I often see young couples, who have been married for a short period of time, lamenting that their marriage has lost its sparkle. They tell me that before they married and for about a year afterwards everything was wonderful. But then they began drifting apart, going through the motions of living together, but without passion. Sex has diminished significantly, talking has been limited, and they have little energy to be with one another at the end of the day. They lost their mojo.
Similarly, I see couples who come into marriage counseling after their children have left the nest. They managed to get through the difficult period of child-rearing where they focused their attention and energy on the task of parenting. But once the children are off to college or otherwise leave the nest, they come to realize that they have another 30-plus years to live and they don’t have a clue about how to do it.
Based on my practice, these couples share several things in common:
- Often these folks end up recognizing that they are living their parents life. They have internalized the life they witnessed, learning how to be married by watching others. If their parents had clearly defined roles they find that they live these roles in their own marriages.
- Many of the men simply defined themselves as plow-horses following the rut to the office and back home again, having a beer, and watching the tube or reading the paper. Or they spend long hours working either on the job or at home.
- Women end up scurrying around the kitchen making dinner for their husbands despite having their own careers.
- Most of these people never saw their parents hugging in the kitchen, kissing, or being playfully affectionate. Seldom did they acknowledge that they knew their parents had a robust sex life.
- Their romantic and sexual life occurred during courtship and dramatically diminished within the first two years of their marriage.
- They often indicated that their sex life all but disappeared once they had children.
What is most noteworthy is the fact that none of these couples spent any time at all designing the marriage they wanted. They simply married and assumed that everything would work out. Yet these same couples would not dare make a dinner party without a plan. They carefully designed their wedding. And they developed detailed plans for building and/or decorating their home. If they handled any of these events in the same manner as their marriage, you can imagine what the result would look like!
In order to increase the probability of having a fulfilling marriage, you must create it; it will not happen by chance. Some people are fortunate insofar as the internalized prototype of a marriage based on their parent’s marriage was that of a fulfilling relationship. Most people, however, did not have that experience; and the odds of two spouses having been blessed with a wonderful internalized prototype is quite small indeed. Some people manage to struggle through the child-rearing stage preoccupied with the daily activities, but are not ready to face the next stage of their relationship where roles and responsibilities are not so easily defined.
Therefore, if you are going to have a fulfilling marriage it is important, if not imperative, that you and your spouse design the marriage that you want. The process of designing your marriage follows the following steps:
- Each spouse should visualize the type of marriage each wants. Visualization requires that you vividly see yourself going through days, weeks, months, and years as though watching a movie unfold. Imagine the days repeating themselves. See yourself engaging in the activities of this life from the time you wake until the time you go to sleep. Ask yourself how fulfilling that time would be. What might be satisfactory today may not be over the course of time. Too many people are short-sighted. They have difficulty projecting how things might look beyond the moment.
- Share your vision with your spouse. Engage in a dialogue and continue the dialogue until the two of you are able to come up with joint vision merging the best of each of your visions. Write that common vision down. This is often a lot more difficult than it sounds.
- Develop a mission statement for the marriage. What do you want your marriage to stand for? What values do you want to honor? Write down your thoughts and share them with each other. Develop a mutually agreed to statement based on these values that will become the guiding principle for your marriage. Agree to challenge one another when behaviors run counter to the mission statement to which you have committed yourselves.
- Ask one another what marriage means to you. Share the expectations you each have of one another and for your marriage. Be certain to explore the hidden expectations, e.g., gender roles.
- Define the job description for each spouse.
- Once this process is complete, put it all together in written form. This becomes your unique marriage manual. To the extent that you honor it, you have increased the probability having the type of marriage you want.
As it often has been said, if you fail to plan, you plan to fail.
[Dr. Dreyfus is a nationally recognized clinical psychologist, relationship counselor, sex therapist, and life coach in the Santa Monica - Los Angeles area treating low sexual desire, premature ejaculation, sexual addictions, drug and alcohol abuse as well marriage and relationship communication and intimacy issues. The profits from his latest book, LIVING LIFE FROM THE INSIDE OUT along with his other five books, are being donated to charity through the website Book Royalties for Charity and can be purchased through Amazon.com. Please become a fan on his Facebook Fan Page by indicating "like" on the page by clicking here. You can also find more tools to help you experience a more fulfilling life by clicking here to visit his website.]
Tags: communication, dialogue, human connection, intimacy, life changes, life enrichment, Personal Growth, Relationships, Sexuality
