Wanna know the biggest marriage killer?
Fusion.
fusion: (noun) The process or result of joining two or more things together to form a single entity.
In a fused system there is no “I”, only “we”.
There is an expectation that everyone should think alike, behave the same, have the same opinions, and want the same things. It’s assumed that each member of the system will be there to meet the needs of the other member. And, in this type of system, the neediest and/or most anxious members of the system will dictate how much pressure there is to conform and sacrifice self in a “Borg-like” manner.
In a fused relationship system, your options for getting your needs met are limited to the people within the system, or to the ways people in the system approve of (read that again).
The more both you and your spouse create a fused system, the more dependent you become on each other and the less time you have to do things outside of the relationship that you find fulfilling.
To break free of fusion you must grow up.
And growing up involves creating and following your own passions, as well as your relationship passions.
When you first met your spouse, ideally you were both living interesting and fulfilling lives. These lives were an important part of what made you attractive to each other. But often, as your relationship progresses with each other, you let go of what used to be important and fulfilling to you for the sake of the relationship.
When this happens it creates two problems.
- You are each no longer the person the other was originally attracted to.
- As each of you give up important things in your life, you often expect the other person to fill the void. This is a heavy burden to place on any one person. It creates neediness and dependency, as well as resentment and boredom.
One of the biggest killers of passion in marriage is all the meaningless time spouses spend together. And it is actually this type of tensionless coexistence that defines most marriages today.
You need to live an interesting, fulfilling life beyond your intimate relationship.
Marriage should be two mature people who take responsibility for getting their own needs met both with each other and from numerous other sources.
While I firmly believe you should keep all of you sexual energy within the marriage, I also believe you should keep doing all of the interesting things you were doing before you met your spouse (or enjoy doing without your spouse).
Great marriages are the result of two mature, grown up people – both of whom have full, satisfying lives – cooperating with each other to get their needs met. In this kind of differentiated relationship, each spouse compliments the other, but doesn’t complete them.
Mature, growing people co-create a number of cooperative systems to help them do this. An intimate relationship is just one of these cooperative systems.
It is this kind of commitment to living a full life that helps maintain the growth in a relationship that is so important for attraction and attachment.
It’s also the premise of Simple Marriage that you shouldn’t have to give up anything important to you to be in a relationship – your hobbies, recreation, friends, family, alone time, passions, etc.
A mature, cooperative relationship should lighten your load, not add to your burden.
In order to create this kind of differentiated relationship, both people have to live their own life as the relationship evolves.
I’m often greeted with push-back to this idea of living your own life in marriage. Like I’m encouraging each spouse to live separate lives together.
You know what … I am!
It’s the only way a marriage fully alive marriage occurs.
(photo source)
I’m in the process of learning what it is I like doing and trying to create a full life outside of my relationship. Currently, my relationship feels more like a burden than an enjoyable partnership. We’re going through a hard time now, trying to recover from a postponed wedding, while still living together; some days it feels impossible. I’m at a point when I just want to focus on me and not have to worry about someone else. Your manifesto has been really helpful – as is your blog in general. I struggle with the concept of growing up within the relationship. I think I need to do it separately before making the commitment. What do you think?
Beautifully said… I once heard it like this. When you are married, you should be like a candle that can give light to another without taking away any of your own light.
Sincerely yours,
Sarah
Wow – great article. I am getting married in May and discovered your site recently. I am looking forward to following Simple Marriage after this post!
Dear Dr. Allan,
I am writing you as an editor with PsychAlive.org, a nonprofit website offering key psychological information (articles, blogs, videos, interviews and workshops) to the general public.
I have taken a close look at your website and feel it would be very valuable to connect.
PsychAlive focuses on issues of self, intimacy and parenting. We draw on the contributions, research and theory of leading psychology experts, and we are interested in link exchange with your site. We would be thrilled for you to link to http://www.PsychAlive.org as one of your resources or to offer you content from our authors and psychologists, of course for free.
One of PsyAlive’s creators. Dr.Lisa Firestone, is a blogger on The Huffington Post and Psychology Today. She has authored several books, produced films and done interviews for NPR, O Magazine, Cosmopolitan, Men’s Health to name a few. She is an expert in the field of relationships and would be glad to offer herself as a resource or as an
author on your site.
We would appreciate your feedback on psychalive.org and consider linking to our various content.
Very Best,
Carolyn Firestone
Editor
Lovely to see Dr. Snarch’s work alive and well! Interdependence of two independent people is a beautiful thing. I especially liked the comment about all the meaningless time couples spend together and not giving yourself up. Thank you.
Dr. Schnarch completely changed the way I view things in relationships.
Great post, Corey! I am definitely guilty of being the needy one in my marriage. This post hit home, and definitely addressed a lot of the issues we have in our marriage. I’m working on becoming more confident in my hobbies and activities, instead of always having to tag along with my husband.
I couldn’t agree more. I was in a marriage for 18 years with a man with Borderline Personality Disorder. He was so fearful of being abandoned and so afraid that we would grow apart that he wouldn’t let me grow at all. He was jealous and possessive. I couldn’t have friends or outside interests. He even balked at my relationship with my brother. I would be pressured into leaving any job that I enjoyed too much. I couldn’t go anywhere without him, or if I did I had to bring one or more of the kids along. Everything was OK between us as long as I was pregnant or nursing or pushing a stroller. (Hence the 4 babies in 12 years.)
The nail in the coffin of that relationship was when our youngest child was 3 and I decided it was time to stop having babies and start focusing on the person that I had lost along the way. I applied for and was accepted into an MBA program. The more fulfilled and successful I became, the more he desperately tried to keep me from becoming anything other than his wife.
I am still angry that we spent five years in marriage counseling and no one told me (or us) how unhealthy that relationship was. I just kept struggling to be what he needed and keep my family together – all the time questioning what was wrong with me.
The ultimate irony – the following was printed and scrolled and placed next to every plate at our wedding reception as my idea of the perfect marriage:
The Prophet on Marriage
by Khalil Gibran
Then Almitra spoke again and said…
“And what of Marriage, master?”
And he answered saying:
You were born together,
and together you shall be forevermore.
You shall be together when the white wings
of death scatter your days.
Aye, you shall be together even in the
silent memory of God.
But let there be spaces in your togetherness,
And let the winds of the heavens dance between you.
Love one another, but make not a bond of love.
Let it rather be a moving sea between
the shores of your souls.
Fill each other’s cup but drink not from one cup.
Give one another of your bread but eat not from the same loaf.
Sing and dance together and be joyous,
but let each of you be alone,
Even as the strings of a lute are alone
though they quiver with the same music.
Give your hearts, but not into each other’s keeping.
For only the hand of Life can contain your hearts.
And stand together, yet not too near together.
For the pillars of the temple stand apart,
And the oak tree and the cypress
grow not in each other’s shadow.
I guess he didn’t get the memo.
I love your analogy in the Simple Marriage Manifesto about the A shape vs. the two individuals standing upright. I am happy to say that the marriage I am in now is two people standing upright, side by side without leaning excessively on the other. My current husband and I remarked after reading your analogy that the imagery is reminiscent of the Twin Towers and the attacks they were able to endure before they finally crumbled.
I love reading your posts. Sometimes they make me think of something I never thought of before, and other times, they just remind me of things that I forgot to remember.
Melisa, I love your story! And how beautifully Khalil Gibran’s poetry expresses the ideal marriage.
While I agree with your premise as to why marriages struggle, I think that there is at least one other way (there may be others) to achieve similar results.
I am a believer in integration. For us, taking our strengths and passions and figuring out how to use them together to form our unique unity or voice has done huge things for our marriage and our relationship as a family. We believe in togetherness and celebrate our diversity as part of our unique identity.
My wife is passionate about homeschooling and photography, I am passionate about technology and the outdoors, my son is an artist, etc. Our process has been to take those skills and learn how to make them work together for our common good. We form our family goals and visions around them. We get to pursue the things we love, and be together at the same time. By bringing them together we are able to achieve things that none of us would have been able to do as individuals.
Sounds like we are saying the same things only slightly different.
Perhaps, but I am not so sure yet.
You are talking about living separate lives together. I am talking about living one life together. A life that takes the passions we each have and puts them together to make something that is bigger than we are as individuals. Like members of a team or a crew on a ship. Pursuing a family identity that is unique because we are.
For many years, I was the one preaching this same philosophy, often trying to encourage my husband to be more independent of me. It felt like a burden to be the sole source of his happiness. However, for the last year and a half, I have found myself being the one who is too dependent on him. I went through some things and relied heavily on him to help me through it and now, well, I see the results of not yet finding my own source of strength.
Although he’d never admit it, I can feel the emotional weight this is putting on him, our relationship, and our family. I know that I need to make some changes, and FAST!
Thank you for this timely post!
This is exactly what I envision for our marriage, but I can’t figure out how to implement it. Maybe that’s the topic of your next post/
I, too, was struck by the profoundness of this post… and cannot agree enough with you! I bow to your insight.
Before meeting my husband, I was involved in a serious relationship with a very needy, emotionally dependent man… whose idea of “true love” was doing every-single-little-thing together. Every waking moment that wasn’t spent physically together must be spent engaged in text, e-mails, phone calls, inspired love poems, or daydreams about one another.
Any outside interests, any friendships, any conversations that I had which didn’t include him were a threat to “Us”.
I once referred to his behviour as an unhealthy obsession (with me), to which he replied, “Obsession isn’t a bad thing. People in love should be obsessed with each other!” (This man was in his mid-40′s, by the way. Just thought I’d clarify that… )
It was a maddening, suffocating, depressing situation to be placed in… It may have seemed romantic on the surface, but this relationship required my undivided attention. I dreaded “failing” and disappointing him – for he continuously accused me of being unsupportive and thoughtless.
Fortunately he was wise enough to end the relationship on my behalf, to search for someone who could fulfill him, and I wished him well on that journey.
Conversely, my husband and I share many similar interests and views, but we aren’t connected at the hip, physically or emotionally. I have my independent hobbies, as does he, and we are both comfortable spending time apart to further our individual goals.
I’ve found that having separate lives keeps us enthusiastic to share everything we’ve experienced/learned/accomplished, and value our time together even more!
Oh, and not receiving 5,000 daily text messages or voicemails means that I can fully appreciate and treasure each spontaneous, albeit rare, expression of cheesy adoration.
Hmm, interesting. I feel like I don’t have too much of a problem with this since my life, and my fiance’s life are both so busy that the down time that we DO get together is SUCH a treat! I think that busyness gets a bad rep… being busy is so good! It keeps you active, thinking about new things, never settling, always learning, and always adding new things to your relationships (especially with your significant other!)
At the same time though, I’m loathe to admit that we really do need lives apart, and that this busyness is what makes our relationship so good. Have you read Sheldon Vanauken’s “A Severe Mercy” Corey? Ultimately, their closeness is what makes AND breaks their relationship. It is so beautiful, so romantic… and so tragic.
such incredible insights, when you stop and think about it, it seems so simple, but if it was we all would have figured it out on our own…I just came over from Wendy’s blog and I am glad I did!
Cheers
Dennis
Interesting points. Thank you. I would like your thoughts on how this practically works when you are in the child-bearing and raising years, building career, etc. How can you really ‘pursue your passions’ when the needs of a household/family requires each of us to reach out and meet the needs/interests of those around us, often to the loving denial of our own?
This is great! This is exactly how my marriage is, I’ve been married a year but we have been together for 6 and this is the type of relationship we have. I’ve always felt that it works well but when sometimes explained to others they seem confused and do not seem to understand how it could work…. I think maybe your personality has a lot to do with it, my husband and I have been both very independent and are both easy going with each other, i think it just came naturally to us. Thanks for putting the concept out there!
What an outstanding site! This is a vital discussion to have, and I thank you for facilitating it.
I have a question, though, regarding the following quote:
“In this kind of differentiated relationship, each spouse
compliments the other, but doesn’t complete them.”
I think you that you mean to write “complements” instead of “compliments,” but it never hurts to ask.
Again, thank you!
You are correct. The other type of compliment doesn’t quite fit this idea. Thanks.
Interesting article. I can’t disagree with you more. Your a good counselor from a worldly perspective but not Godly. The only great marriages are those centered around Jesus Christ and His Word. He states that when we marry two become “one”. Marriage according to Him is to deny self and meet the needs of the other. “Me” and “I” is the dagger in a marriage. One needs to understand marriage from a Godly perspective and realize the the work, sacrifice and commitment it takes to make it work. It was intended to reflect His love for us,(God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son that whoever believes shall not perish but have everlasting life John3:16). It is this type of marriage that the bar has been set. Are you struggling in a marriage? Christ is the answer. It took me a divorce and a reconciliation to realize the only sure advice on marriage comes from Jesus Christ and His Word. I can attest to this one fact; doing it God’s way assures peace, love and joy in a marriage. Colossians 2:8-10.
Excellent post! This idea has been very helpful in my own marriage, and I would encourage interested folk to read Passionate Marriage for more on this (Dr. Snarch’s).
Dave- There are several things that come up after reading your comment. First, I will agree with you that marriages (and life, for that matter) centered around Christ is a component of greatness, especially considering it is through Christ that we have and experience life in the first place.
But the idea of the two becoming one is misunderstood. I don’t believe that you cease to exist as individuals once married. I believe the two becoming one is in reference to a spiritual concept as well as alluding to procreation and two people creating one child. Based on Scripture’s idea that God is interested in our character, or maturity and our growth, I don’t think He designed relationships for us to meld completely into and cease to exist as single entities – thus ceasing to grow.
Marriage’s prototype is not found in God’s love for us, to me, marriage’s prototype is found in the love within the Trinity. The Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit are one, yet three. I think this is more in line with the two becoming one idea.
When you are in this kind of marriage, you can serve each other and freely give of yourself. The denial of self is only in reference to our relationships with Christ an d our sinful nature, not with each other in marriage.
Marriage and relationships based on love are based on choice – if there is no choice, there is no love. When marriage is viewed this way we can then work to reach a point where we can extend ourselves for the well-being of our spouse.
It also boils down to the difference between meeting our spouse’s needs vs. understanding the difference between our spouse’s desires, needs, wants, etc. – which may not be in line with growing up – it may be they want to remain comfortable or continue in their “childish ways.”
At the end of the day, I believe life as a follower of Christ is about maturing and growing in wisdom which is done both in relationship with Him, and with each other.
THANK YOU! I am unmarried but see a lot of the married women in my life (siblings, friends) forming these codependent (or sometimes, just plain dependent) relationships with their husbands. It makes me concerned but whenever I suggest that I would need time apart or my own interests, I always here something to the effect of “Well you only feel that way because you’re not married.” I know I will always be an independent person and I know I will someday have a successful marriage with another independent person. But it’s still very nice to read it!
Amen!
Another great post. Thank you for sharing this. I see this in my practice all the time. People lose their individual selves and have very little to bring to the table at the end of the day. Even worse, a lot of people think that’s what they are suppose to do – become the collective “we”.
I recently wrote an article on a similar topic I’d like to share.
http://escapefromrelationshiphell.com/how-to-stop-being-the-woman-he-fell-in-love-with.php
Thank you for sharing your wisdom.
first question–why did my friend get this in her email yesterday, but i got the most recent blog post? she forwarded this to me and i’m not sure why she’s getting old posts (and i wish i had gotten this one too!)
anyway……
in this post you said “you shouldn’t have to give up anything important to you to be in a relationship – your hobbies, recreation, friends, family, alone time, passions, etc.” while i do agree that generally speaking, as a couple, you should still “do your own thing,” i feel like when you become a parent, this TOTALLY changes. at this point, NON-fusion is what is killing my marriage. before we had kids, my husband and i were going about our own lives, doing the things we’ve always done and enjoyed. then we had kids. as we all know, kids take up alot of time (if you do it right) so there seem to be less hours in the day to keep up with our “hobbies, recreations, alone time, passions…” i have substantially decreased my time spent doing those things (not completely, but alot) in order to give my childrent the time and attention they deserve (why have kids if you’re not going to spend time enjoying them?) but my husband has had a very hard time adjusting to this shift in priorities. when he wants to golf or watch sports or read about sports every spare minute he has, i feel like he is not “fusing” with our family, he is still just going about his own life and not really being part of ours. again, why have kids if you’re not going to engage in their lives? so i would love to hear your opinion on this fusion issue as it relates to kids/family life. i feel like your article was geared towards people w/out kids who actually have time for an outside life still! haha
I resent this post to those that are on the email list from the marriage courses I offer (http://www.simplemarriage.net/free-marriage-courses).
I was really confused why you would resent someone posting such a personal and simple question, and then I realized you meant “re-sent”.
You said, “I also believe you should keep doing ALL of the interesting things you were doing before you met your spouse (or enjoy doing without your spouse).” All?
Maybe SOME. From what I’ve seen, those who believe they should still retain their individuality while they are married is what kills a lot of marriages. I’ve been married for 23 years and marriage does take sacrifice to merge your lives into a unit. To think that you can do every interesting thing you did before you met, hang out with the same people and so forth will kill your marriage, especially once you have children. I run a women’s ministry, and most of the wives feel the same as Val — the husbands struggle with giving up a lot of the ‘interesting things’ they’ve been doing since they were single although they are now married MEN with grown up responsibilities. A lot of christian women will suffer in bitter silence a long time hoping her husband will actually get involved in his family.
Two people meet and are interested in each other, hopefully because they have similar interests and goals. It’s not the activities they are doing that makes them interesting. Couples today are often running in two different directions and it’s like they are merely roommates with benefits. Your job alone is going to consume huge portions of your life and it will be your main opportunity to express your individuality and build (professional) relationships outside of your marriage. But (especially when children are young) couples need to know that realistically they’re going to need to let go of time consuming, selfish activities and look for satisfying activities that both like and can enjoy together, to learn to be one another’s best friend, and really enjoy life together.