today’s changing world, one-size-fits-all advice books and glib formulas for marital success are of little value. But sociologists and psychologists have found a few general principles that seem to help most kinds of modern marriage flourish.
Because men and women no longer face the same economic and social compulsions to get or stay married as in the past, it is especially important that men and women now begin their relationship as friends and build it on the basis of mutual respect. You can no longer force your partner to conform to a predetermined social role or gender stereotype or browbeat someone into staying in an unsatisfying relationship. “Love, honor, and negotiate” have to replace the older rigid rules, say psychologists Betty Carter and Joan Peters. 5
But negotiation will not resolve every difference of opinion or interest. As men and women marry later, they come to marriage with a lot of life experience and many previously formed interests and skills. It’s no longer possible to assume that two people can merge all their interests and beliefs. When two grownups get together and neither has the whip hand, both must learn to live with their differences.
Accepting differences does not mean putting up with everything a partner dishes out. It is certainly not the same thing that psychologists meant in the 1950s, when this advice was directed only at the wife. Today acceptance in a relationship must be a two-way street. To be effective, it has to be based on real friendship and respect, not the counterfeit interest that so many 1950s marriage manuals recommended when they told the wife to pretend to be interested in his work and the husband to pretend to be interested in her day. And in a world where marriages are no longer held together by the compulsion of in-laws and society or the mutual dependence of two individuals who cannot do each other’s jobs, on-going emotional investments in a marriage have to replace external constraints in providing ballast for the relationship.
Another important principle that flows from the historical changes in marriage is that husbands have to respond positively to their wives’ requests for change. This is not female favoritism or male bashing. For thousands of years marriage was organized in ways that reinforced female subservience. Today, even though most of the legal and economic basis for a husband’s authority over his wife and her deference to his needs is gone, we all have inherited unconscious habits and emotional expectations that perpetuate female disadvantage in marriage. For example, it is still true that when women marry, they typically do more housework than they did before marriage. When men marry, they do less. Marriage decreases free time for women, but not for men. In many cases, write researchers Marybeth Mattingly and Suzanne Bianchi, being married places women “constantly on call,” lessening the quantity and often the quality of their leisure time. 6
Women are more likely to bring up marital issues for discussion because they have more to gain from changing these traditional dynamics of marriage. According to psychology researcher John Gottman and his collaborators, if a man responds positively to his wife’s request for change, that is one of the best indicators that they will stay together and have a happy marriage. It helps a lot, they note, if the wife asks nicely. But it does not help if she keeps quiet for fear of provoking conflict. Constructive, nonviolent anger does not usually lead to divorce, but stonewalling a partner’s request for change poses a big risk to a marriage. 7
In the thirty years I have been researching family life, I have read many women’s diaries, written over the last four-hundred years. Reading these records of women’s lives and marriages, I was struck by how often entries focused not on the joy of their marriages but on wives’ struggle to accept their lot. Many women did write about their love and respect
Because men and women no longer face the same economic and social compulsions to get or stay married as in the past, it is especially important that men and women now begin their relationship as friends and build it on the basis of mutual respect. You can no longer force your partner to conform to a predetermined social role or gender stereotype or browbeat someone into staying in an unsatisfying relationship. “Love, honor, and negotiate” have to replace the older rigid rules, say psychologists Betty Carter and Joan Peters. 5
But negotiation will not resolve every difference of opinion or interest. As men and women marry later, they come to marriage with a lot of life experience and many previously formed interests and skills. It’s no longer possible to assume that two people can merge all their interests and beliefs. When two grownups get together and neither has the whip hand, both must learn to live with their differences.
Accepting differences does not mean putting up with everything a partner dishes out. It is certainly not the same thing that psychologists meant in the 1950s, when this advice was directed only at the wife. Today acceptance in a relationship must be a two-way street. To be effective, it has to be based on real friendship and respect, not the counterfeit interest that so many 1950s marriage manuals recommended when they told the wife to pretend to be interested in his work and the husband to pretend to be interested in her day. And in a world where marriages are no longer held together by the compulsion of in-laws and society or the mutual dependence of two individuals who cannot do each other’s jobs, on-going emotional investments in a marriage have to replace external constraints in providing ballast for the relationship.
Another important principle that flows from the historical changes in marriage is that husbands have to respond positively to their wives’ requests for change. This is not female favoritism or male bashing. For thousands of years marriage was organized in ways that reinforced female subservience. Today, even though most of the legal and economic basis for a husband’s authority over his wife and her deference to his needs is gone, we all have inherited unconscious habits and emotional expectations that perpetuate female disadvantage in marriage. For example, it is still true that when women marry, they typically do more housework than they did before marriage. When men marry, they do less. Marriage decreases free time for women, but not for men. In many cases, write researchers Marybeth Mattingly and Suzanne Bianchi, being married places women “constantly on call,” lessening the quantity and often the quality of their leisure time. 6
Women are more likely to bring up marital issues for discussion because they have more to gain from changing these traditional dynamics of marriage. According to psychology researcher John Gottman and his collaborators, if a man responds positively to his wife’s request for change, that is one of the best indicators that they will stay together and have a happy marriage. It helps a lot, they note, if the wife asks nicely. But it does not help if she keeps quiet for fear of provoking conflict. Constructive, nonviolent anger does not usually lead to divorce, but stonewalling a partner’s request for change poses a big risk to a marriage. 7
In the thirty years I have been researching family life, I have read many women’s diaries, written over the last four-hundred years. Reading these records of women’s lives and marriages, I was struck by how often entries focused not on the joy of their marriages but on wives’ struggle to accept their lot. Many women did write about their love and respect
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