What makes a ‘good’ marriage
Recently my reading has taken me to the pages of The Good Marriage: How & Why Love Lasts by Judith Wallerstein and Sandra Blakeslee which was published in 1995. In a way, it's fitting that Wallerstein, better known for her work with children of divorce and families in transition, turned her attention to what makes a marriage work; the results of her 25-year study of 131 children from 60 Californian families whose marriages resulted in divorce are pretty grim, and would naturally lead to questions about how marriage can be strengthened so that divorce can be prevented. It seems that a good marriage is something many of us long for but have little idea how to bring about.
In The Good Marriage, Wallerstein presents her findings from a two-year study of 50 Californian couples who had been married for nine years or longer. She identifies nine “tasks” that couples must master if they are to reach the goal of a happy and fulfilling long-lasting union. The first two in particular stood out for me—“Separating from the Family of Origin” and “Building Togetherness and Creating Autonomy”. Wallerstein argues that separation from the family of origin is a painful but necessary step for the individual to make the transition to adulthood to forge a new identity as a husband or wife—a member of a new unit, a new family. Failure to do so could result in much unhappiness and even divorce. Similarly, failure to create a sense of togetherness or ‘we-ness’—“a shared vision of how you want to spend your lives together” (p. 62) or an “image of the marriage as a separate presence [requiring] continuing attention and nurture, like a healthy garden” (p. 63)—led to discontentment and marital breakdown. Wallerstein writes,
One of the most poignant stories in my divorce work was that of a young Russian couple in Fresno whose marriage broke even though they were very fond of each other. At issue was his inability to separate from his family. Both husband and wife told me that he and his brothers worked at their father's restaurant every day and every night without pay on the promise of someday inheriting the business. Though the husband worked hard, he never brought home a paycheck. And each night, when the restaurant closed, he and his brothers played cards and had dinner together. He came home late every night.
The woman, who married him at eighteen, worked outside the home to support the family and raised their two girls almost single-handed. She begged her husband to get another job, move to another town—anything that would give her a sense of having a real marriage. He was kind to her, he expressed his love for her, but he consistently refused her request. Finally, when the girls reached adolescence, in an act of desperation she took them and drove to another city and a new job. She hoped he would follow her, but the attempt failed. The man became acutely depressed and cried for two weeks, then hired an attorney and sued for divorce and custody of his daughters, which he won.
When I saw them together, he said of her, “She is the most beautiful woman I have ever known.” She said of him, “He's a kind and decent man. But I can't play house any longer.” The marriage dissolved. One child did very well; the other suffered for many years. The man married a woman who was willing to live within the extended family. The woman also remarried. She later said of her second husband, “He loves me, and it's very important to him that I do the things that make both of us happy, but I lost my children.”
The man's failure to separate led to a serious tragedy for this family. (pp. 58-59)
How appropriate that Wallerstein's first two tasks for building a good marriage should coincide with God's design for marriage as outlined in Genesis 2:24: “Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh”.