Staying committed to your spouse

Our traditional model of marriage in the United States has remained stable and unchanged for more than 50 years. We have based our expectations on the relationships of our parents and grandparents and learned our beliefs about marriage based on the need for financial security, continuity and support. As the world changed and more women have had to integrate family life with work life, this model, although traditional, is not geared towards partnership and supporting individual needs.

The highest rate of divorce in young couples is during the early 20's. After about age 27, most young adults have found their true self and are emotionally mature enough to handle the stress of marriage and family life all while juggling a new job market. Men and women today have a need to find their individual selves before committing to a partnership that may force them to give up some of their individuality. Creating a partnership that honors a functional emotional connection while still ensuring individuality is more along the lines of today's needs and wants in relationships. Couples want more than financial security and a stay at home mom or dad. They want to feel trust, love and spiritual connection through the skills and practices they have learned as children.
Multiple priorities and responsibilities have become more important than attending to spouses and a committed relationship. In order to keep that relationship open and growing, there are suggestions for staying creative throughout the years:
• Take time to coordinate your busy schedules at least once a week and then plan a date night each week. Once a month plan a whole day to spend together doing something special and alone and spend at least one week alone together each year. Take this time to visit new places and get away from the daily commute and responsibilities of daily life.

• Buy special little gifts for each other just to let your spouse know you are thinking of them. Perhaps a trip to the grocery store includes a bouquet of flowers or a favorite treat.


• Leave love notes for each other. Text small messages during the day, while away on business or even when you're in different rooms of the house.


• Spend time together at night. When the children go to bed, take time to talk and cuddle rather than watching television or doing chores.


• Kiss your spouse every day and make it a point to say "I love you" to them every single day.


• Communication with your spouse is crucial to a great marriage. Letting your spouse know what you are feeling, your opinions on subjects and what you need from him is important to keep the relationship alive and growing. Actively listening, even when you are facing a conflict, tells your spouse that thier opinion is important to you and that you are focused on finding a solution rather than "winning" an argument. Most arguments can be diffused simply by listening and acknowledging your partners thoughts and emotions.

Marriages take teamwork and commitment to the success of the team over individual accomplishment. Your relationship is your first priority and the ability to form a cohesive unit to face the challenges that come in life. Successful marriages come with a lot of time and energy put forth to make it work. Complete commitment to making a relationship works means investing regularly in your relationship and its needs.
Remember to stay flexible to the changing needs of the marriage. The path to happiness will have many bends and forks and being able to take them in stride will help your marriage become stronger and more fulfilling. If you make the commitment to stand by your spouse even during the toughest moments, it becomes easier to skip through the smaller, trying episodes because you both will feel secure and loved in your relationship.

How to Have your Partner's Back

Over the years, in my clinical practice, I’ve noticed that when I ask patients if they have a good working definition of emotional safety, it is often hard for them to generate a response. However, when I ask patients if they can describe what the opposite of emotional safety in a close relationship might look like, the responses flow freely. Below are some of the most common responses to the question about what a lack of emotional safety looks like:

When you feel like your partner doesn’t respect or like you very much.

When you feel like your partner will assume the worst about you.

When you feel like your partner is looking for ways that you will screw up or let them down.

When your partner is rude, hostile, or detached (in the latter case, signaling possible rejection).

Because I mostly work with a military population these days, I have worked to find language that fits with the military culture. In terms of emotional safely, the related concept that is the closest fit is the idea of “having your partner’s back.”
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In this fourth of four blogs about the two levels of relationships, the topic will be how an understanding of the two levels of relationships allows you to have your partner’s back. To very briefly review the driving concept in this mini-series, I’ve been arguing that relationships occur on two levels. The level of G represents the global level of perception (whether or not your partner views you as a good person overall, despite your flaws), and the level of s refers to a person’s array of specific behavioral traits (and quirks).

There are four major ways to “have your partner’s back.” First, you can commit to refraining from making statements that condemn your partner's character or threaten the very foundations of your commitment. Some examples…

I don’t know why we’re even married some days.

I don’t know if I am still in love with you.

You’re such a loser/idiot/bimbo, etc...

You don’t really love me.

If you don’t start _________, I’m done with you.

When you make statements like these, you can set off a primitive panic at the level of G, and in doing so, you are essentially defecting from the stance of having your partner's back. If you want to get your relationship on better footing, the first step is to stop the bleeding by taking statements like these out of your options for responding. If you are committed to the relationship, then making empty threats about leaving does nothing but leave you with an insecure, hurting partner.

A second way to have your partner’s back is to become a student of their emotional reactions. This is not to say that you need to read his or her mind, but rather that it’s helpful if you can be generally aware of and responsive to your partner’s emotional state. It is possible to unintentionally make your partner feel insecure at times. When this happens, having your partner’s back means being attentive, responsive and willing to quickly address the primitive panic you may have unintentionally triggered in your partner (for example, by asking things like “Did your mood just shift?” “Did I do something that was hurtful to you just now?”).

Although it is especially important during conflict situations, reinforcing that G has reached a positive set point is third way to have your partner’s back. Such reinforcement involves frequently letting your partner know that you love them, showing them with your behavior that you respect them, and holding their worth high when you speak of them to other people. (The opposite of doing this would be to post news of your partner’s flaws and failings to your audience of Facebook friends and acquaintances, a destructive behavior I’m seeing more and more these days).

Finally, a fourth way to protect your relationship at the level of G is to make healthy attributions on an ongoing basis. By healthy attribution, I mean an interpretation of an experience, thought, person, or feeling that is balanced and reasonable. Attributions are critical to the success of relationships in later stages of love.

Specifically, having your partner’s back means expecting the relationship to change as you progress from the cocaine-rush phase into the testing phase and setting your expectations of your partner more realistically. Ultimately, although no romantic relationship can sustain the endless continuation of unfounded idealization, those in successful relationships do carry over into the post-cocaine-rush phase a tendency to slightly idealize each other in a habitually adaptive manner. 

Most of us generally extend this slight idealization to ourselves anyway, so why not fold in the love of our lives as well? Since our intimate relationships have a huge impact on the quality of our lives, then surely, to do so would be self-serving, in the best possible sense of the concept.