The majority of marriages do not disintegrate on a dramatic moment, they are worn at the seams of the normal life. The script presented in the wedding day is straightforward: vows, photos, applause, yet the following years are powered by less vocal mechanisms: who is aware of what has to be done, who takes the load, who stitches a small wound until it hardens. Long-term partnership is an imperfect feeling that is more of a series of repetition actions.
Among the first surprises is the fact that love is a maintenance behavior. The emotional high that united two people is not predictable to be there just on time, and it does not cope with the working schedule, family things, illnesses. It is at the inconvenient time that commitment is significant. A 11-year, 172-married couple study put commitment in a broader context of liking relationship but involved a cycle of making sacrifices and “step up and take active steps to maintain this relationship, even if it means I’m not going to get my way in certain areas.”
That effort manifests itself most reliably in antagonism particularly that which is renewed, without growth or diminution, as a seasonal virus. In the Gottman popularized research, it has been argued that 69 percent of relationship conflict involves the issues of perpetual problems, which are based on personality and lifestyle differences and which cannot be resolved with a clear misunderstanding. The practical lesson is not glamorous: marriage is not necessarily successful because it helps to avoid conflicts but because it helps to make sure that old conflicts are not turning into scorn, defensiveness or apathy.
The emotional work is an interior technical skill: to listen, despite being flooded. The “communication problems” turns out to be, as often, a nervous-system problem- two persons in a frenzy, each feeling threatened, and each one wants to be understood. Relationship research advice focuses on learning to calm down, to slow down, and to take breaks before the brain has a tantrum and the complaint of the partner can be heard without having to turn into a courtroom. It is not a personality makeover; it is a practice undertaken in a real time, with pressure, where each individual would have preferred to win than remain associated.
At this point, in the household labor, the abstract ideals run against the quantifiable work. Not merely chores, chores carry with them the weight of respect and power and whose attention will be considered the default safety net. Execution is not the only division performed by systems such as Fair Play, which also tries to separate what is referred to as “conception, planning, and execution,” since even remembering appointments, foresight and keeping track of supplies may be more tiring than the actual job performance. It is hardly ever a single load of laundry friction; it is whether one partner becomes the project manager of the other, and what happens when the standards of what is clean, done, or enough are not congruent. In most households, resentment does not come in a loud manner. It is accrued in terms of unclaimed duties, unspoken obligations, and silent record keeping of who must be available when needed.
The parenthood enhances all the existing patterns including the ones that a couple vowed never to engage in. According to a therapist who specializes in perinatal mental health, 67% of the couples have reported post partum reduction of relationship satisfaction within the first three years of child birth and that approximately 1 in 5 mothers and 1 in 10 fathers have perinatal mood and anxiety disorders. With a family that is running on lisped sleep and continuous needs, intimacy tends to be inconsistent, the relationship between the couple can be drowned out by the relationship between the two parents, and even the little misunderstanding blows out of proportion quicker than one of the partners can realize.
Another subsystem that is permanent is the extended family. Marriage is not a marriage of two, this is marriage of two family cultures, both of which have their expectations, loyalties and tripwires. According to Dr. John Gottman, any marriage is cross-cultural experience whether there is a difference or otherwise. Holidays or other significant life events may push the boundary-setting into the open where the partners have to coordinate the scripts, shield each other against unnecessary disputes, and leave certain predictively corrosive situations in some instances.
A lot of couples get into marriage with the hopes of having a stable emotional climate. This last type is the long-lasting one: a relationship that can get through hard atmosphere, mend broken ties and go back to good terms without necessarily addressing the issue of one or the other having to transform into a different person.
