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For a relationship to culminate in a successful, long-term, committed union, a five-step relationship-building process must be acknowledged, understood, and completed.
The five necessary steps to a long-term relationship
The path to a definitive, new, long-term, committed relationship goes through five separate steps in relationship building: (1) Step 1: The Transition Relationship, (2) Step 2: The Recovery Relationship, (3) Step 3: The Pre-Commitment Relationship, (4) Step 4: The committed relationship and (5) Step 5: The marital relationship. (For a discussion of relaxing, predetermined, and committed relationships, see David Steele, Conscious partner search(Campbell, CA, RCN Press, 2008).
This article looks at the fifth and final step in the relationship building process, Step 5: The Marital Relationship.
Marital relationship is the time for change!
What?! Isn’t this the time when things settle down and you can finally relax and enjoy some stability?
Well, yes and no. You no longer have to struggle with the uncertainty of finding a partner with whom you have chemistry and who will also meet your requirements. However, choose your favorite bumper sticker: “Nothing stays the same.” “Change is the only constant.” “Men get married hoping their partner won’t change, but they do. Women get married hoping their partner will change, but they don’t.”
However you slice it, getting married isn’t a promise of boring, monotonous predictability. Successful marriages not only endure, but invite and enjoy transforming one another.
A marital relationship has matured to the point where it is being made formal with public commitments. Attention now shifts to both parties allowing and encouraging each other to grow, develop and change to fulfill each person’s life vision and purpose.
Goal and the motivating question. The goal of a marital relationship is to keep the relationship alive by encouraging growth and development. The driving question that motivates this relationship is, “How can WE help each other fulfill ours? personally Dreams?”
The roles you and your partner play. You are expected to be a husband/wife and a cheerleader to your partner’s efforts to “be all you can be.”
The essence of a committed relationship. A common misconception is that getting married is like crossing the finish line in a marathon and no further action is required. The “marathon” part is correct, but the “finish line” image couldn’t be further from the truth. In fact, you are now at the beginning Line a lifetime “super marathon” and a whole new part of your thinking will be challenged.
The common belief is that when we get married we are frozen in that moment like a marble sculpture. We can no longer or need to change our shape, size, beliefs, dreams or visions. A more apt image at the wedding ceremony is not a marble statue but a silly putty sculpture. While we may look like a marble statue when we say “yes,” our actual shape, size, beliefs, dreams, or visions can and will continue to be shaped and modified to our personal specifications throughout our lives.
The back doors to a marital relationship
“Backdoors” are ways that allow one to “escape” from the relationship.
Corresponding to the increased commitment that marriage brings, the difficulty of ending the relationship is also increased. Marriage is not only an extraordinarily strong social/psychological contract, it is also a legal contract. As you know, not only is the financial cost of a divorce significant, but the emotional pain runs deep as well. The effect is to force us to try everything to prevent a breakup and only use divorce as a last resort.
Possible problems in a marital relationship
The marital relationship requires that the two partners help each other to grow and develop. But what if they can’t or don’t want to? The relationship suffers and failure, i.e. “divorce”, is possible.
Some of the most common ways we fail in marriage include:
(1) Taking the relationship for granted and expecting the other partner to do all the work,
(2) Trying to do all the work yourself and shutting out your partner,
(3) Treating a “wish” as a “requirement”
(4) uncompromising,
(5) refusal to learn and apply the problem-solving and conflict management skills necessary for an engaged working relationship,
(6) refusing to accept changes in your spouse as not only acceptable but desirable because of his/her purpose in life,
(7) Believing that the person you are when you marry is the “end product” that will not require subsequent changes or adjustments for the rest of your life, and
(8) Believing in love means that your partner must forever accept you as you were when you got married, no matter what.
(9) Failure to complete the previous four steps in the relationship-building process, specifically Step 3: The Predetermined Relationship
So what’s the point?
Don’t be lulled by the obvious “finality” of “marrying.” Make no mistake, your work is not done yet.
Not only are you capable of change, but the essence of a successful marriage requires that you change. Your challenge is twofold: Can you make the changes you need to make to fulfill your life’s vision and purpose? And can you support, even encourage, your partner to do the same?
What’s in your way? In the shadows lurks the ubiquitous resistance to change! So your ultimate challenge is to overcome this resistance so that your marriage has the nourishment it needs to grow and thrive.
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