Is Your Marriage Marginal at Best?
“Most marriages are marginal at best”
These people are not really working at their relationship. They stick it out, despite fighting or a lack of connection. They are, indeed, stuck with a marginal marriage.
The other half, of the 50% who stay, are ever awake to the need to nurture their relationship. They learn and practice good communication skills, give caring behaviors and appreciation, resolve conflict and maintain a healthy sex life. John Gottman, Ph.D. , leading research on what makes marriages succeed or fail, calls them Masters, rather than Disasters!
“Many people should not have married in the first place and too many people stay together for too long in a lousy marriage.”
I don’t know about “many” but we certainly all know couples who leave us wondering how they got together in the first place! They seem uniquely unsuited for one another. The truth is that we don’t know exactly why they fell in love. But we have some ideas.
Falling in love is an unconscious process. It often seems that we are bound to experience it with the seemingly most incompatible partners. Harville Hendrix, Ph.D., in his bestselling book, Getting the Love You Want, explains that we are drawn to a mate who exhibits both the positive and negative traits of our early childhood caretakers. This is our Imago, or image of what love looks like.
In the Romantic Stage, nature helps us to focus on what’s positive by giving us a healthy dose of chemicals and hormones. Once they wear off, we begin to struggle with one another and the negative or triggering characteristics of our mate emerge. Dr. Hendrix tells us that we get together in order to grow up. That is, to become fully conscious and present to healing one another’s childhood hurts.
Our conflict with one another is our growth trying to happen! We can literally become agents of healing one another if only we learn the tools to move us through our power struggle. When we don’t, we remain stuck and the marriage is headed for divorce, or possibly to a long, boring, marginal existence.
You’re also right that too many people do stay together in these lousy marriages for too long. The average length of time a couple will struggle before seeking help is six years! Retreats such as the upcoming one in Montecito are designed to offer couples a deep, satisfying way to improve their relationship before it’s too late.
“Sometimes you just have to let it go!”
You’re right. Not every couple will decide to stay together in the marriage, even after having done some deep work on the relationship. The decision to divorce is always there. I do recommend, however, that couples ask themselves if the desire to leave the marriage isn’t based on a frustrated and desperate not knowing of what else to do. If a couple truly commits to showing up, being present, learning better communication and strengthening the connection AND still thinks they’re not happy enough, they will just have to let it go.
Having done the work, these couples will be able to let go with more love and compassion leaving each other with more growth and healing than they came into the relationship with. That’s the least you can do. If you heal your issues with your partner, you won’t have to carry them with you into the next relationship!
“The retreat should not be promoted as a place to make new ‘friends’.”
I agree with this one, Ernie. To my knowledge, it’s not being promoted for that. It is true, however, that at every retreat, I see couples bonding and supporting one another in deep and meaningful ways. There’s something transformational about the synergy that gets connected when people are vulnerable in a safe setting. Some couples who meet at the retreat remain connected as friends on the journey.
” I would like to know if there is information on the married couples who attended these retreats. How many are still married? How are their marriages. Any change after the retreat?”
So far, all of the couples who have attended this Retreat are thriving in their relationships. Follow up sessions and contact reveal that they are still using the tools they learned during the weekend. This is key. There is no magic wand. But for those who come with an open mind and open heart, stay present and vulnerable and commit to learning and practicing new skills, the road is hopeful. There are many comments from past participants on my website. Here, I have attached one from a wife whose marriage was on the brink when they showed up last August at the Retreat:
Last weekend, my husband and I had the opportunity to attend Mary Kay Cocharo’s Over the Bridge Retreat for Couples. I would like to share a little bit about our experience in the hopes that what I have to say will motivate another couple to work with Mary Kay in some capacity to bring healing to their relationship.
My husband and I have been married for 15 years. We have three beautiful children, ages 5, 9 and 12. We have practiced attachment parenting with all of our children and it is safe to say we were both 100% committed to raising our children and putting all of our love into ensuring that they grow up with all of the support they need but we were failing in our connection and attachment to each other. We were both on the verge of giving up and neither one of us knew how to make things better. No matter how hard we tried, we could not get on the same page.We desperately needed an experienced guide to help us understand, heal and recover from all of the emotional wounds and misunderstandings that naturally occur in a marriage and for us they had accumulated from over 15 years of not having the right tools to repair our ruptures.
We signed up for the retreat because we knew we needed to make some changes. On the first night of the retreat, we made a vision board of our wildest dreams for our marriage. As we worked together on our board, we noticed that both of us were picking up different magazines but we were on the same page. It was a perfect metaphor for who we were as partners; we were completely different magazines but we were on the same page. We wanted the same things in our lives and in our marriage.
Throughout the course of the weekend, we learned how to resolve our conflicts, listen with compassion, forgive each other, open up emotionally, connect spiritually and most importantly; we learned how to walk across the bridge to one another and get on the same page. Mary Kay and her team of expert guides provided us with an amazing space to heal where we needed to heal and to see each other with fresh eyes as if we were noticing each other for the very first time. They took us on a journey that we could never have gone on by ourselves.
Now we know how to give each other the love that both of us wanted and needed. We received so many practical tools and opportunities for healing the space between us and within us that by the end of the weekend I realized the weekend we had together had been my wildest dream come true!
We are so grateful to Mary Kay and her team…Thanks to them, our children now have parents who are 100% attached to each other. We now know how to truly and unconditionally love each other in the way we always wanted to. Our children and we will have the blessing to continue to grow up in the sacred space we created that weekend. Words alone can’t fully describe the blessings that came forward for us and will now continue forever and ever!
I, and my Retreat Assistants, are all highly trained, skilled and enthusiastic practitioners of Relationship Therapy. We don’t promise you miracles, but we do promise you a fun, relaxing and highly beneficial weekend to improve the quality of your intimate relationship.