The All-or-Nothing Marriage

Key Highlights

It’s true that the institution of marriage in America is struggling. But I came to realize that the best marriages today are better than the best marriages of earlier eras; indeed, they are the best marriages that the world has ever known. In addition, although the average marriage is shaky, many floundering or passable marriages can flourish by adopting strategies pioneered by the best marriages. (p. XI)

In short, the institution of marriage did not come prepackaged with a set of universal principles or instructions. Rather, it has existed in countless variations across space and time. That said, all societies construe marriage as a means to the fulfillment of certain goals, and despite some variation from person to person, each society develops a loose consensus about which goals are most important to meet through marriage (economic production or emotional fulfillment, for example). (p. 6)

America has witnessed three major eras of marriage: pragmatic, love-based, and self-expressive. (p. 7)

The breadwinner-homemaker ideal from the love-based era had been teetering for decades, especially as more and more women entered the workforce, but it had a major last gasp in the 1950s and early 1960s. Because television shows, including Leave It to Beaver and The Adventures of Ozzie & Harriet, first rose to prominence during this era, the 1950s marriage has been enshrined in popular consciousness as the “traditional marriage,” even though it was, by historical standards, bizarre. (p. 9)

In a cruel cultural twist, just as we have increasingly looked to our marriage to help us fulfill higher-level needs, we have decreasingly invested the time and energy required for the marriage to meet these expectations. According to one major study, the amount of time that childless Americans spent alone with their spouse declined from thirty-five to twenty-six hours per week from 1975 to 2003, with much of this decline resulting from an increase in hours spent at work. The decline for Americans with children at home was from thirteen to nine hours per week, with much of it resulting from an increase in time-intensive parenting.* (p. 22)

Marriage, in short, has tilted toward an all-or-nothing state. As its primary functions have ascended Maslow’s hierarchy, and as we’ve spent less time with our spouse, it’s become more difficult for our marriage to live up to our expectations, which means that more of us wind up feeling disappointed. At the same time, as the nature of our marital expectations has changed, the benefits of fulfilling those expectations are larger than ever. Consequently, even as the average marriage is getting worse, the best marriages are getting better. (p. 24)

There are several reasons for this reduction in family size, but perhaps the most important is that the intergenerational wealth flow reversed. On a pragmatic-era family farm, children made significant contributions to the household economy—serving as a courier, collecting eggs, churning butter, plowing, harvesting, and so forth. Even in the industrial era, before laws were passed to protect them from abusive work practices, many children continued to provide net economic value for the household by working in factories or mines. Eventually, however, the expenses linked to raising children exceeded the economic yield that children contributed to the household, sometimes by a large margin. As children became a source of economic burden, rather than economic benefit, parents had fewer of them. (p. 48)

Traditionally, women employed communal strategies to raise children, with mothers and grandmothers working together—and, crucially, socializing—to look after their collective gaggle of kids. Relatively speaking, child-rearing in the 1950s was isolated and isolating. (p. 64)

In the words of the poet E. E. Cummings: “To be nobody-but-yourself—in a world which is doing its best, night and day, to make you everybody else—means to fight the hardest battle which any human being can fight; and never stop fighting.” (p. 78)

Getting married has shifted from an event signifying that one is entering adulthood to an event signifying that one has achieved all of the hallmarks of adulthood. Growing swaths of the populace view marriage as something that should come after one has already established economic independence, learned from several serious relationships, and experienced a prolonged cohabitation with one’s potential spouse. As noted by the journalist Catherine Rampell, “it turns out that a few more life stages need to be spliced into the nursery rhyme ‘first comes love, then comes marriage.’” (p. 92)

Regardless of the details, life is getting faster, straining our psychological bandwidth—the brainpower available to focus on the task at hand. (p. 133)

Overall, the two graphs reveal that spouses are spending less time alone together in the twenty-first century than in the late twentieth century, and that the time they spend together (including with other people) is less focused on meals and more focused on television and parenting. (p. 138)

However, there’s a circumstantial case that spousal time in the average marriage is, if anything, of lower quality than it was in the past. (p. 139)

This issue can become especially problematic when both partners are stressed or when there isn’t enough time to prioritize both partners’ needs, a situation that is especially likely in dual-career couples. “I think a big issue,” says an anonymous wife, “is that we both want to be taken care of at the end of the day, and neither of us has any energy to take care of the other.” (p. 142)

Lovehacks have three defining features. First, they don’t take much time. Second, they don’t require any coordination with, or cooperation from, our spouse. Third, they don’t require that we modulate our expectations. (p. 185)

MAKING EXTERNAL, TEMPORARY ATTRIBUTIONS FOR NEGATIVE PARTNER BEHAVIORS

If we’re confident that our partner is, by and large, a decent person who wants to do well by us, there’s a strong argument that we should seek to make attributions that give him or her the benefit of the doubt. When the causes of a given behavior are ambiguous, we are likely to be happier, and our relationship stronger, if we assume that our partner has good intentions. One approach is to train ourselves to adopt an if-then rule like this: If I start feeling frustrated or angry about something my spouse did (or didn’t do), then I will take a few seconds to consider other explanations for his or her behavior. (p. 187)

REAPPRAISING CONFLICT

One promising way of mitigating the damage is to reappraise, or reinterpret, the conflict. In one reappraisal procedure—the marriage hack, which my colleagues and I recently developed—spouses think about a conflict in their marriage from the perspective of a neutral third party who wants the best for all involved. (p. 188)

MITIGATING INSECURITY

It seems that those of us who struggle with low self-esteem can overcome our destructive self-protectiveness, and experience greater feelings of security in our relationship, when we respond to compliments from our partner by considering why he or she admires us and what the compliment signifies about the relationship. (p. 191)

ADOPTING A GROWTH MIND-SET

We have wide latitude in considering whether problems in our marriage are fixable. According to the psychologist Raymond Knee, people with strong destiny beliefs think that partners either are or are not “meant to be.” They view conflict and other relationship difficulties as indicators that they may simply be incompatible with their partner. People with strong growth beliefs, in contrast, think that partners can cultivate a high-quality relationship by working and growing together. They view conflict and other relationship difficulties as opportunities to develop a stronger relationship. (p. 192)

MAKING INTERNAL, STABLE ATTRIBUTIONS FOR POSITIVE PARTNER BEHAVIORS

Rather than separating our spouse from the behavior and treating it as a one-off event, relationships benefit when we link our spouse to the behavior and treat it as generally characteristic of him or her—when we make internal, stable attributions. (p. 195)

CULTIVATING GRATITUDE

The partner investment condition didn’t use any convoluted or time-consuming procedures. All of us can find a few minutes per week—before going to bed or while showering, perhaps—to think about ways in which our spouse has invested in our marriage. Doing so has the potential not only to bolster our gratitude and relationship commitment, but also to increase our overall happiness. And here’s the kicker: Because our own experience of gratitude tends to predict our partner’s warm treatment toward us, our decision to pursue a gratitude-increasing lovehack can increase our partner’s positivity toward us, potentially launching a virtuous cycle of mutual gratitude, kindness, and commitment. (p. 198)

CELEBRATING TOGETHER

A third lovehack for savoring strengths involves helping each other celebrate life’s achievements and successes. (p. 200)

AFFECTIONATELY TOUCHING

A prerequisite for thriving through marriage is that we dedicate sufficient time and attention to the relationship. (p. 206)

But it’s possible to reverse, or at least mitigate, that mind-set. Rather than treating everything else as the priority and squeezing our marriage into the pockets of leftover time, we can seek to do the opposite. Given the psychological and physical benefits of a successful marriage, there’s an argument to be made that, where possible, we should make quality time for the marriage even if doing so requires that we transfer to a less stressful job or live in a home with dust bunnies or enroll our kids in fewer activities. (p. 206)

If we’re happy to tread water, an attentive hour per month may be sufficient. But if we’re seeking something extraordinary—a profound sense of connection—there’s no substitute for significant dedicated time. (p. 209)

A crucial element of time together is that the people involved are not only in each other’s presence, but also present. (p. 209)

Greater self-disclosure is linked to higher relationship quality. (p. 212)

The psychologist John Gottman, having conducted extensive research in which he videotapes distressed and nondistressed couples discussing conflictual topics in their relationship, has compiled a suite of communication behaviors that reliably distinguish between successful and unsuccessful marriages. Four particularly damaging behaviors are criticism (characterizing the conflict in terms of a fundamental flaw in our spouse), defensiveness (counterattacking rather than engaging with our spouse’s concern), contempt (engaging in insulting, mocking, or hostile behavior), and stonewalling (clamming up when our partner raises a concern). In general, it’s beneficial for each partner to try to respond generously when the other behaves badly, as doing so avoids the escalating cycles of negative reciprocity characteristic of unhealthy relationships. (p. 213)

A second set of all-in strategies is linked to responsiveness—the manner in which partners attend to and support each other’s goals and needs. Responsiveness consists of three core components: Understanding involves “comprehending the partner’s core self (e.g., needs, desires, strengths, weaknesses, etc.).” Validation involves “respect for or valuing of the partner’s view of the self.” Caring involves “expressing affection, warmth, and concern for the partner’s well-being.” (p. 216)

Play

Socializing

In short, socializing with our spouse and other people can stoke the romantic fire in our marriage, but only if the socializing is fun and intimate. (p. 220)

Novel and Exciting Activities

Most of the research in this tradition derives from Arthur and Elaine Aron’s self-expansion theory, which suggests that people have a fundamental motivation to expand the self (to grow) and that a central pathway through which they do so is by engaging in new and stimulating activities with their romantic partner. (p. 220)

What counts as a novel and exciting activity? The possibilities are practically infinite, and each couple’s preferences are idiosyncratic. The only rules are (1) that it’s an activity that both partners are happy to try and (2) that it takes us out of the mundanities of everyday life. (p. 222)

A Diversified Social Portfolio

A growing scientific literature investigates the value of having a diversified social portfolio—one in which we have various significant others in our lives who relate to us in distinct ways and help us meet distinct needs. In a study by the psychologist Elaine Cheung, participants nominated up to four people who would be especially effective in helping them manage each of seven sorts of emotional experience: cheering up sadness, calming down anger, calming down anxiety, capitalizing upon happiness, amplifying anger, reducing guilt, and reducing embarrassment. Cheung used these nominations to calculate three measures of participants’ social portfolios: (1) breadth, or the number of emotional experience types for which participants listed at least one partner, (2) redundancy, or the average number of partners listed for each emotional experience type, and (3) specialization, or the proportion of significant others whom participants listed as helping them regulate precisely one type of emotional experience, such as having a friend who helps us calm our anxiety but doesn’t serve any of the other emotion-regulating functions. Both breadth and specialization, but not redundancy, predicted psychological well-being, suggesting that, all else equal, having a number of social support specialists can be preferable to relying on one or two generalists. (p. 240)

Ongoing research that I am pursuing with Cheung and others reveals that having a specialized portfolio also promotes one’s own and one’s partner’s happiness in the relationship. In this nine-month study, breadth and specialization also predicted a decreased likelihood of breakup. In addition, as illustrated in the chart below, having a highly specialized social portfolio protected participants from the typical decline in relationship well-being over time. (p. 240)

Take Inventory

The best place to start is by taking inventory of what we’re already asking of our marriage—of the needs and goals we’re looking to our marriage to help us fulfill. (p. 264)

We can start the process by dividing our requests into three categories: (1) needs that we can meet only through our partner; (2) needs that we can meet through our partner or some “other significant other” (OSO), such as a friend or other family member; or (3) needs that we can meet through our partner, through an OSO, or on our own. (p. 265)