Five Negative Patterns in Marriage

By Daniel W. Trathen, D. Min. Ph. D.

It seems like everything these days is being blamed on El Nino or La Nina. I heard the other day that a couple was blaming their marriage problems on the frequent storms hitting California. Their real relational problems were not revealed, but it seemed that the erosion of their marriage didn't just happen overnight. Undoubtedly, it took years and years of water, frost heaves, wind, and dry conditions to shake the foundation of their relationship. Then, one day the hill was so distressed that it gave way and slid and they lost confidence that they could recover. Sand bags can only hold back so much. What are we "sand bagging"? How is it that we allow the storms of life to over-power us to the point that we continue drifting? The fact is that the El Ninos of marriage are negative patterns that have been allowed to develop and can distress us through their constant repeated blows. There are at least five negative patterns that contribute to marital problems.

The first is to expect the impossible. We expect our partner to like everything that we like, like every person we like, and enjoy all the same activities we enjoy. We expect that we will never again feel lonely now that we are married. We expect our spouse to always understand our feelings and moods. We expect that every time we want sex our mate should also want sex.

The second is to thwart communication. Instead of asking how our partner feels about something we try to read their mind. We become masters at negatively interpreting what our spouse is saying. We learn to overreact, raise our voice and volume as we escalate. We tend to criticize our spouse, create defensiveness and turn the problem back on our partner when they have an issue with us. We use irritating phrases and names and discount feelings by telling our spouse they shouldn't feel that way. We walk out of the room when our spouse is talking and communicate nonverbally with facial expressions and gestures. We either don't talk to our partner or else we say one thing, but really mean another.

The third is to make a problem out of problem solving. We pick the most inconvenient times possible to discuss problems or bring up an issue which has made us angry when we're sure our partner doesn't have time to respond. We overload the conversation with more than one issue until the initial conflict gets lost in the shuffle and both of us are so angry that we give up out of exasperation, become stubborn, and refuse to resolve or compromise. We make up our mind from the beginning that our way of handling the situation is the only acceptable one. We sidetrack the discussion by getting angry, crying, personalizing, or blaming, or leave the discussion up in the air by saying, "we'll see, maybe, I don't want to talk about it, etc.," and then never come back to discussing it until it gets thrown into the next argument.

The fourth is to allow our imagination to run wild resulting in creative jealousy. We build mountains out of molehills or take what may be a small issue and magnify it out of proportion. We allow our imaginations to go unchecked and to come up with wild, unfounded situations. We don't allow our partner to have friends outside of the marriage and demand all their time and energy and make them feel guilty when they want to grow personally. We continue stunting our growth by rejecting people who challenge us to grow or in other words, freeze the status quo.

The fifth is distorting sex. We think of sex as duty or as dirty and use it as a reward or as a punishment. We expect a perfect sexual response, or become inconsiderate and crude with one another and never share tenderness or emotional intimacy without intercourse.

These five negative patterns are signs of erosion in marriage. By themselves they can cause tremendous damage in a relationship, however, they rarely manifest themselves one at a time. Many couples experience several of these patterns on a daily basis and they become huge storms in their relationship causing further erosion and distress. What may seem like a mud slide that happens all of a sudden is only the result of years of these negative patterns of relating. It doesn't take many years before the foundation of marriage is damaged and in need of major repair. If after reading this column you find your relationship suffering from at least one of these five patterns of erosion, you might consider calling a marriage counselor. You may be experiencing marital problems and need solutions to help weather these storms.