Why Marriage Is So Hard, and What I Wish I Knew Before Marriage

Marriage exists at the edge of human capability. No one is born ready to create a happy, thriving marriage; we have to develop that capacity. It’s like playing the piano or climbing a mountain or ballroom dancing: possible, but not easy.

If your parents were exceptionally good at loving each other, you get a free head start on the path to creating a really good marriage. If you had normal parents who weren’t very good at loving each other, you get to start back here with the rest of us. Welcome to the real world.

Your brain is primarily designed to handle a child-parent relationship, not an adult relationship. Your relationship with your parents was a survival-level priority when you were a child. You didn’t have the option of choosing different parents, or asking them to change, or asking for parent-child relationship therapy. Instead, you just had to do the best you could with what you had.

As a child, you were incredibly vulnerable. When your parents failed to love and protect you, it had a significant impact on you. If you grew up in a soft nest, where you were treated kindly, your brain developed soft programming that was appropriate for childhood, and could then be adapted to thrive in adulthood. If you grew up in a hard nest, your brain developed hard programming to help you survive in a hostile environment. This kind of programming is difficult to rewrite, and it is not compatible with marriage.

When you were a child, your parents had all of the power in the child/parent relationship. You needed them to survive, and your brain was programmed to stick with them no matter what. You were also programmed to see your parents as good people, even when they weren’t. If you grew up in an abusive home, your brain was programmed to see your parents as more benevolent and less sadistic than they really were.

Most parents enjoy hurting their children at least some of the time, and children are not capable of understanding that their parents like hurting them. If you grew up with sadistic parents, your brain twisted that sadism into normal, acceptable human behavior. You became blind to sadistic behavior in your parents, in yourself, and in others. This blindness causes the cycle to be continued, generation after generation. As long as you are blind to sadism in your parents, you will also be blind to sadism in yourself and in others.

Most of us grew up in families where anger and conflict go hand in hand. Did you ever see one of your parents take a strong stand against the other with love and kindness in their eyes? We learned that you stand up for yourself with anger, or you don’t stand up for yourself at all.

There are only two ways to overcome fear: anger and courage. In a normal marriage, when my partner is pressuring me to do something I don’t want to do, my default response is to get angry. My anger helps me stand up for myself and hold firm on my boundaries. It helps me take action even when I am afraid. As a child, anger was my only solution to these kinds of situations, because children are not capable of the kind of courage it takes to stand up to someone with love and kindness.

Imagine silence on one side of a continuum, and anger on the other. Most of us feel trapped in this spectrum, seeing only two choices: either speak up with anger or remain resentfully silent. There is a third choice: speak up with kindness and courage. This third choice requires a level of emotional maturity that most of us never reach in life. We might be able to do it at work, but we generally can’t do it at home.

Marriage is hard because it activates childhood behavioral patterns that were designed to help us manage difficult child-parent interactions. We learn about human relationships as three-foot-tall beings who have no power and great needs, and then we try to use what we learned to create a thriving adult relationship. We have to radically re-wire our brains to create thriving, long-lasting adult relationships.

Your brain is wired for childhood, not adulthood. You can rewire your brain, but it takes deliberate, intense effort. If you just allow your brain to do what it wants to do in marriage, it will continue to behave as if you were a small, vulnerable child, and your partner was an unkind parent.

Relationships drive growth

Intimate relationships are the primary driver of human growth.

You fall in love with someone, but eventually your feelings fade and the reality of who you are starts to take over your relationship. You start to feel angry and resentful. Sex falls apart.

You're bumping into the fact that your brain is designed to survive childhood. It's not designed to support a long-term romantic relationship.

When you have an intimate relationship, you get forced into uncomfortable situations where you have to either grow or be miserable. That's why intimate relationships drive growth.

When you grow, your relationship gets better, and as your relationship gets better, it drives even more growth. This cycle never ends.

You do have a choice: you could have a cat or a dog and live by yourself. But most of us want to love and be loved, and if you want to love and be loved, you need to grow to become capable of loving and being loved.

We all have to face this challenge. Every couple has relationship problems. Every couple struggles with communication. Every couple struggles with sex.

There's one luxury in life that outshines all others: an amazing marriage. There's no reason you can't have that kind of marriage.

What I wish I knew before marriage

You’re trying to manage the minds of lots of people, for you to be okay. And that’s a thankless job. It’s exhausting. - Jennifer Finlayson-Fife

Resentful accommodation is neither kind nor loving

I entered my marriage with a well-honed ability to accommodate my wife’s preferences. I thought I could use that ability to create a thriving relationship.

I was so wrong.

The more I accommodated my wife, the more I resented her. I tried to hide that resentment, but it still found ways to show itself. I felt like I didn’t have a choice in the way I showed up. I consistently blamed my wife for all of the dysfunction in our relationship, taking no personal responsibility for what was happening. We focused on raising our children, never talking about what was happening between us. We were both anxious around each other, avoided intimate conversation, and didn’t like to be alone together.

After many years of reinforcing this unpleasant pattern, I learned that I was doing something called “resentful accommodation.” I was overtly yielding to my wife’s demands, while internally resenting, resisting, and blaming her. I was pretending to be kind and loving, but on the inside there was neither kindness nor love.

I’ve been unwinding this pattern over the last few years, learning to be honest and courageous in my marriage. I still do lots of nice things for my wife, but I do them of my own accord, and with real love in my heart. My actions are no longer driven by fear of emotional intensity, and my heart is no longer full of resentment.

It has taken me years to make this change, and my wife has made similar changes on her side. As Jennifer would say, we are becoming more capable of love. It’s not an easy thing to do.

Relationships tend to be well-balanced

Romantic relationships almost always happen between two people at similar levels of emotional development. Once the relationship is established, both partners grow or stagnate together. If you think you are significantly more (or less) mature, kind, or loving than your partner, you probably aren’t.

We are blind to our own faults, and sensitive to the faults of others. This makes it look like your partner is the problem, when it’s really a 50/50 split. Your partner probably sees you more accurately than you see yourself, and vice-versa. You need a mirror to see your body, and you need another person to see your soul.

Relationships are hard because what you can see (your partner) is not what you can change (yourself.) The temptation to focus on your partner’s shortcomings (what you can see but can’t change) is the greatest obstacle to relationship repair.

The law of relationship balance means that when one partner grows, the other usually follows. Immaturity in one partner encourages and enables immaturity in the other. We all still get a choice, but the easiest way to grow up is to live with someone who is more grown up than you are.

Personal growth is the only way to improve a relationship

The best way to help your partner grow is to focus on your own growth. Attempting to change your partner directly is a “shortcut” that doesn’t work, and it distracts you from your own growth. You need to grow out of behaviors and attitudes that enable and support your partner’s immaturity. Identifying and changing those enabling behaviors gets you out of your partner’s way.

Focus on your own growth because that’s where your power lies. Even if you think your partner is responsible for 80% of the difficulty in your relationship, your power still lies in the 20% you can actually change.

Love fuels growth in yourself and others, while resentment encourages stagnation. Love demands honesty, courage, and calm confrontation. Deception and coddling are not love.

Honest confrontation is part of growth. It’s hard to confront your partner, and even harder to confront yourself. Self-confrontation is more powerful than partner-confrontation. Self-confrontation in front of your partner is the fast lane to personal growth.

Differences in desire are normal

There is usually a higher-desire partner (HDP) and lower-desire partner (LDP) for each area of a relationship. It’s common to see an HDP/LDP dynamic in the areas of sex, intimacy, communication, growth, and parenting, among others. It’s rare for one partner to be HDP in all areas.

The LDP has control over the thing they are lower-desire for. The frequency and intensity of sex, intimacy, and communication are determined by the LDP for each. The LDP for staying together determines how long the relationship lasts.

Higher-Desire Partners often use the thing they are higher-desire for as a way to extract validation from the LDP. Lower-desire partners often get a sense of self from resisting the HDP. An HDP who uses sex, communication, touch, or gifts as a source of validation is encouraging the LDP to offer less of those things.

Differences in sexual desire can be resolved if both partners become capable of more generous, giving, and abundant sexuality. This requires both the LDP and HDP to develop stronger, more generous desire. The HDP for sex must confront the urge to use sex as a source of validation, while the LDP confronts the urge to withhold sex as a form of punishment or control. There is often a good reason for the LDP to not want the kind of sex that is being offered.

Short truths about relationships

Your part in the relationship

You aren’t more mature than your partner, you’re just immature in different ways.
Your relationship will improve when you change your input into the relationship system.
Your partner can also change their input into the system, but why wait for them to go first?
Your partner knows more about your personal flaws than you do.
It’s easier to see your partner’s flaws than your own flaws.
Your relationship distress is your responsibility, not your partner’s responsibility.
Your partner is not the cause of your distress, and they will not be the solution to your distress.
You can only control your own contribution to the relationship system.
You can’t control your partner’s behavior, but you can change the environment they are operating in.
Most relationships consist of two people reacting to each other in a never-ending loop.
When you stop reacting and start changing, your relationship starts to change.
If you wait for your partner to go first, you might be waiting a long time.
You can’t break the loop unless you’re willing to accept and manage your own anxiety.

Relationship dynamics

There are three common self-reinforcing relationship dynamics:

Victim/manipulator: one acts helpless while the other acts superior and controlling
Victim/rescuer: one carries responsibility for the other, who acts helpless
Pursuer/distancer: one deals with anxiety by withdrawing, the other deals with anxiety by seeking connection
In each case, your own behavior encourages and enables your partner’s behavior.
Most relationships incorporate all three dynamics.
The further you back into your corner, the easier it is for your partner to stay in their corner.
When you leave your corner and come out into the middle of the relationship, it makes it harder for your partner to stay in their corner.
You might feel like you have to keep playing your preferred role, but you don’t actually. You can stop at any moment.
You probably learned your preferred role in your family of origin.

Communication

When you defend yourself, you reinforce the idea that your partner is the one who decides whether or not you’re good enough.
Most arguments are just attempts to extract validation from each other.
Meaningful communication begins when you stop needing your partner’s agreement and approval.
Intense emotions are mostly used to manipulate each other.
When you start arguing, say “I’m getting defensive, I’ll be back in 20 minutes” then go calm yourself down and try again.
Ask for what you want and tell your partner what you see. This is called “perception/preference communication.”
You haven’t been asking for what you want because you don’t want to give your partner a chance to say no.
If you’re saying a lot of words, you’re probably trying to manipulate someone.
It takes three words to describe how you feel right now, and eight words to describe how you felt in the past. When you use hundreds of words to “share your feelings” you’re just trying to manipulate your partner.
If you don’t feel heard, your partner probably just disagrees with you and you don’t want to deal with that.
If you’ve already explained something twice, doing it a third time isn’t going to help.

The family you came from

Your brain is wired to see your parents as more innocent than they really are, and that makes it easy to see yourself as more innocent than you really are.
Your brain was designed to survive childhood, not to thrive in adulthood.
If you want to thrive in adulthood, you have to rewire your brain.
You don’t get to choose the family you grow up in. Your family’s emotional burden is not your fault, but it is your responsibility.
You will pass your family’s emotional burden on to your children unless you deal with it.
You can’t see yourself clearly until you can see your parents clearly.

Parenting

You aren’t as innocent as you think you are.
Children learn from what you do, not from what you say.
You are responsible for regulating your emotions and for helping your children regulate their emotions
Families are anxiety-management machines.
In a low-functioning family, children act as anxiety absorbers.
In a high-functioning family, parents act as anxiety absorbers.
When you don’t deal with your own anxiety, you pass it on to your family.
Family anxiety concentrates in the family member who has the weakest emotional boundaries. This is often the youngest child, or the most vulnerable child.
Your child will always operate at a fixed percentage of your own maturity. If you want your child to be more mature, you have to become more mature first.
You don’t get to blame anything on your children.

Sex in committed relationships

There is always a higher-desire partner and a lower-desire partner (HDP/LDP)
The LDP controls sex, whether they want to or not.
All long-term relationships experience sexual desire problems.
Bad sex is high anxiety and low intimacy
Good sex is low anxiety and high intimacy
You can’t negotiate desire.
Things that kill desire: anxiety, neediness, shame, guilt, immaturity, dishonesty, cowardice, fragility, and using sex for validation.
Things that nurture desire: courage, kindness, honesty, compassion, growing up, and settling down.
The HDP and LDP contribute equally to sexual problems.