Contents
Home, work, children, shops, sleep… Few couples manage to keep the brightness of feelings in this rigid coordinate system. Whether everything is fine with you now, or something is not going well – it is always useful to look at your union a little more closely, to understand its strengths and weaknesses, in order to decide how (together) to live on.
We continue to live in a world of illusions: 69% of those who are just about to get married are convinced that they are doing it once and for all*. 79% of those who have already tied the knot are sure of the same. Young people (under 25 years old) and those over 55 are especially resolute: 58% and 39%, respectively, believe that “a person should create a family once and for life.” What amazing results, what a wonderful blinding love! The reality is different: for every two marriages, there is one divorce**. 26% of families break up after 4–6 years of marriage, 16% between 7–9 years, and 41% after 10–25 years. Over the past half century, the situation in our country has changed significantly: in 1960, there were one and a half times more marriages, and three times less divorces than now. What happened?
“A family in modern society has ceased to be a necessity: often both partners work and are economically independent, it is quite possible to cope with household chores and raising children alone, and the practical meaning of marriage for survival disappears,” says family psychotherapist Varvara Sidorova. – In addition, we have more opportunities to make new acquaintances, which significantly reduces various fears, including being alone. Another reason for divorce: marriage itself has become freer thanks to the sexual revolution and the strengthening of women’s position in society. Now both partners have the feeling that they have enough freedom, resources and strength to do what they want and not stay in a marriage if it becomes uncomfortable there. The doors to the space of endless love search have opened before us. Thanks to dating sites, we’re beginning to think that a soul mate can be found with a properly completed questionnaire, and a hassle-free, quick—almost sterile—consensual divorce has almost convinced us that marriage is just a formality. And yet there are more and more people among us who want to reconcile the irreconcilable: everyday and eternal, a long life together and the intensity of passion, obligations and independence.
TO UNDERSTAND HOW STRONG THE INVISIBLE THREADS THAT KEEP US TOGETHER AND TO REALIZE THE ROOM WE ARE ALLOWING OUR RELATIONSHIPS.
We and our relationship
What keeps successful “long-playing” marriages? There are few common reasons for staying together, characteristic of all unions without exception. Chief among them is communication. If partners are able to conduct a dialogue calmly, without causticity and causticity, the years of harmonious existence are strung one after another, like beads on a strong thread. “Communication at the same time can be completely different, the spouses are quite capable of interacting without words: with timely actions, convincing gestures or facial expressions,” Varvara Sidorova is sure. – But in the urban environment, communication is more often tied to words. The main thing is that an understandable communication is established between the partners, thanks to which, as a result, an emotionally and physically comfortable situation will arise for both. The more successful this interaction, the more stable the marriage.”
Men don’t want to talk about feelings…
Or they just can’t? “If you ask a man what he feels, he is more likely to tell what he thinks,” said sexologist Igor Kon. “Many boys don’t even notice the difference.” And this is not surprising: they are still taught to suppress their feelings, shame if they cry. Therefore, men are much more likely than women to suffer from alexithymia – the inability to distinguish their emotions and describe them in words (and hence the inability to share experiences, and lack of empathy). What about those who live with alexithymia? Colin Hesse, a psychologist at the University of Missouri (USA), studied more than 900 people with alexithymia and found that the exchange of affection (hugs, touches, smiles) significantly improves their lives, helps to establish warmer and more trusting relationships *. It seems that sometimes you can do without words.
* Personality and Individual Differences, 2011, № 50 (4).
Daria Rybina
Motivated precisely by this desire to live in peace and comfort, couples discuss what excites, pleases, impresses, surprises, annoys or hurts. And we invite you to start (or continue) this conversation with the questions from our dossier. Before you is an unusual test that was created by well-known European experts, Psychologies experts: social psychologist Jacques Salome, psychoanalyst Robert Nueburger, psychotherapist and sexologist Alain Heril and clinical psychologist Maryse Vaillant. In each of the four parts of this test, we invite partners to first ask questions to themselves, and then answer questions for two together. There are no right or wrong answers here. More precisely, the authors of the test do not offer ready-made answers at all: they see their task in ensuring that a deep and important dialogue for two takes place in a pair. The task, of course, is not to “bring the balance”: fill in the boxes “for” or “against”, establish what is good (or bad) in your life, and get a universal conclusion: more “yes” – a strong union, no more – it’s time to leave. The experts did not have the task of testing your union for strength. They invite you to calmly and kindly consider what is happening to you and your relationship at this stage, although, of course, the conclusions from this conversation may be unexpected or, on the contrary, confirm what you have long suspected. These same questions can also be helpful to those who are single right now: try to immerse yourself in the “nurturing ground” of reflection, think about past love experiences and prepare for what may be waiting for you in the very near future.
Mandatory meetings
Taking the opportunity to try to understand how strong are the invisible threads that hold us together, as well as to determine the place we assign to our relationship, is what we can do based on the questions of the test. Do we agree to continue our common adventure, do we see our couple as a union of two people who are ready to learn to overcome circumstances (sometimes with effort and pain) and consider them as obstacles, instead of seeing them as a reason for another conflict or final breakup … According to psychotherapist Virginia Satir (Virginia Satir), when a relationship first arises, we want to believe that life together will develop by itself ****. But in the magic and magic of the first meetings, not only we act, but also our unconscious. In these moments there are never two lovers: there is he (she) and his ideas about her (about him). “As for the couple, this is something third, not you, not me, not what we think of each other, but an independent unit, a separate organism in which I and my ideas are only a part,” says Varvara Sidorova. – The couple has its own destiny, its own life cycle, order and internal structure. She lives according to her own laws, and not always by the conscious effort of one of the spouses, you can remake her the way you want. Any changes that occur in the lives of partners affect the balance of the couple. The tension of mutual recognition goes away, but new knots are tightened, new patterns are woven. “Relationships of the first year, the appearance of children, all the major events of life are always a serious test for two. Just like the death of loved ones, relocations, layoffs or career successes. Any significant event does not pass without a trace for the family, ”specifies Varvara Sidorova. Over the years, the history of relationships becomes more and more intense and clumsy, and it takes time, effort and opportunity to get used to it. What seemed attractive three, five, ten years ago may now look absolutely lifeless: suddenly we begin to worry about a completely ordinary matter or are surprised by a sudden need … And all this, of course, requires discussion with a partner.
QUOTE
“Is love a split book, is it possible to take out some sheets and insert others? Even if this love is generous, inoffensive, the mass of torn pages gradually accumulates and can outweigh the mass of those remaining in the cherished book. They, put aside in a box of bitter, disturbing memory, coalesce into a separate story of the same love. Or another love? Or maybe already dislike? Or even torment? Mutual torment or one-sided victims? And isn’t it time to print in large letters, albeit in trembling handwriting: THE END?.. Is it really the end? Yes, can I? Can you? Can we do without each other? No, you need to scroll back and find the page where these errors began. We scroll back, farther and farther … And here it is crossed out, and there is a dark mark, and here is a smeared spot. Everywhere, except, perhaps, the cleanest page – the first! No one can take this away from us, not even ourselves: how I approached you and you looked… But already from the second… And now page after page is flying into the box with drafts, and love is trying to start all over again. Well, not from the first meeting – she is always holy – but from the third or fifth … Something that later began to destroy love slipped through there. And so begins the story of a new love between the two. How long will it last? No one can predict the viability of love. She can survive and recover from a cancerous tumor – or she can die from a runny nose, which suddenly gave a complication. But in general, her stamina reserve is very large. How many times did Tolstoy rewrite War and Peace? What about Gogol’s “Dead Souls”? Is it possible to suppose that a lover has less zeal and desire for perfection than a writer? Is love really worth less than some epic novel or prose poem? Of course, not all geniuses and hard workers. But after all, in the work is not a text, but a whole life. To fall in love with true love, how much you need to fall in love – the same, the same!
Time for yourself
Passing our test together and summing up the intermediate results of the joint path is not only a convenient opportunity for each partner to express their reproaches, claims or disappointments. And even, rather, on the contrary! This is an opportunity to better understand yourself, to assess your own ability to adapt to the new, to explore your desire to move on. What do I have now and what would I like to have in the future? Do my opinions always coincide with those of my partner? Can we look in the same direction? This is a kind of inventory of our expectations, past experience, as well as compiling a list of strengths and weaknesses. The main thing is not to turn the discussion into passing judgment on your (and your partner’s) competence.
“Once every six months we arrange a gala dinner with wine and ask each other the question: “Well, are we running away or are we living on?” — the writer Dominique Desanti shares her experience after sixty years of marriage… And adds: “Now, of course, it has already become a tradition, a game, but at first we spoke seriously…” But the philosopher Alain Badiou (Alain Badiou) calls again and reaffirm the strength of their feelings: “To be faithful to a partner means to confess your love to him again, to remind you that a confession made at the dawn of a relationship remains in force. It means saying to the other: “I accept you completely, I accept that you are who you are, and I agree to let you into my life.”
We wish you to be inspired by these words, stop for a few moments and talk about something that concerns only the two of you.
* The survey was commissioned by Psychologies by Tiburon Research on November 14-18, 2011 among men and women aged 18-60, residents of Russia.
** According to the Federal State Statistics Service, gks.ru
**** V. Satir “You and your family” (April-press, Institute for General Humanitarian Studies, 2007).