Is 'Marriage Illiteracy' Robbing Your Marriage of Joy?

If you’re unhappy in your marriage, should you stay together for the sake of your children? This question is often thought to have only two possible answers: prioritize your personal happiness and divorce, or continue to suffer in your marriage. Based on my experience working with more than 5,000 couples over the past 20 years, I would suggest that, for many couples, there is a promising—but often overlooked—third option: learn how to have a happy marriage. Don’t let yourselves become the next victim of what I’ve come to believe is a widespread “marriage illiteracy” problem in our country.

Married couples today can take advantage of several decades of excellent research identifying “marriage best practices.” These practices are not hard to learn, and—when embraced—can transform a marriage. Yet very few of the couples I work with are aware of these practices. If you have children and are unhappy in your marriage, you owe it to them—and yourselves—to at least try implementing these best practices in your marriage before throwing in the towel. 

Hard vs. Soft Problems

There are many couples with “hard problems”—such as addiction or infidelity—that are hard to fix. For these couples, turning around their marriages will be difficult. But I meet with many more couples who have “soft problems.” These couples may think they have a hard problem because they’ve grown apart and are completely fed up with each other, but in reality, they've been making the same small mistakes over and over again.

The good news? These small mistakes can be easy to fix—but couples need to learn what the fixes are.

I believe it is the failure to love in all of life’s bad times that silently, over time, saps too many marriages of the joy that should always be there.

Dr. John Gottman, in his excellent book, And Baby Makes Three, reviewed the psychological research on the challenges married couples face when they become parents. His number one finding: “Even though both parents are working much harder, they both feel unappreciated.”

My work with couples bears this finding out. When a couple reaches out to me for help with their marriage, I ask each spouse to email me in advance of our session an overview of the issues they are facing. One mother of three children under the age of five wrote that she “never knew having children would be this wonderful or this difficult.” She shared all she did for her family, in addition to having a full-time job, adding, “it is not easy, yet nothing seems to be enough” for my husband, who “is extremely critical of me.” The husband, for his part, wrote “No matter how much I feel I have given, and given up, I have been assured that my wife has done more. Even when I acknowledge that truth, I feel that my contributions are not deemed sufficient.”

With each feeling unappreciated, their little arguments quickly escalated into big arguments. The wife added that their problems were “too long to list” and that she “knew for sure" she had made a mistake in marrying her husband. 

As I read what they each wrote, the prospects for their marriage certainly seemed bleak, but when I met with them just two days later, we laughed throughout our three-hour session. I assured them their problems were not unique, and that many of us struggle with the same challenges. I also emphasized that these challenges have been studied and solutions have been found.

This same wife who was so down on her marriage just two days before kept repeating throughout our session, “All we need are tools.” This couple had been unnecessarily suffering for years in their marriage because they were unaware of the tools available to them. They are one example of the many “marriage illiterates” I have worked with over the years.

I can share that almost no couple I have ever met understands how to sustain a positive, connected relationship over time. One husband told me, “Everyone tells you that you have to work at your marriage, but no one tells you what work you need to do.”

Marriage Best Practices

My wife and I were also marriage illiterates. It’s why I got involved in this work in the first place. I realized early in our marriage that we didn’t know how to be married. When I was asked to take over teaching the marriage preparation program at our church, I leapt at the chance, in part, because I realized that the challenge of teaching others how to be married would force us to learn for ourselves.

Here are a few of the crucial lessons and best practices my wife and I learned how to use in our marriage that can help those who are struggling in their marriage.

1. Say Thank You—A Lot

One of the best practices we learned is to say thank you, after reading Dr. Gottman’s finding that it’s the absence of positivity, not the presence of negativity, that predicts if a couple will later divorce. Couples with marriages rich in positivity are quick to see the best in each other; couples with low levels of positivity are quick to see the worst. So, look for opportunities throughout the day to say thanks. Develop the habit of thanking each other every morning and every evening.

A couple who had been married eight years with a six-year-old daughter had grown tired of their constant fighting. In a desperate attempt to revive their marriage, they flew to Italy for a romantic week together, but they fought the entire time they were there. Thinking, if a romantic week in Italy can’t save of our marriage, nothing can, they decided to divorce on their return. However, the husband’s brother, who had met with me the year before, urged the couple to meet with me one time to give their marriage one last chance.

When I asked the couple what was wrong, the wife angrily replied, “I’ve been making him breakfast for eight straight years, but all he’ll say is that the eggs are runny, they need more salt..!”

A husband forgetting to say thank you 2,000 times can certainly embitter a wife and bring their marriage to a breaking point, but this is an example of a “soft” marriage problem that is easily fixed. I turned to the husband and said, “She’s been making breakfast for you for eight straight years! Can you just say thank you? Then, you can say, ‘can you add a little more salt next time?’”

Four days later, the couple emailed me with the news their marriage was back on track. A “romantic week” in Italy had made their marriage worse. A simple “thank you for breakfast” had saved it!

This couple was marriage illiterate. They were operating under the assumption that grand gestures are the key to sustaining romance—special date nights or glamorous trips—but they were neglecting the everyday small gestures that Dr. Gottman has found are more important.

Here is one of the biggest secrets about marriage that almost no one knows: the humble day-to-day of married life is more important than even the most romantic of outings. If you can learn to take a little time every day appreciating each other, you might soon find you are enjoying your marriage once again. 

2. Don’t force conversations; schedule them.

Dr. Gottman estimates that 91% of the time is the wrong time for couples to talk. If you force a conversation when one or both of you are stressed, tired, hungry, or agitated, you are far more likely to damage the relationship than solve the problem.

My wife regularly accused me early in our marriage of being a “uniquely defective communicator” as I would shut down whenever our conversations got hot. When I got silent, my wife would mock me — “Have you forgotten the English language?” 

I wanted to talk, but I just couldn’t. I didn’t understand what was wrong with me. Then, I got involved in this work and discovered there are a lot of us “uniquely defective communicators” out there, my wife included.

My wife thought she was a good communicator because she wanted to talk. She was shocked to learn that she was regularly choosing the wrong times. Once she learned to give me a heads up—and we embraced the simple practice of scheduling conversations—we discovered we could have a positive conversation about any topic. We started solving the problems that had been plaguing our marriage.

Here is one of the biggest, yet little-known secrets about marriage: the humble day-to-day of married life is more important than even the most romantic of outings.

My wife and I are not alone in having struggled with communication. I work with a highly-educated clientele—98% have college degrees. When I meet with engaged couples for pre-marriage counseling, I ask them to complete the online FOCCUS inventory, which asks them to assess more than 150 potential “landmines” that could impact their marriage.

I have given the FOCCUS inventory to 103 engaged couples thus far this year, yet despite their high level of education, in 88% of these couples at least one partner flagged a concern over the couple’s communication, citing issues like conflict avoidance, the silent treatment, recurring arguments, differences over communication style, and a partner not being a good listener.

Surprisingly, few of these couples had made any effort to learn how to be a better communicator—that is, until they were required to take a program like mine. It’s a shame, because learning a little bit about how to be a better communicator can alter the whole trajectory of a marriage. 

3. Honor your vows: Love in good times and bad.

It’s fashionable to mock the traditional wedding vows—I will love you in good times and in bad—but truly living these vows just might be the key to a happy marriage.

Research shows that one characteristic of truly successful couples is that they are five times more positive than negative in their interactions with each other—when they are in conflict with each other! The “masters of marriage”—to use Dr. Gottman’s term—pass with flying colors the true test of love: Do you love each other when you disagree? When you are angry?

One of the most profound moments in my marriage came when I was only weeks into my new career as a marriage coach. My wife had forgotten to do something, and I was livid. It’s the only time in my more than 20 years of marriage I remember wanting to yell at her. I was at work and told myself, “When I get home, I am going to give her a piece of my mind!”

That night, I stomped up the stairs to our third-floor apartment, ready to read her the riot act when I walked inside. But as I reached our front door I said to myself, “Peter, you’ve been teaching couples to greet each other well—whether they feel like it or not—are you going to practice what you preach? This is a bad time. Are you going to keep the promise you made on your wedding day to love in good times and in bad?”

When I opened the door, I could see fear in my wife’s eyes. She knew she had made a mistake and was bracing herself for the worst. But instead of lecturing her, I stretched out my arms and said, “Come here!” My wife ran to me with a joy you rarely see, and we danced—sticking to the greeting ritual we had just recently committed ourselves to.

In that moment, I learned what it means to really love someone. If you love someone only when you are happy with them, that is not a heroic love. Loving someone when you are angry with them, that’s heroic. I wanted to be guilty of this heroic love for the rest of my life.

Learning to love my wife in the “bad times,” especially when I was angry at her, was a turning point in our marriage. 

It sounds like implausible marriage advice—dance instead of fight; talk later—but it is advice that works for us, and I have seen this advice transform the marriages of many couples over the years. Learning to love my wife in the “bad times” when I was angry at her was a turning point in our marriage. I soon realized I also needed to love my when I was tired or grumpy after a long day at work.

I have come to believe it is the failure to love in all of life’s bad times that silently, over time, saps too many marriages of the joy that should always be there. A blunt question I ask every couple is this: what is more important to you, your marriage or your mood?

The single best advice I give my couples is this: start every day with a positive connection, greet every day with a positive connection, and end every day with a positive connection—whether you feel like it or not.

Try These Marriage Best Practices Before Giving Up

Couples contemplating divorce should not be quick to throw in the towel. They might not even need marriage counseling. They should ask themselves if they’ve been neglecting the small everyday gestures that keep a couple glued together. They should ask themselves if they’ve been consistently bringing up issues at the wrong time. They should ask themselves if they’ve been failing to love each other when they are stressed, tired, or annoyed.

Parents who are struggling in their marriage owe it to themselves—and especially to their children—to give the “marriage best practices” in this essay a chance: thank each other often, talk about issues when you are both in a constructive mood, and show love to your spouse—even when you don’t feel like it. Embrace these practices, and you might find what so many couples have told me over the years, “We forgot we loved each other!”

A happier marriage might be closer than you think.

Peter McFadden, a New York-based marriage coach, blogs on marriage at MarriageFun101.com.

*Photo Credit: Lightstock