The Mirages of Marriage

"Next we turn to a book by one of the pioneers of family therapy, Don Jackson. It’s called T he Mirages of Marriage , and he co-wrote it with a professional writer named William Lederer. But Jackson is the mind behind this book. It was the very first self-help book for married couples from a systems perspective and it’s still one of the very few from this perspective. What it also includes, which is very important, is everything that had been learned up until that time about communications theory. I don’t want to make this book sound heavy. It really is a nice self-help book for regular people. But the question is: if you really want to change things do you want to be told what you already know, which clearly hasn’t been working, or do you want to see things with fresh eyes, even though none of us is comfortable with what’s unfamiliar? The Don Jackson book will help you see that there are things going on with communication in your relationship that you never realised, and I’m not talking about that Mars/Venus junk . You see, people don’t just exchange information. They do things with words. They issue commands even when they think they’re just describing reality. They create realities even when they think they’re ‘just talking’. For example, someone might say ‘How are you?’ to you in a way that both made you feel dominated and made you feel like crap. One of the cool things about the Don Jackson book is that he explodes a number of myths about marriage, particularly about the role of love in marriage. If your marriage is in trouble, this book will help. Romantics might not like what I have to say, but I’m telling the truth as a long-time therapist and as someone who’s been married to the same person for 50 years. Don’t shoot the messenger! Love doesn’t really have much to do with anything when it comes to relationships. Love really has two parts. The first is the feeling of hope and excitement most of us feel when we encounter someone we think will meet our needs. As in: ‘Oh, she’ll think I’m wonderful and special, and we’ll want to have sex with each other, and she seems interesting or fun, so I won’t be bored and my friends will like her,’ and… stuff like that. Next thing you know, you’re head over heels. But this love is really just the rocket fuel people need to launch a relationship in this fearful, divorce-ridden world we live in. But love is not self-validating . The initial love you feel isn’t saying anything true or important about the quality of your relationship, or about how your relationship will turn out. It’s just hope, and the psychology of hope is that hope is hard to kill. In fact, hope is usually the last thing to die in a dying relationship. Which is why people hang on so long before divorcing. “Love is really just the rocket fuel people need to launch a relationship in this fearful, divorce-ridden world we live in” The other aspect of love is the feeling that grows over time when you are life companions with someone. It has to do with attachment, loyalty, friendship, and a hundred filaments of connection. And people can feel this kind of love long after they’ve concluded they actually don’t want to be with their partner anymore. People who’ve been seriously abused by their partner can still feel this kind of love. So please don’t put too much stock in love. The measure of okay-ness in your relationship isn’t “But I love him!” It’s whether you’d recommend a relationship just like this to your beloved younger sister or brother. It’s whether you would look forward to another year with this person if it were like the year you’ve just had with him. Perhaps most important, it’s whether you are pretty sure that there is room in your relationship for two whole people: you as you really are and him as he really is. So am I throwing love overboard altogether? Of course not. I’m just saying that as a feeling it doesn’t prove much, though it’s a nice feeling to have. But there is one aspect of love that’s all important. No matter what you feel, if you treat your partner as if her happiness and well being were as important to you as your own, and she can tell you’re treating her that way, then that’s love that matters. A lot. If your partner’s in distress and you’re able to focus your concern on him, as opposed to focusing on the distress his distress causes you, then that’s love that matters. If the way you treat her makes her feel good about herself, then that’s love that matters. If your love creates a life in which both of you flourish, that too is the only kind of love that matters."