Be supportive
WHAT makes a happy marriage?
The quality of our relationships is especially important to our happiness and wellbeing.
For many, our marriage is the most important relationship of all.
Making a public, lifelong and socially recognised commitment to another person is a powerful way to underscore your special bond.
It is no wonder many people who have been excluded from doing so have strongly sought the right to be married.
At a time when Australians are discussing issues around marriage, we might consider what helps to make a happy marriage, especially given about a third of Australian marriages end in divorce. Marriage poses its challenges.
The philosopher Kierkegaard advised, if you marry, you’ll regret it. If you don’t marry, you’ll regret it.
He was reminding us that being engaged in a long-term relationship, as other life choices, is likely to involve significant compromise.
Indeed, successful relationships are likely to involve a degree of frequent and routine compromise.
As Joseph Campbell described, it helps if each partner considers this to be sacrificing to the relationship itself, as opposed to sacrificing to your partner. In that way the higher-order relationship becomes stronger to each partner’s benefit.
What can we do to become and remain happily married?
In recent decades we have learnt much from the research of psychologists John and Julie Gottman. They emphasise the importance of a marriage being based on a deep friendship.
That will help us listen and be attuned to each other. It will help us communicate many more positive to negative messages and gestures, which would optimally come at a ratio of about 5 to 1.
The underlying friendship helps you connect well on a daily basis, perhaps in such simple ways as finding out something about your partner’s plans for the day before parting and reconnecting soon after you have returned home.
It helps you support each other at times of stress and to attempt to repair your relationship after conflict. It helps you enthusiastically acknowledge and share in each other’s achievements.
Beware of becoming caught in the four patterns of behaviour that increase the likelihood of divorce, including entrenched patterns of criticism, defensiveness, stonewalling and contempt, which is harmful.
It helps to have some shared skills to manage conflict.
Especially be wary of getting into a pattern of harsh and rapidly escalating arguments.
If you’ve been arguing for more than three minutes without getting any- where, it is time to bail. Fewer than 5 per cent of arguments are suitably resolved after that time.
If you have repeated arguments about the same theme, it helps to look for the different but understandable interests and values that underlie your conflicting positions.
For example, rather than one partner seeming a spendthrift and the other a tightwad when planning a holiday, it might be that one partner prioritises freedom and adventure while the other prioritises financial security — there might be a way of finding a compromise solution which allows for each partner’s legitimate interests.
It helps to solve your solvable problems, but accept a fair proportion of conflicts might not allow for a win-win solution. Accept that as partners we change and grow throughout our lives — at least hopefully we do. This can create tensions, but can also energise and help renew our relationships. As Esther Perel (pictured) said, many of us will have several long-term relationships in adult life — sometimes with the same person! For example, a relationship can change substantially once children come along or after they leave home. It is important to recognise and accept the otherness of our partner. They do not have to share all of our interests, views and values. Of course, this applies to all other people including our neighbours, friends, work colleagues and family members. If we accept people’s otherness we are more likely to be attuned to their needs and interests, and the extent to which they might overlap with our own. These principles would also fundamentally apply to samesex marriage, which therefore shares the same essential nature. I do not see any reason why samesex couples should be excluded from the same public acknowledgment and acceptance of their right to marry. It is a key reason why I will be voting yes in the postal survey. Chris Mackey is the principal psychologist at Chris Mackey and Associates and a fellow of the Australian Psychological Society.