Ask someone why they got married and they will probably answer something like, 'I thought it was the right thing to do' or 'It felt right'. Simon Sinek, in his book Start with Why, states that the reason we are not more clear is that gut feelings come from the limbic part of the brain and this part of the brain does not have a language function. His book, though modelled for a business setting, can be helpful in looking at relationships.
Sinek postulates that most people in business focus on what they are doing, as it is easiest to describe and is where their vision is clearest; they want to sell coats, for example. What is the result of the action, like starting a book at the last chapter. How is also fairly simple to determine, but the why – the purpose or belief behind what they want to do – is harder to elucidate. From this notion, we can assume that many businesses fail because the head of the company is working backwards – in Sinek's view – and may never be clear on the why of it all. As he states, customers buy into the why of the business, not the what.
To extrapolate this information to relationships, we will not achieve the what (i.e. happily ever after) if we do not know the why. I can no longer remember where I read this, but the following quote expresses this thought well; "Get the Why of your marriage right, fill your marriage with the right Hows, and you have a much better chance of a successful What – a great and lasting marriage." As someone who has gone through a divorce, a lot of time and energy goes into understanding why it ended. It would have been so much less heartbreaking to have invested in understanding why it began.
I have already talked about the why of relationships in terms of why you chose this person. Now, I talk more of: do your why and their why coincide? We tend to assume that people see the world the same way we do and so we may not ask the big questions that would indicate a symbiotic pairing. I know of weddings that take place before the question of whether they both want children ever came up and not surprisingly, these marriages sometimes did not end well.
What is your 'why' in entering a committed relationship? To have children? Financial gain? Belonging? Will you both be happy living in the same area? How will children be raised? Will one of you put the other through school? Will you both climb the corporate ladder?
Daphne Kingma, in her book Coming Apart, looks at helping us understand why we came together in the first place. It’s advisable to spend the necessary time to understand this before the walk down the aisle than spending time and money on therapy and legal bills to undo the tangled web a married life becomes. She encourages people to define what tasks you hope to accomplish by choosing this person to marry.
We need to know who we are and what makes us tick. It is known that the early years of life is when the brain is most rapidly developing. Some studies suggest who we are is largely determined by our first seven years. Early life experiences are important in defining who we become, the scripts we are likely to play out, and the lessons we need to learn.
It is Kingma's position that our life plays out according to emotional patterns established in our childhood. "...we try so hard to duplicate our early experience through our adult love relationships..." Is the script you are playing out a method to make up for things lacking in your childhood? Or is it just assigning meaning to what occurred in your younger years? Do you see within your partner the means to help you grow through what you need to learn. Someone who grew up in a home filled with chaos and instability may need a structured secure home in which to understand the person they are and to develop confidence to be all they can be. She goes on further to state that a marriage will end when the developmental task of one or both have been resolved – "...we have learned basically who we are.”
Kingma, in helping people understand the ending of a relationship in Coming Apart, suggests exercises that could be done to help you understand where a couple stands before deciding to make a life together. You need to look at what you are both trying to accomplish, what your relationship status has been for the past while, and what development tasks you each may be trying to complete.
Sadly, couples do not ask enough questions before they decide what they feel will last a life time and solve all their problematic concerns. Songs, poems, and movies describe that over the moon feeling we have when we are madly and passionately in love with that special someone. Research and life experience teach us that this intensity of feeling lasts only between six and thirty months. Having an understanding of this and how love is likely to change over a lifetime will lead to better outcomes for a couple. What script do you see yourself playing out, individually and as a couple? What roles? Do you have similar purposes? You need to determine how compatible you are as individuals but also in terms of life goals.
There are a myriad of questions one should ask or otherwise ascertain about the other before you bind yourself to them. Will you have children? Where will you live? If a great job is offered in Timbuktu will you take it? How is money handled? Will you be members of a specific religion? How comfortable are you with talking about sex? The more questions you ask the better.
Kingma asks, "If you have not defined what it is that brought you together, how will you know if it's working?"
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