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> Of course, we compromise: by taking turns, and by putting up with the fact that one of us is, to some degree, dragging the other along for the ride. But we can also tell that we are compromising, and that makes each of us feel sad, and somewhat alone.
This is actually the problem. Compromise is when two people in an adversarial relationship both try to look out for themselves and inevitably walk away disappointed.
When two people view marriage as a self-giving endeavor, rather than a self-serving one, happiness follows. You're happy to give and happy to be loved in return.
The trouble is for so many people, a mutually self-giving relationship is unthinkable.
I've been married for 15 years and my wife and I couldn't be more different. I'm an engineer working on my second Masters degree and she has a high school diploma. Our interests differ wildly but we're very happy because we both share a desire to serve and make the other one happy. Me first is the problem.
Yes. Reading this article is like watching Elaine from Seinfeld attempt to navigate a marriage. The expectations for how it works are so deeply, fundamentally off-base that it's kind of funny in a sad way.
The main difference is that Elaine lacks self-awareness, so it's easy to just laugh and not feel bad for her.
There's no need to write a bad review of marriage if it clearly wasn't made for people like you in the first place.
(I do want to stress that Agnes Callard is a good, perceptive thinker on many other topics, even if this piece IMO really misses the point)
I think that's more of a symptom in this case. The problem is that the writer and, likely, her husband are driven by ego. Everything about the first few paragraphs screams, I'm putting on all sorts of fronts (bc I think I'm being smart/cool).
If you feed your ego ahead of your soul, you won't know what you really want/need, and if you don't know what you want/need, how is anyone else supposed to satisfy you in any sustainable fashion?
The good news is that relationships can help you develop as a person. You should be growing together and on your own. If you care for someone and feel you're failing them in some way, it should drive you towards self-examination, which should spur new perspectives and development.
I would guess that you and your wife are less driven by ego than most. You probably don't reach a place where you're self-giving without at least corraling your ego. You may be at a point where you take it as a given.
To be clear, everything in your post is good. I just think it's Step 2, rather than Step 1.
I think this is true, but it really comes down to: how much do you and your spouse like each other?
If you both like each other, you'll want to give, and the relationship is probably going to feel mutually fulfilling. If it's not mutual, you won't want to give, even if you force yourself, and you'll resent doing things for them.
Honestly I think all these reframings are a way of avoiding the basic fact that the main source of satisfaction in a relationship is just: how much you're romantically into the other person, and how much they return that. Throw trust in too, since that's sort of separate, but that's the meat and potatoes of the dish. Romance is romance, vast majority of relationship dissatisfaction I see comes from a lack of desire from one person.
You can give your heart, but if your significant other doesn't speak your love language, no matter how much you give, it may not be right for you. If you're focused exclusively on giving, are you considering your own needs as a person? Granted, if both people are focused on giving, hopefully they can figure it out among one another.
What you say sounds nice, but either I don't understand it, or I feel it just isn't true.
For example, you want to watch a movie together, but neither of you have the same tastes in movies. What do you do?
Because both of you are self-giving, you both say that the other can pick, you're thus in a deadlock.
At some point, there's going to need a compromise, because you can only pick one movie and neither of you happen to like the same movie.
So best you can do is compromise by alternating, this time you watch your preferred movie, next time there's.
Or you compromise by not watching movies together, but seperately.
I've heard good marriages described as a 100 / 100 partnership, not just a 50 / 50 one. You described that idea excellently, thank you.
> a self-giving endeavor
This seems like a step 2 to me. I think when people try to be giving as a step 1, before their own needs are met, they can end up miserable and resentful. But when your needs are met, giving is natural and joyful.
The NVC assumption is that when two people can identify each other's needs and connect with them, they find that their needs aren't actually in conflict. Compromise isn't necessary. That's the idea in theory at least.
I'll play devil's advocate. Your marriage doesn't sound like one of equals. You're doing a Masters while working full time I imagine. So who picks up the slack for household management? I'm guessing your wife. If you have kids, then it is even more unbalanced I imagine.
I know people in similar marriages - it works great, as long as the spouse is happy being the dutiful house wife. But I also know people in this situation who are now separated - usually the man/provider is completely blind sided when their ever loving, house wife says one day "no" and just walks out. They had no idea there was an inequality in the first place, and assumed their spouse is happy like this.
I personally believe that when marrying someone, "marry your equal" is incredibly important advice. Marry someone of similar earning power, with similar career and life accomplishments. This helps ensures a equal relationship that has the greatest chance of success.
Why does it have to be all self-giving or all self-serving? Why not simply a team, with the team first?
To me this sounds a lot like a distinction without a difference.
My wife and I have different preferences for different things. We each routinely compromise by going along with the others preferences. We aim to do that in such as way as to achieve a healthy balance, where each of us feel satisfied and have our needs met. We do this by using communication.
To my knowledge, neither of us feel any animosity towards those compromises, because we’re both very interested in taking care of each other, and meeting each other’s needs.
Is this self-giving or self-serving? It just seems like using different vocabulary for the same thing.
15 years is a long time.
Congrats and may you have many more together!
Exactly - I don’t go to my wife to gush over the latest database optimization details I discovered expecting to have a deep technical discussion. Maybe the executive summary. I talk to my coworkers or friends or online people who are excited about the same details. If someone can only feel close to you when they speak of crossword puzzles I wonder if they’re on the spectrum or need to join a crossword club or something.
We do have a baseline of shared philosophies and views but even there we often find that we slightly disagree on details.
This is exactly right. Marriage is a commitment to deny yourself so you put the good of the other first.
When I hear people talk about marriage (or any commitment) these days, I sometimes wonder if they're from a distant planet. When any long-term commitment is some form of oppression from which we must be liberated, bonds like marriage cannot work. This is justified in the pursuit of happiness. Ironically, those who seem happiest are those willing to make (and keep) binding commitments.
Agreed. My wife and I are more likely to get frustrated with each other because we both are trying to take care of the others needs. We want the other person to be more selfish because we so much want to take care of each other. On the spectrum of problems to have it’s a pretty minor one.
Your own happiness and your significant others' aren't mutually exclusive, or zero-sum. It's a distortion to characterize one as more or less important than the other. It's important to look out for both. You can't just rely on your SO to make you happy.
Depends really on the Personality traits and Needs of the 2 people involved. Some differences complement each other. Some dont.
And that too depends on the type of problem the couple faces which is not static and changes from year to year. The same couple that complement each other in one situation can be completely hopeless together in another.
So its all about Awareness and Communication of what your traits, needs, strenths and weaknesses are.
Obviously thats non trivial cause the chimp brain is not really designed for such things. The brain looks outward not inward. It takes much more work to look inward.
So all chimps fail a test to produce a list of their personality traits and needs, strengths and weakness wrt to different situations that matches what their partner will produce of them and vice versa.
Couples that minimize that gap, and its lifelong hard work, are usually the most long lasting.
I think there is beauty and wisdom in making a commitment (through good and bad, till death do us part) and then actually keeping that commitment regardless of how my personal desires are or are not met over the years.
Once the commitment to honor my wife and word is most important, it becomes an anchor in my life to the waves of wants and desires which are ever changing. Feeling lonely in my marriage, well, I'm in this thing for life, how can I productively address this with my wife? Or, maybe my expectations of her are unrealistic, can I find friends or interests elsewhere while still honoring and remaining committed to her? If our romance becomes dry, then I work to address that with her. If I notice she's not happy or unsatisfied, then I need to care for her and help if I can. If I can't, then I'm just going to be there with her, walking through dark times, because that's my commitment, and it's loving and honorable.
My desires are often fleeting and dishonorable...selfish and wanton. It's good to deny them and pursue more honorable things with my life. The best things in life, the best stories, are those that come after trial and sacrifice. So much of our modern culture is empty and destructive because we've put self, our wants...our desires, in the place of utmost importance. Not having the wisdom to see that philosophy is like dedicating oneself to getting water from a broken cistern.
Furthermore, one of the best things a father can do for his children is to love their mother this way.
I'm trying to empathise to your perspective, but I can't see why you would want to remain less happy (or more miserable) that you'd otherwise potentially be while your partner does the same thing, just because it seemed like a good idea at some point in the past.
You add abstract good adjectives to that idea (honorable, wise, beautiful) and bad adjectives to the opposite (wanton, selfish, etc), but you don't really justify that assignation.
I understand that thinking short term by default can lead to harm or missing something in the long term. But there's a whole jump from that to thinking that something has value just for being long lasting. Following your analogy, I wouldn't want to keep reaching from water in a well that went dry long ago.
>The best things in life, the best stories, are those that come after trial and sacrifice.
I'd say that even if that is often true, it is often difficult to tell trials and sacrifices apart from refusal to move on.
And to be clear, since this can be both a philosophical conversation and one that touches personal matters,I don't by any means imply a personal judgement of your personal choices - I'm just speaking about abstract ideas.
With respect, this sounds miserable.
The only redeeming fact is the commitment to your children, which is honorable and admirable.
In the end, what do you get from that commitment? Why did you make it in the first place, if not for a selfish reason? What is the place of “honor”, if it is not a code that it makes you happy to live by?
People’s terminal preferences are the root of who they are. There is no goal that exists beyond one’s terminal preferences. You can prefer to obey some moral distinction, but you prefer it because that increases your happiness/life satisfaction (or at least, you have absorbed enough second-hand examples that you believe it will increase your happiness/life satisfaction.) If it didn’t, why would your brain ever bother to spit out a “you should do it” answer?
> My desires are often fleeting and dishonorable...selfish and wanton.
I think you’re confusing societal mores that you’ve chosen to adhere to (e.g. monogamy) with some sort of objective moral function that all humans will somehow be judged by regardless of whether anyone is doing the judging. If you’re sleeping around (the thing I’m assuming you’re talking about here) but you’re in a polyamorous relationship, with a partner who experiences compersion rather than jealousy when people outside of your relationship do things to make you happy — is that act still “dishonorable” or “wanton” of you? What would those words mean, for that to be true? If everyone important to you wants you to enjoy yourself, and you do enjoy yourself, then who is saying no?
And, given that, if your marriage partner does say no to something that would make you happy, how is that anything other than an incompatibility between you; something that could have been avoided by ensuring compatibility before commitment?
IMHO, you are rationalizing staying in a relationship with a partner whose preferences do overlap with yours enough for life with them to be generally pleasant; but where in some ways their preferences are extremely incompatible with your own. But, because you are embedded in a society mostly consisting of potential partners who also have those same extremely-incompatible preferences to your own, it doesn’t feel like you’d actually have any luck finding a partner whose preferences cohere more closely to your own. You satisficed, and now are attempting to construct a philosophy that makes satisficing seem optimal, so that you can have one fewer regret.
People should really spend more time looking outside their own culture for partners. It can turn out that what is “dishonorable” or “wanton” to you, is just regular respectable behavior in another culture in another part of the world. The objectivity of social mores is an illusion created by cultural isolation.
(FYI: this is just the standard University “introduction to meta-ethics” stuff, just applied to romantic social mores in particular.)
Agree 100% with parent here. I find some of the responses interesting and I think symptomatic of the trend I've seen among the under 35 crowd.. (stay single for as long as you can, marry late, have dogs/cats in place of children..) Ultimately, you're either honorable as a person or you're not. Honor for honor's sake is reason enough.
These sorts of rationalizations against honorable behavior such as commitment are what is driving the degradation of society as we know it. These institutions have formed over hundreds (if not thousands) of years, and are ultimately present to sustain and propagate life itself.
"If Jonathan and Mira’s relationship seems better than Johan and Marianne’s, it must also be acknowledged that Levi sets his couple an easier problem. Bergman suggested that marriage was meant to address a metaphysical need: our connection to reality. Levi, by contrast, sees marriage as a way of navigating one’s place in the economic and social order.[..]. The shift is telling. If marriage is composed of a set of tasks or projects—a career, parenting, keeping a home—its failures can be displayed as extrinsic to the question of how spouses connect. Levi’s diagnosis is something like: these people have different priorities. This means that their lives can succeed to a greater extent than their marriage does. What was, in Bergman’s hands, a horrifying picture of the limits of human contact becomes, in Levi’s, a set of increasingly independent journeys of personal growth."
This is I think a fantastic observation about a lot of fiction that deals with personal relationships today. What bugs me about so many of them is how narcissistic they are in the sense that the question all of them seem to pose is how relationships can be managed like a project, almost like a self-help career guide.
As the article points out Bergman's original piece asked fundamental questions about the nature (and limits) of human connections. From the first two episodes of the new version I've seen it has exactly the kind of atmosphere the article describes, how marriage is 'managed' and organized in relationship to work, careers and so forth.
I haven't watched either (though was intrigued by the new release), and I have the same sort of feeling about modern romance-focused media. It all seems to revolve around management and coordination rather than the deep existential well that I feel is the basis for all such relationships. Though I do think that the individuals' capacity for introspection leads to two fundamentally different kinds of relationship ills: ones that stem from an externalization of the "problems" to the other person or the relationship itself, and ones that come out of the internal, existential "lightness of being".
I don't presume to analyze someone's marriage, let alone whole life, based on a few paragraphs.
Nevertheless, I can't help but notice that the writer of the article describes herself as lonely, having had "trouble forming friendships", "inconsiderate", and having "love for confusion".
The fact that she feels lonely in her marriage speaks to me more of her innate nature than her marriage. I wonder whether most non-optimal marriages are like this -- people bring their own problems to the marital table, in hopes that the problems will be solved, and become invariably disappointed that it doesn't solve them.
Regardless of what the underlying cause is, my sympathies to the author. Loneliness is a terrible thing to experience.
Yes. Many people have an overwhelming expectation that a partner will fix everything.
I mean, often my wife is the only person I see for a several hour stretch. And it's somewhat sad and lonely when I experience something and it's not really something I can share fully with her -- because it's deep and specialized and nuanced in somewhere that I've obsessed.
But-- how can anyone expect that of anyone? How boring would life be if I'd found such a close twin of myself that all the weird, esoteric stuff that amuses me made sense to her? She brings her own perspective and abilities, and the cost of this is that I don't get to see myself and my little obsessions mirrored every second in her.
A partner can bring an awful lot, but they can't bring everything all of the time.
My take is that you've got to have some things you enjoy doing together or talking about, but it doesn't have to be everything, and being in a marriage is no excuse for stopping to have other relationships with other people that can fill those gaps.
For example, if you're a nerd for philosophy, find some friends who are too, talk to them about it, join online communities, etc. Same thing if you're a nerd for geometry.
More importantly I'd say is your partners ability to support you in having those other outlets and relationships or opportunities for doing those things as well. That's what I'd consider love.
Do the things you both enjoy together, encourage each other to also find people and ways to do the things you don't both enjoy seperately, and be okay with that.
Now, if there's nothing you both enjoy doing or talking about, well, I'm sorry to say, but why are you together? Such relationships cannot survive beyond the initial lust.
If one or both of you have grown to enjoy different things and because of that no longer enjoy much in common, well that's how people grow appart, and it's why some relationship do eventually end naturally, and it could be time to move on, and that's okay too.
In my limited experience, couples create marital loneliness over years via bitter complaints when they should've worked on addressing the issue. Instead of saying "honey I'd really like you to enjoy 24, and could you please let me show you how wonderful that show is", a wife would instead say "You never like any show that I enjoy". And immediately the tension mounts. Instead of saying "honey I know you don't enjoy playing tennis, but how about we find something we both like and we can even get a coach", a husband would simply say nothing and find a bunch of strangers to watch tennis in a bar.
I don't quite understand such behavior, to be honest. We know that we shouldn't bitterly criticize friends, nor should we use absolute words like "never" or "always" on them. We also know that we should find common interests among friends, and it's okay if we occasionally get it wrong, like this one time you took your pacifist friends to a paintball tournament. Then, why can't we treat our spouse, someone we took an oath to spend the rest of our life with, like our friends? We learn how to conduct crucial conversation and nonviolent communication in our job, then why can't we do the same in our home? I puzzles me to no end.
I have a personal theory that we simply live too long for the traditional concept of marriage to make sense. "Until death do us part" means something very different if the average lifespan is 50 years versus 80 years. People change, and grow tired of one another, and that's okay and good and healthy. But a marriage which ends in divorce is considered a "failed marriage", as if all of the prior years count for nothing.
I say all of this as a single 27-year-old who has never been in a committed relationship, and has no plans to enter one in the future. Perhaps that means I lack the authority to weigh in on this topic, and perhaps it means I practice what I preach.
"he’s considerate and unromantic, whereas I’m romantic and inconsiderate."
I appreciated this observation. I have been married for 26 years. I am more expressive to my wife with my words, "I love you" etc. However, her actions speak louder than my words. I seem to be wired for me first where she is wired for me next. I'm trying to get better at being more helpful rather than grand gestures.
Ingmar Bergman was quite an interesting character. From his wikipedia page:
"His father was a conservative parish minister with strict ideas of parenting. Ingmar was locked up in dark closets for infractions such as wetting himself."
I came to find out how his own marriage went. At first, I thought the only reference to his wife was that his name were inscribed under his wife's tomb several years before his death. But, that was because I assumed his film listing would come after his personal life. Scrolling down shows that he was married five times.
Kids, families, shelter, food(!), retirement, health, social issues/relationships all feel like the things people can connect on. They’re more real, they’re innate. And you need the right level of challenge in all of them, too easy and it’s unfulfilling and too hard is soul crushing.
I don’t expect to “connect” with anyone with my own interests and hobbies - that seems incredibly naive to me. They’re far too abstract to be interesting to others.
Within healthy communities the need for meaningful human interaction is spread out among the community and not placed solely on your spouse. Therefore, I suggest a large driver of marital loneliness arises because marriage is not capable, on its own, of solving loneliness. Loneliness roughly means a lack of meaningful relationships. Communities offer the opportunities for various levels of connection from close friends to casual acquaintances while connecting all the individuals to each other (i.e. you have your close friends but everyone also knows each other). Furthermore, healthy communities create a dynamic environment where new relationships form spontaneously as the individuals grow and change (e.g. the former acquaintance marries your sister and now you become close friends, you have a kid and get to know the other parents in the community better, etc).
In this way, communities and marriage form a symbiotic relationship. Stable marriages become the bedrock of a community, as family provide the most stable structure for the community. However, strong communities also provide a dynamism and support that reduce the burden on marriage to provide a fulfilling life to those within it.
However, meaningful communities have been almost entirely eroded by the acids of modern life: increased mobility (communities, like all relationships, require time), car reliant infrastructure, declining religious participation, and economies built on individual consumption all make it harder to build, find, and belong to communities. And with the decline of communities, the sense of belonging and meaning that once was spread out over a largely stable group now falls to a single individual - your spouse.
In fact, one could argue that the increase in marital breakdown observed during the 20th century is itself a second-order effect of the breakdown of communities in that same time frame. Even the liberalization of the divorce laws could, arguably, be framed as a response to a trend already in motion rather than kickstarting it from out of nowhere.
Sorta related, I was reading today a translation of Charles Aznavour's "Je Bois" (I Drink)
I drink to forget my unfortunate years
And this life together
With you, but so lonely.
I drink to give me the illusion I do exist,
Because I'm too selfish
To smash my own face.
It's a nice article, but the realistic view is that pair-bonding in animals (and, yes, humans are animals) evolved to provide resources and stability to children. Couples are prone to a "seven year itch" which corresponds to the time at which children are able to move away from their mothers and the family unit psychologically. Pair-bonding is reinforced by a common purpose: the child or (as a proxy) some other shared goal. When these disappear, the bond weakens. It's a very natural occurrence. Romantically, we want these things to last for life, but the evolved machinery that we are born with does not provide as much reinforcement as we need to make that happen consistently without some of the problems listed by the article.
When I saw that HBO were doing a remake I wondered: who do they think they are that they can do better than Bergman?
In the problems of this article's perspective is a fixed mindset. That we have our defaults and starting places but cannot expand beyond them. Even (as one has in an [IMO] ideal life partner) given a customized guide into foreign passions and interests. Yet this is step one because the next and following stages are exploring and creating inside that connection and sharing, supporting both the contributed growth of the individuals but also of the shared endeavor and continuous creating.
I've been in a relationship not far from the early stages of what is described. Shifting towards what I describe above was contained by physical and emotional violence. So far as I can tell those were echoes of her past traumas, not to excuse. I can empathize though... The task of next levels growth is a challenge that rocks us at levels we are not normally thinking of and in facing we find nearly no guidance to assist us in our journeys.
What a pregnant and rich context into which a shift could unlock untold riches of two deeply sophisticated minds with much to offer and deeper challenging commitments to forge. There are other options, clearly, but are there, really?
[To be slightly less obtuse: the final sentence shifts from possiblity to desirability which is semantic slipperiness for which I apologize... but not enough to rephrase, apparently]
If you want to be happy for the rest of your life, marry your best friend. Don't read these self-help articles.
When I was young the pundits kept saying that love only lasts 2 years. I think this is because they had a shallow definition of love.
If you marry your best friend you will always be your true self and they will always be their true self.
I suspect that marriage as we know it was built for an agricultural society. We are (mostly) not that any more, and the “until death we part” doesn’t make as much sense as it did. Marriage will change into something else, we just don’t know what that will be yet.
Some people can only learn from first hand experience and this is why incompatible people marry and and raise children.
I dodged the bullet 2 times from partners, that I had feelings at the time (I was lonely and out of a relationship for very long periods before), who didn't want children with me (they would consider abortion in case I left them pregnant, instead of having a family with me, when I discussed the possibility).
Love is real and instinctual. No matter how many possible couples you have observed (I appreciate gossip sometimes) to know the possibilities of what to expect, you still have to fight your own urges and dreams.
"Marriage" is a pretty stupid concept to be honest. It's not a good signal of a committed healthy relationship at any point really. Some people get married so they can fuck without shame and guilt. Some people get married because they need tax benefits. My partner and I don't care at all about marriage despite a decade of being together and mutually understood plans of being together for the rest of our lives. We probably will get married. But is that an inflection point on things? Definitely not.
Marriage is many things to many people. The concept of marriage is both cultural and legal. Whatever you feel about marriage, don't forget that it is also a legal concept with its own definition which may or may not coincide with your specific cultural expectations.
First, what a refreshing discussion for HN.
Separately, is it me, or do I just see less and less people choosing to get married these days, and even less of them having kids? Wondering if anyone has seen stats to the same and if this is just an n=1 problem or more of a generational trend.
The quality and thoughtfulness of some of the comments in this thread is outstanding.
I wonder if this is a modern marriage thing with the ride of individualism. Not saying this is right but back in the day the roles were very defined.
There is an explanation using some old stereotypes, to connect with others:
Men share their knowledge and ideas.
Women share their emotions and feelings.
I am saddened by this article turning into an advertisement for a HBO show.