Q: You're a marriage therapist and a clinical instructor at Harvard, so you must have a good idea how many people are actually happily married.

A: Statistically, about half of all marriages are going to end in divorce. Of the half that remain, very few are actually happy, lively and satisfying. Couples all too often achieve a state of safe complacency where there's a great deal of distance and stagnation.

Q: Your book is called The Marriage Benefit. If we're all miserable, what is the benefit?

A: We grow and change and find meaning, not in a world of infinite possibility — and this relates to the whole matter of monogamy — we find meaning because there are limitations. If we actually had unlimited possibility and control, nothing would ever mean anything. Some of us, as we go through life and endure hardships, close off; we have short-term ways of managing that are designed to make us feel better but not to grow. Other people are willing to feel some of the discomfort from their mistakes, and that's the bedrock of what it takes to grow. If we're open and honest with ourselves, and are willing to take risks and think a little more about who we are than who they should be, sustained intimacy can be an incredible crucible for growth. Ultimately, marriage can be a forum for learning through a kind of creative constraint, an exploration of your own self in no small part because of the kinds of choices you have to make to stay together.

Q: What's so rewarding 25 years into a marriage?

A: I don't know that memories and experiences mean as much if they're not shared. Beyond that, some of the rewards have to do with the fact that your spouse mirrors for you, in a very realistic way, where you are in your life. It's a very common thing that [married] men look for younger women, and to generalize, the simplest thing men are doing is trading in mirrors. By trading in that mirror, you get to fool yourself.

Q: What's the downside? That sounds pretty appealing.

A: Ultimately, happiness grows not from trying directly to be happy, but from trying to live your life really well, and then happiness comes as a by-product. Based on my experience, solutions designed to secure a certain degree of happiness by way of a trade-in or a quick fix don't have the same kind of staying power as the satisfaction and happiness that comes from living well and more honestly. I know men who've left their wives for younger women, and five years down the road — often, not always — they feel very empty and alone.

Q: It's culturally permissible for women to complain about their husbands. Do men sit around moaning about their wives?

A: The characteristic framework women use to carp about their husbands tends to be, a) why don't you grow up? And b) why aren't you more emotionally available? My experience is that men bitch and moan too, but about different things. For example, after children come into a marriage, men whine about the emotional and sexual distance of their wives, about women not putting them first, the way they used to. I think men feel the emotional absence of women much more than is generally acknowledged. One thing that bugs me about this idea that men are basically emotional Neanderthals who need to be retrained is that guys can hide behind it: "Look, that's just who I am, I'm not emotional, so, whatever. I'll just turn on the TV rather than talk."

Q: Why do couples usually seek therapy?

A: They want or need something they're not getting, and both men and women feel that. Quite often, what they're not getting results from this almost inevitable odd piece of coded software of long-term attachment: part of attraction involves finding people with whom you're going to be related in places that are the most vulnerable and difficult for you. Early on, that's part of what feels so good. But as time goes by, perhaps you've found someone you thought was really solid and they turn out to be stodgy, or you found somebody you thought was full of life, and they turn out to be flighty. You find your way to the places that have embedded difficulties you don't see in the beginning. And by and large, rather than try to find a way to talk about them and put one's own vulnerabilities on the table, people do what they do naturally in the face of their own pain: they find ways to close off, either withdrawing, or caricaturing their partners by devaluing or idealizing them. So over time, a sense of distance, stagnation and loneliness evolves. That private pain people walk around with, how lonely they feel in a marriage, more than anything is what brings people into my office.

Print Article    Send to a Friend    Write a letter to the editor

Digg this Stumble It!   Post to del.icio.us Seed Newsvine   Share on Facebook Technorati links