While talking about marriage and relationships one day at work, a co-worker of mine stated, “I can’t tell you how to stay married, but I can definitely tell you how not to.” He had been married and divorced five times in his 68 or so years of life. Maybe that wisdom is worth something in a world where we are continually looking for the right answers or steps to realize our goals. Maybe figuring out what “not” to do is a good starting point.
The truth is that starting with a goal or ideal is a good plan. We need to have expectations, and holding something up as our highest conceivable good is always a great idea. In this cynical world, we can forget that truth and ideals are necessary. In losing this perspective we are losing touch with our real potential while we fiddle around through life, justifying and excusing our mediocrity. Often we feel like life is in an “either/or” scenario. This is also reflected in how we view marriage and potential long term relationships. Either you are happily married and stay together forever, or you are not happy and therefore destined for divorce or just settling.
But what about the process? What about the value of the journey as it relates to this highest conceivable outcome? It is never a straight line, and we often overshoot or head in a fundamentally wrong direction in pursuit of a worthy goal.
Is the problem with the goal? Should we just give it up?
There is a part of the process that we do not welcome very well, and that part is failure. Failure is life’s way of redirecting, not necessarily an outcome to be accepted. When we face failure and other disheartening challenges in life and love, we have a perceptual system that calls it a threat. It is a threat that cuts to our core and challenges who we are, or should I say, who we think we are. But as a perceived threat, our cognitive brains go into overdrive, trying to explain it using rational evidence from the environment. People, places, and things that are present become the cause or perpetrator of our felt threat, and we act out against it by either fighting or flying.
However, more rooted in our psyche lies parts of our reality that are both personal and unconscious. These personal things often come in the form of wounds and pain from our childhoods, but can also be untapped potential and skills that are being weighed down by insecurity and misguided expectations.
Holding up our ideal while failing to respect the process is nothing but a set up, leaving us to interpret our present circumstances as a threat and feeling like we are falling short or incapable of achieving what we set out to accomplish. Our perspective is fixated on something far down the road, while we ignore that the path to get there is long, winding, over hills and through valleys. The circumstance of failure becomes an inflection point for us to bring to the surface our entire reality, not just the conscious parts. Failure to incorporate these “Shadow” elements amounts to an inability to grow.
Being stagnate in growth leaves us with a decision to make. We make the decision intentionally or not, but inevitably we make it. Either we rewrite our personal life narrative around the failure, or we take personal responsibility. Personal responsibility is not about blame or fault. Instead, personal responsibility is about owning the decisions you make within the process while ensuring that they are tied to your need to grow.
Every journey has a known and unknown element in it. I am reminded of Frodo Baggins in The Fellowship of the Ring. Frodo and his companions were journeying into strange lands on their way to a place called Rivendell, trying to avoid the Black Riders. They first needed to get to Weathertop from which they could get a view of their destination. They knew where they needed to get to, but they didn’t know if they had enough food and supplies to get them there. Upon Weathertop, while evaluating their situation, Merry asked, “How far is Rivendell?” The guide, Rider, replied that it would take him 12 days with good weather and no ill-fortune. In the end, he estimated that it would be “at least” 14 days for this group. To which Frodo replied, “A lot may happen in that time.”
There is an unknown element whose existence in our process we need to be aware of and acknowledge. When we start, we have a good view of where we want to go. However, when we start on our journey, we need to be prepared for the unknown because we will lose sight of the destination when we get down onto the path. The unknown will spring up, and if we are not prepared to interpret and confront these challenges, we will be stopped in our tracks. The hidden elements are more about us and our need to change; then, it is about the goal or destination.
Focus on the process
Focusing on the process is about addressing the parts of you that are being surfaced in the face of conflict and failure. Choosing to address these parts of you may or may not have an immediate effect on reaching your goal, particularly in achieving relational bliss, but it will have a direct impact in the long run. Thus the need to individually hone in on personal responsibility and the process, as it relates to the goal, not just focus on the desired outcome and the fact that you haven’t arrived.
The Marriage Journey
Divorce is a decision, not an inevitable consequence of a failed process. Processes are going to fail, and many choices are going to have to be made. Regardless of how imminent it feels, divorce is a decision made at a point in the process that rationally seems like a necessary choice. However, that rationality has arrived at through a long process for most people that occurred after several points of failure in their attempts to “fix” their relationship. The missed point is not the failure in the relationship, which is now becoming the victim; instead, it was the inability for one or both parties to see that the relationship struggles were a call to personal growth and confrontation within each individual first.
Divorce
There is really no nice way to say it. A person gets married with the intention of staying married. Divorce becomes the moment of a goal not achieved. There is no partial success or almost. The goal was “Till death do us part,” and that didn’t happen. Call it a failure and do what accomplished people all learn to do, which is learn from it. Failure must be understood as a necessary part of a successful process.
Appreciate failure
The word failure carries a very negative connotation in our culture. To label someone a failure has very powerful psycho-repercussions. Undoubtedly, the label of failure from our caregivers in childhood can have a life-long effect on our successful attempts as well. Somehow our fragile egos struggle to separate our efforts in areas of relationship, career, and hobbies from who we are as individuals. In other words, “I failed; therefore, I am.” However, this is precisely where the value of failure comes in. It is doing its job and shaking our egos, exposing our issues and becoming us to growth.
Instead of getting honest with ourselves, we attempt to avoid the pain of failure; we prefer to rewrite our life narrative in terms of avoidance of personal responsibility and rationalization. We externalize the problem and seek support from the horror of “Being failures.” We talk to well-meaning others who reinforce our point of view as not to offend us with true pointed feedback. They take a “To each his own” approach, which allows us to continue to avoid the much-needed feedback and introspection that would make our lives better in the long run. Our avoidance blinds us from being able to appreciate the power of failure, and the valuable lessons that lie within the discomfort of a failed experience.
What Divorce is Not
Divorce never comes as an easy decision for a marriage. It becomes difficult during the emotional storm to see how I might be contributing to a shared failure. The shame and guilt I might have to look at can be overwhelming. To take good long looks at ourselves while feeling like we are always on the emotional defense is seemingly impossible. You will see relationship posts on Facebook and Twitter using well-meaning phrases that encourage the divorcee to believe that they are not being “appreciated,” or he/she was “just not compatible,” or that they “deserve better” so then moving on, so then the goal is to move on. However, to put it plainly, divorce is never the burning out of some romantic flame that just had its time.
What Divorce Is
Divorce is the failure of two people to simultaneously engage in a process of personal growth that was being afforded in the realm of intimacy. As Harville Hendrix lays out beautifully in his IMAGO theory, our subconscious drives our romantic attraction to find a mate who will help us heal emotional wounds from childhood. We all have them, and they hurt. We tend to formulate our lives around efforts to avoid the resurfacing of those wounds. We become pretty darn good at it and feel like we have uncovered the right way of thinking only to enter the realm of romance and find ourselves constantly triggered.
This is the beginning of the breakdown process- I get triggered, I blame your behavior, you get defensive, blame me, and intimacy lost. That cycle wears and tears on a relationship until we are all out of forgiveness, second chances, and essentially romantic or intimate feelings. Once I’m on the defensive, self reflection becomes nearly impossible.
Most of us aren’t privy to the evidence of this process while we are entering a marriage. Evidence of this process doesn’t become apparent until multiple years into the marriage, and at that time, damage may seem beyond repair. Although the evidence at that time of turmoil may support the decision to get a divorce, it also leaves us with a false sense of justification. Essentially we need that justifiable evidence to support our conscience and rationalize our decision to dissolve the relationship. So we begin to build a case.
Avoiding Failure
Many couples come to therapy as a last-ditch effort to save their marriage. They inevitably come in complaining of communication problems. Unfortunately, communication is only the surface expression of a deeper issue, the issue of trust, and that of commitment. In most cases, where infidelity is not an issue, the problem lies in the trust realm. Some commitment is at least partially evident in their attempt to seek help. After ignorantly poking at each other’s childhood wounds for so long, it becomes apparent why trust is non-existent.
Avoiding failure requires a perspective switch and a willingness to put down defenses and see our spouse as the hurt child they are. Not easy to do when you feel under attack, and the attacks can come at any time and from anywhere. The fighting and poking at wounds is actually a “best” attempt to solve the problem of not connecting. However, best efforts end in failure when spouses do not have all the the correct information to frame their relationship.
The info lies in this little storage container that we all keep buried inside the closet of our hearts. It involves shame, guilt, negative beliefs about our selves, and the sources of those pains. We do not like to share these things with anyone, especially those we do not trust. Heck, in most cases, we aren’t even aware that these problems are living in the basement. In the end, it is this self-preservation that wears down the resolve of the commitment. Sharing this information is genuinely revealing our selves and all of our ugliness. When our spouse can see these wounds, and understand that they’re operating it can change their perspective and create a new way of communicating begins that breeds closeness and safety.
If It’s Inevitable
You may have moved on from your partner, but you will not move on from your self and your need to pursue growth. You are wired with a need to attach, and attachment is for survival, both physical and emotional, and survival depends on healthy adaptation. Those wounds want to heal and to heal, they must be triggered to the surface. Failure to recognize and deal with those wounds will set you up for a repeat attempt at blind romance. It’s the suppression of these wounds that leads to stress as well as physical and mental health issues later in life, as many experts are realizing. This suppression is also why divorce rates for second and third marriages are higher than first marriages.
Rationalization
Most people in their attempts to avoid the pain of a sense of failure begin the rationalization and demonization process of their ex. The rationalization of divorce has two potentially devastating consequences. One consequence is that our worldview and value system that led us into a committed “Until death do us part” relationship must be compromised, and we must tell ourselves and others that divorce is OK. We reframe it from a mistake or failure and turn it into the right decision. We essentially perpetuate the belief that there is no value in genuine commitment.
Taking on this value shift can affect our ability to reattach later to another inevitable attraction and prevent us from truly engaging in a more profound sense of intimacy with another human being. That drive to know and be known is essential to our happiness. We risk shutting down that drive and limiting our human experience with altered belief systems and values that don’t allow us to face ourselves in the intimate realm of commitment with honesty.
The second thing that rationalizing a divorce does to our psyche is related to the process that I mentioned earlier. The intimacy of marriage is a triggering experience. Our spouse will indeed seem like our biggest enemy at times. Their patterns of behavior and communication will no doubt trigger in us defensiveness. What we are defending is actually the target area of our personal growth. By protecting our ego and the emotional weakness in our own character, we perpetuate it and strengthen it. This may be the most damaging result of not engaging in the process of personal growth offered in marriage. Furthermore, if we perpetuate a rationalization regarding divorce that doesn’t engage our areas of growth and responsibility then we are just setting ourselves up for next time.
What does all this mean, and what can a person do with this information to strengthen their marriage or begin to grow post-divorce?
1.) View your spouse as a mirror. Any distress or frustration you feel as a result of their behavior is tied to a similar emotional wound from your childhood, probably at the hands of a primary caregiver. The circumstances of your life have changed, but those emotional wounds continue to be triggered in real life until they are faced. Often the love your spouse needs is complimentary to the area of growth you need to attend to.
2.) Own your feelings. No one is causing your frustration. The frustration is already living in your belief system and personal views. Your spouse may be cueing a response, but they are not causing it. Leaving socks on the floor, not flushing the toilet, and talking on the phone too much are not mortal sins. However, in marriage, they can be significant points of conflict. Focusing on the content of the fight misleads us away from the underlying process, which lies within the source of the emotion, not the trigger.
3.) The ego needs to be dealt with constantly. Be mindful of those feelings and allow the real source of the reaction to surface and be understood. In this understanding, the wound loses its power over us, and our spouse’s behavior begins to have a lesser effect.
4.) View the frustrating behavior and offensive statements by your spouse as defensive instead of offensive in nature. Your partner is also protecting their wounds, and recognizing that your behavior may be triggering them allows you to make appropriate adjustments.
Marriage, like any other well-intentioned investment that falls short and ends in divorce, is undoubtedly a failure. This failure is not meant in the conventional, shaming sense of the word. Instead, it is a failure in process and perspective. Recognizing this process and your responsibility to the process will lead to personal growth. Whether you acquire this information during the conflict or after the divorce is final, the ultimate failure is in not applying it. Having the insight to your own personal growth and wounded psyche and the willingness to face it can provide the perspective change you need to grow, married, or not.
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This post was previously published on medium.com.
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From The Good Men Project on Medium
What Does Being in Love and Loving Someone Really Mean? | My 9-Year-Old Accidentally Explained Why His Mom Divorced Me | The One Thing Men Want More Than Sex | The Internal Struggle Men Battle in Silence |
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