Part 1 (2/2)
These experiences brought us into close touch with many ”normal” married couples. Our practice was to insist that the retreats were _not_ for couples with problems, but for those who considered they had satisfactory marriages and wanted to explore their potential for further growth. As counselors, we had previously dealt only with marriages in trouble. Now we found that many of these ”normal” couples were settling for relations.h.i.+ps that were far short of their inherent potential. Some exhibited the same self-defeating interaction patterns which we were accustomed to finding in couples with ”problems”--but either they had accepted these poor patterns as inevitable, or the conflicts they caused had not yet reached crisis proportions.
Matching our observation of these couples with some of the research findings on marital interaction, we arrived at four important conclusions:
1. Only a small proportion of marriages came anywhere near to realizing their full potential. Lederer and Jackson[C] suggest that the proportion of ”stable-satisfactory” marriages in our culture does not exceed 5-10 percent.
2. Most married couples desire, and hope for, the achievement we have called ”relations.h.i.+p-in-depth.” Early in their married life, however, they find their growth together blocked by interpersonal conflicts which they either cannot understand or are not prepared to make the effort to resolve. They settle for a series of compromises, resulting in a superficial relations.h.i.+p.
3. As time pa.s.ses, the couple either accepts this unsatisfactory situation, or it becomes progressively intolerable. They are usually so ”locked into” their self-defeating interaction pattern that they are quite unable to change it by their own unaided efforts. Some seek marriage counseling, but often too late for it to be effective.
4. This tragedy of undeveloped potential could be avoided in many instances if married couples had a clearer concept of the task of marriage and did not have to struggle in almost total isolation from other couples going through the same experiences. The potential of married couples for giving each other mutual help and support is very great; but it is unable to function because of an unrecognized taboo in our culture.
This taboo, hitherto unrecognized as such, prevents married couples from sharing their intramarital experiences with other couples. In many settings married couples form friends.h.i.+ps with each other, enjoy social contacts, even work together on projects; but there is always a tacit understanding that they do not reveal to each other, further than is unavoidable, what is going on in their husband-wife relations.h.i.+ps.
Complex mechanisms for evasion and mutual defense exist. Some of these are familiar, strong hostility in one partner when the other appears to be revealing too much; making jokes to relieve tension when some inner secret of the marriage accidently breaks to the surface; silence or withdrawal when ”outsiders” appear to be probing too deeply. These defense systems work so well that it is not unusual when a couple begins divorce proceedings for others in their circle of acquaintance to express astonishment in such terms as ”We are amazed! We had no idea that they were having trouble!”
We could speculate about the reasons for this taboo: a protection against public humiliation, since we all want others to feel that we can manage competently such a basic undertaking as marriage; a safeguard against exploitation, since a discontented marriage partner offers fair game to a predatory third person; a link with our s.e.xual taboos, since difficulties in marital adjustment often have a s.e.xual component, and any suggestion of s.e.xual incompetence is deeply wounding to our pride.
It could reflect the traditional tendency to regard the family as a closed ”in-group”--an att.i.tude not without advantages for its strength and stability.
What we are concerned about, however, is that this taboo is being maintained with a strictness that goes far beyond its usefulness in our changing society. It is depriving married couples of help and support from each other, at a time when marriage has become much more difficult and demanding than it was in the past. Indeed, we believe that with the emergence of the nuclear family as the norm in our Western culture, the individual marriage has been deprived of the supports derived from the extended family of the past precisely at a time when our rising expectations of highly rewarding interpersonal relations.h.i.+ps are subjecting it to demands it is often unable to meet. In the larger family groupings of the Orient, despite their hierarchical structure, a great deal of help and support can become available to the individual couple in times of trouble from those with whom they share a common corporate life.
It may well be that the new ”life styles” being experimented with today--mate-swapping, multilateral marriages, and group marriages, for example--represent attempts to enable the individual marriage to break out of its isolation and to gain better communication, interaction and needed support from other marital units.
A striking ill.u.s.tration of this trend toward deep sharing between married couples has come to our notice from an unexpected quarter. Two married couples from a conservative Christian background decided to meet and talk together, with complete detailed frankness, about their s.e.xual experiences. A series of such meetings was held, the conversations taped, and subsequently published in book form.[D] The couples, after careful consideration, decided not to hide behind a cloak of anonymity, but to use their real names and disclose their ident.i.ty.
Confronted with this new trend, we take the view that the taboo against the sharing of husband-wife experiences between one married couple and other married couples can with impunity be relaxed in appropriate situations with benefit to all concerned. Between such couples the development of great warmth, empathy, mutual understanding and support, can contribute significantly to the enrichment and growth of the individual marriages involved. This is essentially what happens in marriage enrichment retreats.
COMPARISON WITH THERAPY AND ENCOUNTER GROUPS
”How do our marriage enrichment groups differ from group marital therapy on the one hand, and from encounter groups on the other?” These questions are raised by many people. What are the answers?
Group therapy for married couples is now widely available, and its effectiveness has been established. Our marriage enrichment groups differ from therapy groups in three important respects.
First, marital therapy is undertaken with couples who have serious problems, often because the individuals concerned suffer from personality disorders. When marriages are not stable a good deal of pathology may emerge in the course of group interaction. Severe conflict between husband and wife may have to be permitted to surface and be handled openly by the therapist.
The second important difference is that therapy groups generally continue meeting, on a weekly or bi-weekly basis, over a long period of time--as long as a year in some cases. Moreover, individual couples may also undergo counseling (individually, conjointly, or both) in a.s.sociation with the group therapy either before being admitted to the group or concurrently with the group experience.
The third difference is in the leaders.h.i.+p pattern. Therapy groups are led by professionally qualified persons--psychiatrists, clinical psychologists, social workers, marriage counselors. They play a fairly directive role. The leaders are often male and female co-therapists, but are seldom husband and wife. The role model aspect of the enrichment group, as well as the partic.i.p.atory aspect, are therefore much less p.r.o.nounced and the group is less free to find and follow its own direction.
An enrichment group consists of several married couples not in need of therapy meeting on an intensive basis but for a limited time period. In our opinion such groups need not be led by professional therapists; although, other things being equal, that is of course a decided advantage. We have come to the conclusion, however, that effective leaders.h.i.+p can be given by lay couples if they are carefully selected and trained.
The encounter group, a general descriptive term, is intended to include many variants. We have partic.i.p.ated in such groups, studied their procedures, and adapted some of these to our marriage enrichment retreats. Couples who have been involved in encounter groups adjust quickly and easily to the methods we use in marriage enrichment, are generally very cooperative, and an a.s.set to our groups.
There are two significant respects in which our marriage enrichment retreats differ from encounter groups. First, encounter groups are composed of individuals, while our groups are confined to, and led by, married couples. This distinction calls for different approaches. There is a greater complexity in the leaders.h.i.+p, and a greater complexity in the group itself. The encounter group is confined to interactions between separate individuals and usually these individuals have not known each other before joining the group and probably will not continue a.s.sociation afterwards. By contrast, we have at least three kinds of interaction: between individuals within the group, between couples (including the leading couple) within the group, and between husband and wife within the marital unit.
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