William Glasser - Getting Together and Staying Together: Solving the Mystery of Marriage

Late in 1992, Naomi, my wife of forty-six years, died of cancer after a brief illness. We had a good marriage and were especially close for the six months that she was ill. Before she died, we talked honestly. about the future and how I would conduct my life with regard to our children, grandchildren, assets, and work, and I have followed through on what I promised. We also discussed my personal life. Knowing me so well, she announced that I would need a new companion and said, I hope you find the right one. I didnt anticipate that the loneliness would be so acute, but she was right. After all those years of marriage, I was an unhappy bachelor.

There are a lot of advantages to looking for love at an age when many of loveS usual problemsmoney, children, not enough free timeare behind you. Still, finding someone was not easy. I met several fine women, but the right one eluded me. Then I got lucky. I found my current wife, Carleen. From this wonderful relationship, weve both learned a lot. To share that knowledge, with CarleenS help, I wrote the 1995 book, Staying Together.

In the year 2000, Carleen and I will have been married for five years and together for almost seven. During that time, we have barely had a cross word, and our marriage is stronger than ever. What we have accomplished is not luck. From the beginning, we decided to base our relationship on what I then called control theory, a theory that we had both used and taught for years.

We wrote this book, a new edition of Staying Together, because we have learned a lot about marriage by being married. From what weve learned, we have expanded and clarified the original control theory and given it a much more accurate name: choice theory. Not surprisingly, choice theory grew out of the long-held belief that all of our behavior is chosen. Further, the underlying motivation for everything we choose to do is genetic. Therefore, driven by our genes, what we do with our lives is not random: It is purposeful. And it is always our best effort at the time we choose it.

In this book, we explain what we have learned from putting choice theory to work in every aspect of our relationship and how our compatible connection has become a successful marriage. There is every reason to believe that what weve done can be done by any reasonably compatible couple who loved each other when they got married. What destroys marriages is neither incompatibility nor lack of love. It is the destructive behavior each partner adopts soon after marriage. Once they choose these behaviors, it is inevitable they will continue, and over time, both partners will become miserable.

The subtitle of this book is Solving the Mystery of Marriage because, for the vast majority of people, what begins to reduce their affection for each other after marriage is a total mystery. Couples whose marriages started out full of love, couples who couldnt get enough of each other in the beginning, see that early closeness begin to slip away, and they havent the slightest idea of whatS going wrong. The warm feeling for each other may return in brief spurts, and other parts of their marriage, such as closeness to their family and friends, may remain satisfying, but their personal relationship either continues to deteriorate or stabilizes at a level well below their initial expectations.

As the years go by, many divorce, but even more stay together trapped in a joyless tedium often made tolerable only by escaping with the help of alcohol, food, drugs, or affairs. If you are in or approaching this situation, dont despair. Read on, and you will learn how you can regain the closeness you once hadif you are willing to make the effort. But we have to warn you: This will take some effort. You may have to start living your life differently from the way you have lived it since birth. We also want to say that the characters in this book are fictional, but they are based on real people.

A while back we received the following e-mail:

To: wginst@earthlink.net

From: Cherylm@mail.anywhere.com

Subject: query on marriage

I have sent this query to the websites of several well-known psychologists and psychiatrists, but to tell you the truth, Im not even sure I want an answer. Im even worried that what you may tell me will make me feel worse than I feel now. The other possibility is that there isnt an answer; there certainly doesnt seem to be one. I wont be surprised if you tell me that the marriage I have is the way marriage is and I should just accept it.

To begin, I guess the best way to put it is, that for me, marriage is a mystery. It became a mystery a few years after we married, and in the twenty-plus years Ive been married to Larry, my husband, it remains a mystery. Larry doesnt know Im writing this letter, but as far as I can see, itS as much a mystery to him as it is to me. On the surface, we have a good marriage. We dont fight or argue much and, I guess compared to their marriages, my friends tell me I have one of the best marriages in our circle. But itS not good enough for me.

My problem is that thereS no spark in our relationship. To put it in two words: ItS dull. ThereS nothing to look forward to. It just goes along month after month, the ups never high, the lows rarely low. Our marriage reminds me of the heart monitor on ER when the patient dies, flat, no more beeps. ItS not that we dont do things or see people we enjoy. But the enjoyment is more as individuals than as a couple. For example, with our friends heS with the men and Im with the women. What we dont seem to be able to do anymore is enjoy each other. When were together by ourselves, thereS no real substance to our relationship.

More and more, I think about the beginning, about how much in love we were. How every moment we could spend together was so precious. How just being with each other seemed to be all we needed. ItS not that I have any hope we could ever recapture those initial feelings, but this is too far in the other direction. As I look over what Ive just written, it sounds stupid. Why would you be interested in the complaints of a disgruntled forty-two-year-old woman? I feel stupid for even bothering you.

Anyway, hereS the conclusion Ive come to after wracking my brain for a year. And mind you, all I can really speak for are wives. I dont think I know that much about how my husband really feels or what he thinks about, and neither do the women Ive discussed this with. If we had that kind of communication in the first place, wed have much better marriages. When I ask them, most women say, Im happily married. And I say it, too. But what we are talking about is the whole picture: friends, family, children, grandchildren, and even the people we work with. What we dont talk about is happiness with our husbands.

So Im not saying itS all bad. We have the status of being married, which is still important to most women, and my guess is to most men. ItS certainly important to me. Marriage gives us more money, help with our children, and a man we can trust in a crisis, much more than we would have if we werent married. And in so many marriages in our circle, our husbands are like Larry, good men whom we loved when we married them and for whom we still have some affection if no longer any passion.