EDITOR’S NOTE: Fair warning, this post has a great deal of psychobabble included. It is also a continuation of our previous discussion.
You walk in the door and are greeted with… “Honey, we need to talk about a few things.”
If you’re human, your insides immediately tighten and your defenses prepare for battle.
It’s a common occurrence.
Your spouse tells you what’s going on with them and you react.
The status quo is being threatened and while you may have grown tired of the relationship routine as well, your reaction is anything but open to their perspective.
Why is it that when an important person in our life (i.e. spouse) shares something and we disagree, it’s more likely to turn into World War 3 than a honest discussion?
It’s due to the fusion fantasy – or the belief that marriage is two people becoming one symbiotic entity. The Bible even alludes to this point…“and the two shall become one.”
While I understand this sentiment, the lens needs to be slightly adjusted.
Marriage is a symbiosis. But this relationship is not intended to produce happiness or wedded bliss.
It’s the mechanism to produce better people.
Marriage is a people growing machine. That’s the way it’s designed. The two becoming one concept in the Bible is more about the sexual union and creation of a family than each spouse giving up their individual identity and only being a married couple.
In order to get the most out of marriage, it’s necessary to have the proper view of what’s going on.
The natural conflict that occurs in marriage is part of the growing up process. It’s unrealistic to believe that you and your spouse are going to agree on everything. Finances, parenting, in-laws, the list goes on and on.
Often to avoid conflict in marriage it appears easier to accommodate your spouse, compromise, or avoid the tough topics altogether.
The problem this creates … conflict is inevitable.
There’s the old saying about being able to point out the married couple eating dinner in the crowded restaurant: they’re the ones not talking to each other.
The couple isn’t talking because they’ve already said everything there is to say, it’s more likely they don’t want to hear what the other person is thinking.
Deep down married people are trapped in a conundrum.
You want to know your spouse on a deeper level, to connect more and share more with them, but you open yourself up to not liking what they think or feel about something. To put it another way, you want a more expressive spouse, but want to control what they express.
In order to get closer to another person, you risk loosing yourself. Every person in marriage faces a continuum of separateness and togetherness. Me versus we. The desire to chart your own course in life and the desire to connect with them at the same time.
The psychobabble term for what you’re facing is differentiation.
It’s the ability to handle these two ends of the continuum without going to either extreme. Now this doesn’t mean you are able to remain balanced in the middle, differentiation means you are able to get close to another person AND keep a clear sense of self.
Differentiation is a term coined by Murray Bowen, who believed in a theoretical scale of human functioning from low to high. According to Bowen, there is no normal. He’s also quoted as saying “there’s a little schizophrenia in all of us.”
Bowen has also defined what it looks like on the upper and lower ends of the scale:
Lower differentiated people-
- Unable to separate feeling from thinking
- Reactive – emotionally driven
- Stuck together with or cut off from family and/or significant others
- Conform (chameleon) or rebel (bully) or Nice Guy (pleaser)
- Need to control functioning of Others
- Less flexible, less adaptable, more emotionally dependent
- Easily stressed into dysfunction, difficult to recover from dysfunction
- Inherit a high percentage of all human problems
- Life course determined by what feels right
Higher differentiated people-
- Able to access thinking in high anxiety
- Responsive – thoughtful consideration
- Connected with significant others while maintaining separate Self
- Self-defined, Self-validating
- Focused on control of Self functioning
- More flexible, more adaptable, more emotionally independent
- Cope better with life stresses, recover rapidly from stress induced dysfunction
- Remarkably free of human problems, lives are more orderly and successful
- Life course based on principled beliefs (Bowen, 1978)
Self assessment time – where are you on the differentiation scale?
Be honest. No rose colored glasses. And again, this is about you and your level, not your spouse.
(photo source)
Up until recently, I’ve been on the low end of the differentiation scale. But I’ve had a bit of an awakening over the last couple of years & I’ve been working hard to learn who I am and become confident in being me..in my job, my marriage, and my personal relationships. Boy is this difficult with family…but that’s another story. Although it hasn’t been easy, it’s incredibly freeing to do this. For the first time in my life, I’m saying no to people and not feeling guilty!
Can you expand what you mean by “Remarkably free of human problems”? I can see how a highly differentiated person would have less stress and guilt and a more personally fulfilling life, but there are so many human problems. I wouldn’t think differentiation could deter them all.
As you grow and differentiate you do find less worry and stress because you begin to look at everything differently, but you also find you get caught up in other people’s problems much less.
Much of life’s human problems stem from the infecting we do with each other. We feed off each others anxiety – especially in families. When you are more differentiated, it’s not that you become immune to others but you learn better ways to respond to others.
Problems will not go away completely, but you can navigate them better as you grow.
Thank you for this piece. I have been talking quite a bit with friends, some of whom recently married, about what I’ve always termed the “I vs. We” dilemma. I think it’s applicable across the spectrum, but I think this divide is probably even more pronounced as we get older. My wife was 42 (and never married or engaged) when we got married. I was 40, but had married before. While I, undoubtedly, had things to correct from my previous married; I think that I was more prone to the “We” side of things. Where as my wife had more of an adjustment because she had spent all of her adult life as an “I.”
I really liked reading the differentiation break out. If nothing else, it served as a nice barometer for how far I believe I’ve come as an individual and partner in a relationship. Looking at the list, I have moved — in the span of about six years — from low to high differentiation. To be clear, I most certainly have areas to improve; but growing, learning, acknowledging, and progressing has been quite satisfying for me, and I am confident that it’s helped nurture and strengthen my marriage.
I’m on the low end of the scale and trying to work to better myself and not be so much of a ‘niceguy’. My wife is in the process of leaving me and I think that this post and the previous days’ post describe our situation exactly. It’s a hard road to travel and I’m deeply upset by it all. I’m praying for all the best, but am terribly worried about my future.
Thanks for the great post Corey. I just found Simple Marriage a few days ago and plan to be back frequently.
One thing that occurs to me is that even though I consider myself highly differentiated, I am not always this way. Especially when you look at the first two bullets of the lower differentiated description. It is easy to fall into a reactive mode when you’re tired (I have six kids) or stressed. I suppose its easier for a highly differentiated person to recognize when this happens, but sometimes it sneaks up on you.
This idea also reminds me of something I read years ago by Stephen Covey where he talks about the “space” between stimulus and response.
Thanks again for the thought provoking post. I look forward to reading more on your site.