Constructing a Happy Marriage

What are the ingredients of a happy marriage?
Is a happy marriage always happy?
What does it take to have a happy marriage?

SADEGHI: First of all, a happy marriage requires at the bare minimum two individuals who are happy with themselves. Individuals who are not happy with themselves do not make their partners happy. Actually, they make them sad. Because the face of one partner becomes a context for the other to see him/herself through, sad faces will not resonant happiness in others.

Additionally, unhappy individuals are more prone to withdraw and be over-demanding. So the first step in selecting a partner is to ensure he/she is a happy person. How do you determine that?

To understand if an individual is happy or not happy ask a few people who know him/her. They will tell you that he or she ‘has always been like that’. Happy individuals do get sad but will quickly bounce back. They act like a ball, which is full of air. Even when they are dropped they take a fall, hit the ground and bounce back. Unhappy individuals, like a deflated ball, when dropped hit the ground and remain there. Happy individuals probably have experienced and developed a strong sense of trust and self-reliance.

Unhappy individuals have probably experienced some emotional incorrectness at the hands of their families that have impacted their life. Now, interestingly, car manufacturers often acknowledge that a particular model of a car has had some defects from the assembly line (when the car was being put together). In these instances, the car manufacturers recall their products for repair. I have never heard of a family recalling its child for a corrective emotional experience. Even when they realize that their child has had, say, a problem with low grades, depression, or anger, parents never recall their child for “repair”. Interestingly, the individual himself or herself also never stops to say, “Maybe the way I was put together was not right”. Thus, he runs away from accountability and responsibility for his or her incorrectness.

Secondly, many people believe that “love” is the answer to a happy relationship. Now, these people do not stop and ponder why 60% of the people who love each other and marry end up in divorce? Were they being fake to begin with? Did they grow apart? What happened? I strongly believe that shared culture is a strong binding force for many marriages. When people do the same thing and draw the same experiences from them they tend to feel closer. This kind of closeness often exudes an experience similar to the experience of being “loved”. In fact, people who feel “unloved” often report “my partner never does anything for me that I like”. In other words, “He does not play my game and thus I do not experience a sense of closeness”. For instance, “He wants to go to his parents but when he comes to my parents he does not get involved”. So, another component or ingredient of marital happiness is a “goodness of fit” between the partners in terms of their shared individual and cultural meanings.

Now, a marriage can have all the above and still be unhappy. That is because there are many factors that contribute to the dissatisfaction of a marriage. For instance, if one of the partner changes his or her job, this change alone can create marital dissatisfaction. Or, let’s say one’s partner becomes bankrupt in his or her business. The social and financial impact of the bankruptcy will definitely impact the martial relationship in a negative way.

FOOJAN: What I understand from what you are saying is that “culture” means a common agreement among the couple, a sense of understanding and interest regarding each other’s world. They both subscribe to similar but not necessarily the same beliefs and ideas in how to conduct marital life. They have a similar not identical blueprint of the marriage.

In order to have a happy marriage, in my opinion, the partners need to have “willingness” to create the shared culture. I do not believe that any one in the world is born with a similar cognitive structure as another, since we ultimately create our own reality based on our own perception. For example, we see that sisters and brothers who are raised in the same family have different perception and cognitive structuring, even though this configuration is the closest shared culture you can find.

This willingness creates a space for acceptance and then negotiation between the couple. In this scenario, the couple can feel that they are heard, understood, in control, and that they are a part of the decision-making in their day-to-day life. These elements create the way of healthy relating. Beyond the context of willingness and acceptance, I think a healthy way of communicating will add to the negotiation skills that would create results.

Since our partners cannot read our minds, although almost every one has a hidden desire for the partner to read our minds, the skills to mix and accept each other becomes a necessary skills for developing and maintaining a healthy, happy marriage.

Ali Sadeghi, PhD. is a licensed Clinical Psychologist with an office in Encino, California and he specializes in Depression and autistic children. Foojan Zeine, MFT is a licensed Marriage and Family Therapist with an office in Tarzana, California. She specializes in Couples Therapy