Make your good-enough marriage better
by Mira and Charles on December 23rd, 2009In a recent New York Times Magazine article, a free-lance writer named Elizabeth Weil tells us about what happened when she and (with prodding) her husband decided to try to make their marriage better.
The man-bites-dog part of this is that their marriage wasn’t in trouble. They weren’t fighting all the time. There’d been no infidelity. They just had a normally imperfectly happy eleven-year-old marriage, the kind of marriage anyone unhappily married would want. There were little issues—he’s too into cooking, she doesn’t like to French kiss—but mostly all they were suffering from was the is-this-all-there-is? syndrome: “Our marriage is good but not great—so now what? Do we just endure? Or do we try to make it better?”
Many of us feel the same way. Most of us actually. Most people, it turns out, have good-enough marriages: there are problems, they’re not ecstatic, but they’re happy. So we wonder, Could we do better?
And that’s a very dangerous question. When you say this is what it is and it’s good enough and really accept where you are, you stop paying attention to all the little problems, to all the ways you may not fit together all that well. But if you say let’s make this marriage better, then suddenly you are paying attention to problems you’ve long ignored. Not only that, you suddenly find you’re working on problems you’d long since stopped working on because you couldn’t make any progress with them. And yet you think you’re going to make progress now?
What’s more, if you go for help, as Weil and her husband did, those helpful helpers will be sure to point out new problems, and with each new helper there will be still more new problems.
Yikes! And yet dangerous as it may be to work on your good-enough marriage, it may be less dangerous to work on it than just letting things slide. Because slide is the right word. The problem with good-enough marriages is that as problems go unfixed denial isn’t always the right solution. Sometimes problems lead to irritation, hurt, and distance. People tend to drift toward a smaller and smaller slice of their life together and to more and more routinised ways of interacting. Good enough slides into just-barely good enough.
So how then do you work on your relationship without making things worse?
The biggest mistake many people in this situation make is to focus on your biggest problems first. The thing is, they are big for a reason. They’ve already proven themselves to be hard to solve. If you focus on them now, you’ll just get frustrated fast.
Instead, follow these principles:
1. Daily maintenance. There are little things that people in love do to signal that they are happy together and in love. They kiss. They hug. They say nice things to each other. They seek each other out. They listen patiently to each other. They hold hands. They’re open with each other. So make sure that you daily maintain your marriage by doing not what happily married folk do but what people in love do. In fact, ask each other, What are three little things you’d like me to do more of every day? Then do these things.
2. More of the good stuff. Instead of fighting battles over the bad stuff in your marriage, talk to each other about what the good stuff in your marriage is. Maybe you enjoy going for walks together. Maybe you like cooking together. Maybe you just enjoy having good conversations. What would you point to if you were bragging about your marriage? Then figure out a way to have more of the good stuff. We’re constantly amazed at how married couples know about the good stuff in their marriage but just don’t do it. They’re too busy, too distracted. But that’s what you need to focus on. Build on your strengths.
3. Make one little request at a time. Instead of trying to fix everything, instead of going right to your biggest problem, think about one little thing your partner could do that would make things better. Like, Say Hi when you come home. Call me during the day. Don’t talk to me in the morning when I’ve just gotten up. Put down your Blackberry when we talk. Find a time for us to make love that’s not late at night just before sleep when I’m exhausted. Then exchange requests. Have a friendly competition over who can do a better job of meeting the other’s request. Then once you have that success under your belt, move on to one other little request. Make your good-enough marriage better one little request, one little success at a time.
4. Just listen. The next time your partner starts talking about something, astound him or her. Just listen. Really listen. Don’t just be silent. Ask questions. Reflect back what you’ve heard. Make your partner feel you really know and understand what she’s saying and where she’s coming from, and do all this before you even begin to respond.
Well, that’s it. Four little things anyone can do. Nothing particularly challenging. Nothing really a lot of work. No demons to confront. Just little things that, if you keep them up, will take you out of your is-this-all-there-is? syndrome and put you into a marriage that’s not only good enough, it’s getting better. It’s starting to feel like being in love again.
If you want more help with this, there’s a whole raft of quizzes, 10-best lists, and tools and tips to make your marriage better in the amazingly helpful Our Love Is Too Good to Feel So Bad.
