A Marriage Therapist's Blog
Thoughts on Marriage Counseling
Archive for February, 2009
- Oak Trees - Pleasanton
- Photo © 2009 Jay Slupesky
Sometimes when I am listening to a man and a woman talk about a difficult issue, a problem that has become divisive and has impacted their happiness as a couple and may even be threatening their relationship, I try to use my intuition and my experience to figure out what is “really” going on, in other words, what is being felt but not being said.
I have come to believe that in a couple’s relationship the bottom-line question that lurks unseen, unspoken, and frequently exists outside of conscious awareness is this: how much do I matter to my spouse?
I have chosen the plainest way I can think of to state the question, but it can be said and thought of in other ways, some of which might make the sentiment a little clearer, so consider the following variations. Are we still a happy couple and are we going to remain so? Am I the most important person in your life? Is there anything I don’t know that I should be worried about? These are the questions that can cause so much pain to someone who is no longer sure what the spouse’s answer would be.
The issues that a couple argues about and that frequently land them in my office are frequently not the “real” issues. My job is is see beneath what is spoken and figure out what is really going on.
- Trumpet Vines
- Photo © 2009 Jay Slupesky
As I mentioned in my previous post, marital satisfaction tends to go down after the arrival of the first child if the pregnancy was not planned or, if it was planned, if one (or both) both parents were not in agreement about having a baby or were not enthusiastic about it. Put another way, couples who planned their pregnancy and where both spouses were excited about it can maintain or even increase their satisfaction after the baby arrives.
Parenthood sometimes causes a couple to revert to the “traditional” gender roles because the woman quits her job to stay home with her child. Some couples are quite comfortable with the traditional roles, but for others it can be a source of stress. The man way resent his wife for not contributing to the family’s income, and the woman may resent her husband for not helping with housework and childcare. Hopefully, the couple had decided well in advance whether the woman would stay home or would continue working, and had planned accordingly.
- New York City, Seen From the Hudson River
- Photo © 2008 Jay Slupesky
Some young people in unhappy marriages think that having a child is a good way to improve the happiness and satisfaction of their relationship. I get a little uneasy when I hear this because I know it’s not always true. I know that sometimes having a baby adds enough stress to a marriage that divorce is the eventual result. The child that was hoped to bring happiness winds up being a child of divorced parents.
Studies show that marital satisfaction levels can drop when a couple becomes parents for the first time. This is more likely if the couple didn’t plan to get pregnant or weren’t in full agreement about getting pregnant, and if the couple didn’t talk in advance and plan about life with a newborn.
On the other hand, if the pregnancy was planned and the parents were both enthusiastic about parenthood, the couple can maintain their satisfaction, or maybe even increase it, after their baby is born.
- Sails
- Photo © 2009 Jay Slupesky
It’s been almost nine months since my Turn Off the Television! post, and I’d like now to follow up with another plea, to wit: Turn Off the Video Game!
I work with couples as young as their early 20s, and I work with couples as mature as their 60s. In my work I’ve noticed that some men up to about age 35 or so spend a lot of time playing video games.
I am curious about that age 35 cutoff because I can think of two possible explanations. The first possibility is that once they reach their late 30s, men begin to lose interest in video games. The second possibility, and the scarier one, is that men don’t really lose interest in video games, but that the guys who are about 35 now were the first group of pre-teens to be around when video games became really popular: they were around the impressionable age of 10 in 1983. If memory serves, that’s when the Atari video consoles were just beginning to catch on.
Regardless of which explanation is correct, I do know this: some men spend so much time playing video games that their marriages suffer as as result. To make things even worse, now that people play games against one another over the internet, it’s more common for people to become online friends with another player of the opposite sex (yes, there are some women out there playing too) and to have the relationship turn into an emotional affair.
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