed to offer.” (p. 16).  This is a wonderful summary of what happens in the breakdown of a marriage.  The loss of emotional and supportive connection happens way before a partner begins looking outside of the marriage.  And usually, the sex that happens during an affair happens after there has been considerable emotional and supportive connection by the third party.

“Men are not biologically ‘built’ for marriage.” (p. 16)  Even in our more socially aware culture of gender equality, this belief continues to pervade our thoughts around marriage.  Dr. Gottman makes an interesting point when he states, “…the frequency of extramarital affairs does not depend on gender so much as on opportunity.  Now that so many women work outside the home, the rate of extramarital affairs by women has skyrocketed.  According to Annette Lawson, Ph.D., of the University of California, Berkeley’s Institute of Human Development, since women have entered the workplace in massive numbers, the number of extramarital affairs of young women now slightly exceeds those of men.”  (p. 16)  This shouldn’t be surprising, given the debunking of the belief above.  We usually end up having sex with those feel close to, but we feel close FIRST.  And both men and women long to be close to another person, even if the old adage is true that men want sex more than women.  Of course, that is a topic for another article.

In a future article about marriage counseling, we will discuss ways to actually build a healthy marriage.  A marriage is always a work in progress, and learning about your spouse could be the most beautiful part of the journey.  For spouses to learn how their approach to a happy marriage isn’t that helpful is just part of the journey!

If you are interested in marriage counseling in Nashville, TN, or want to know more about how marriage counseling works, please feel free to give us a call at (615) 800-9260 and discuss more if we could be a fit for you and your marriage.  My name is Chris Roberts, and I am a marriage counselor in Nashville, TN, and love helping couples break through to happy and fulfilling marriages.