The Top 10 Marriage Essentials

© 2014 Paul R. Shaffer. All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.

Published by AuthorHouse 01/25/2024

ISBN: 978-1-4918-3636-1 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4918-3634-7 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-4918-3635-4 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2013921160

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Contents

Foreword

Chapter 1   Realistic Expectations

Chapter 2   Emotional Intimacy

Chapter 3   Balanced Priorities

Chapter 4   Healthy Boundaries

Chapter 5   Respect

Chapter 6   Validation

Chapter 7   Accountability

Chapter 8   Perception of Reality

Chapter 9   Forgiveness

Chapter 10  A Healthy You

Afterword

After the Afterword

Foreword

For the record, in case you missed it, this is Marriage Essentials 10th Anniversary Edition. It’s a very odd thing being a writer and going back to something you wrote 10 years ago. At the time, what I had put down in print seemed relevant and meaningful for the clients I was working with. I still find that much of what I had to say was good, but I would just say it somewhat differently today - and do a better job of keeping a tighter focus. Hopefully, having this chance to both balance and make more concise what I did before will make this revision a welcome one.

One of the things I always appreciated about John and Julie Gottman (the research experts with couples’ work¹) whenever I’d see them in a workshop, was that they’d always present their latest work in terms of, Here’s what we think we know now. They were humble enough to acknowledge that they were always learning more, and weren’t so rigid to believe that everything they already knew was the total truth. I feel the same way.

As with a relationship, what you get out of a book partly depends on the attitude with which you approach it.

With every new couple I see, my initial concern is with rigidity and ego. Most couples have to be willing to let go of some of their beliefs about what their relationship is and isn’t. Typically, they’ve formed a diagnosis of their partner already based on how their particular expectations for the relationship have or have not been met. But who’s to say that their expectations are realistic, or that their conclusions concerning their partner are formed with a correct interpretation of the evidence?

Say that I am a rock expert and someone brings me their rock collection, wanting me to assess their rocks - which ones are the most valuable, which ones they can get rid of, and the overall quality of what they brought in. Now, the likelihood is that because this collection belonged to that person they are already somewhat familiar with what they have. They may have even been taught some basic geological information when they were in school, or have done some research of their own. But the odds are that some of the rocks they’ve brought in aren’t going to be what they thought they were because they’re not an expert.

Similarly, with couple’s work, one of the most difficult types of clients to work with is the one who thinks they’re a relationship expert - having oversimplified the relationship’s issues into a few fixes that usually all fall on their partner to make happen. So, they’ve made themselves invulnerable because they’ve put themselves above criticism. And it’s typically this same rigidity of knowing that is part of what’s killing the marriage relationship. They’re the kid with the rock collection who insists that they know as much about those rocks as the rock expert because they have rocks of their own.

Now, it’s true that experience counts for something and having lived with a partner gives you some valid information about that person that the counselor may not have yet evidenced for themselves. But the likelihood remains that many couples don’t know how to accurately assess the problems in their relationships because they don’t have the training and are often too close to their own issues to see them clearly.

What the relationship expert fails to grasp is that, even if they’re not the one with the primary issue, they still play a major part in whether that issue gets better or worse. Because they’re part of the relationship, they’re part of the problem as well as part of the solution.

The clients that benefit the most from counseling are the ones that approach it with humility and an open mind for learning something new. Going into it they’ve accepted the fact that they don’t have all of the answers, and that’s okay. Because they are receptive to help, they are more likely to get helped.

In reading through this book, I hope you’re able to approach it with an open mind and an eagerness to add to whatever is already in your toolbox. While there will always be pieces that don’t apply to your world, I hope you’re able to find the pieces that do.

______________________________

The specific examples of couples I use in the following chapters aren’t any one actual, living breathing couple but a conglomeration of any number of couples I saw with those particular issues. So, if you’re a former client, and it sounds like you, it wasn’t you. It was any number of people like you.

You may also notice as you read that I tend to stay with the traditional husband/wife or male/female relational dynamic with the examples that I use. This is not meant to intentionally exclude other partner pairings, it’s just an easier way to use pronouns without it becoming confusing as to whom I’m referring. Even with same-sex relationships, there still tends to be one partner who is more the man, and the other who is more the woman - so, staying with he and she can still translate. Ultimately, while my professional expertise is with heterosexual relationships, relational principles and guidelines are universal, and not restricted to a particular sex or pairing combination.

Enjoy the read!

Chapter 1

Realistic Expectations

One of the most common problems encountered by couples during the first few years of marriage is adjusting their expectations of marriage to fit the reality of what it is actually like to be married.

This isn’t just a problem for new marriages. Couples who’ve been married twenty or thirty years can often be gravely unhappy with each other because of unmet expectations. But, the initial question in such cases should be, How realistic are those expectations?

When I refer to relationship expectations, I’m referring to the shoulds that we enter a relationship with regarding what we think a partner is supposed to do. These include lifestyle expectations (neatness, work ethic, pets, sleep habits, spending, etc.), chore expectations, communication expectations, parenting expectations, and intimacy expectations.

Most couples’ expectations started back in the dating days with the expectations they had about how a man is supposed to treat a woman, and vice versa. If those expectations had been met, or sufficiently adjusted, and the couple has moved on to marriage, the next hurdle is how those expectations change once the marriage has begun.

A man may have been aggressive during the dating stage, but now his continuing to take charge is labeled as dominating, when it wasn’t before. Or a woman may have waited on the man to initiate any physical advances when they dated, but now the man is upset because she’s continuing to not initiate now that they’re married.

For a marriage to work in the long run, the couple needs to develop compatible, realistic expectations of the relationship, and the roles need to be flexible enough that they can change as the needs shift over time.

This can be a little confusing during the transition into marriage because you may think that you’re both on the same page, but, when it comes to the day-to-day reality of living together, you find out just how accurate, or inaccurate, those assumptions were. You may even find that while you thought you could live up to a certain ideal, when it comes to doing it on a daily basis, it’s either not sustainable or a lot more than you expected.

Ideally, the couple has had some extensive conversations prior to marriage about what each other’s expectations are, and how they’re going to differ from what they were during dating (for instance, one partner may have been tolerant of the other’s opposite-sex friends, but expect, once married, that they will no longer do solo activities with those friends). But, even then, the couple is having to make some projections about what they think it’s going to be like in that valley before they’ve actually lived there.²

Even if the role expectations going into a marriage are realistic and the couple does well living by them, life may still force a shift on the relationship (for example: a breadwinner loses their job). In such situations, if the roles aren’t flexible enough to be adjusted, then the relationship will experience its first crisis, being that it only worked so long as it fit a particular formula.

One unrealistic expectation going into a marriage is that, Nothing’s going to change. I’ll still be me and you’ll still be you.

Part of that is true. If both partners were honestly showing their true faces before marriage, then there will not be as many surprises once into a marriage. But marriage itself will still likely force shifts on the couple because now their relationship is no longer just a courtship - it has the additional roles of being each other’s partner.

The courtship is the play. The roles are the work.

It’s easy to play nice together. Working together presents a different challenge.

Sometimes, the person that we marry seems to become someone different after marriage partly due to the marriage. For instance, how much time he spends playing videogames gradually becomes an issue for her. Or, her staying out late with her girlfriends becomes a concern for him. Someone who wasn’t concerned about their partner’s personal spending before feels compelled to become the financial manager in the relationship in order to compensate for the partner’s poor spending habits. Whoever is the object of concern may feel somewhat deceived by their partner if these topics prior to the marriage were never addressed as issues. Yet, they are failing to recognize that it’s not really the partner that has changed. Instead, being married has put them in a different role.

If neither wants the changed partner to continue in that role, then what has pushed them into that role will likely have to change as well, at least to enough of a degree that there is no longer a need for balancing.

For the game player, it may mean limiting the gameplay to something closer to moderation (though what is considered moderation may be an argument in itself).

For the late-nighter, it may mean setting a reasonable curfew, agreeing on what are considered safe places for her to go that late at night, or doing a better job of informing the partner when plans change and when she’s running late.

For the over-spender, it may mean agreeing to a budget.

In each of these instances, it’s attaching accountability for behavior that realistically needs some limits if it’s not going to continue to have a negative impact on the relationship. That’s part of the safe-guarding that goes along with the marital roles. Without that limit-setting, the potentially problematic behavior pushes at least one partner into a parent role. These are some of the initial challenges in most marriages - finding the balance between freedom and responsibility.³

Another typically unrealistic expectation that is often brought into a marriage is that, We should already know how to do this (be married). While it’s certainly good and even necessary to have some idea of how a marriage works, if you’ve never been married before, then neither of you is going to be experienced at it. And while you don’t need to have a lot of experience, you do need to be honest with each other that you’re both in the same boat – learning how to best meet each other’s needs.

If you were married before, but it wasn’t a healthy relationship, you wouldn’t want to try to duplicate how things were done because it didn’t really work. And, even if your previous marriage was functional, so you have had past successful experience, it still doesn’t mean that the exact same formula is going to be the best fit for your current relationship.

One of the underlying principles that can help a couple get through the times that require role adjustments, or deal with differing expectations, is intertwined with how they view their commitment to being married.

It’s very common to meet couples who have been married for years and continue to stubbornly hang on to unhappiness. When you ask them, Why are you still in this thing? the answer often given is, I made a commitment – for better, for worse. So, obviously, they’re upholding their commitment for worse.

But the marriage commitment isn’t just about being committed to stay. The actual commitment is supposed to be that you will continue to love each other – which is about how you act, not solely how you feel. Seldom in those marriages do you find the individuals continuing to be loving.

So, the better question for those couples is, What is your commitment to continue to show love to this other person? Because to remain and just coexist is more of a roommate relationship than a true relational marriage.

This is part of where a healthy definition of love applies. If the marriage is based on a true commitment to be loving, then it means that the couple continues to act in loving ways towards each other, even when they’re not feeling the love. By continuing to act in a loving fashion, they promote better odds for a loving response and it keeps the door open to continue to experience loving feelings. I’m not suggesting that there is no accountability for wrongs, or that you’re supposed to lie to your partner or yourself about how you feel. But the focus of the couple remains on the healthy picture of who they themselves need to be in order to make the relationship work, upholding their commitment in the process.

Further into a marriage, realistic expectations take into account how passion changes in a marriage over time. The familiarity and comfort that comes out of a long-term relationship, while desired, can also be part of what calms the fires that keep a romance feeling exciting and alive. Couples that have been together for a while need to be realistic that desire matures with age, becoming more of a slow-burn that requires fuel to be kept alight, rather than a raging passion that’s self-sustaining.

This is one of the reasons that affairs occur. A partner who is expecting the peak experience of being in-love to just continue at the same level they had when dating becomes disillusioned with the marriage when that doesn’t happen. And, so, they unfairly compare the newness and risk-taking excitement they feel with someone else to a long-established marriage where each is known and feels safe. They fail to take into account that an affair exists in isolation to the rest of the world, but at the point it is exposed, confessed or revealed, two worlds will collide and there will be lasting damage for everyone in those worlds. Further, the new relationship will not be immune to the same realities that were true for the marriage – once real-world responsibilities and day-to-day existence are added, the work will be the same as it was for the marriage if the emotional connection is to be kept alive.

The Family Mirror

Since people tend to gravitate to the extremes because the extremes are always the easiest to see, it’s not uncommon that people either try to duplicate the marital template that their parents modeled for them, or