Three Models of Enduring Relationships
Some of the books that have been written over the years about the ingredients of a successful marriage are filled with optimism, A “successful” relationship is one in which each member of the couple has maximum freedom to grow and change. If there is strain and stress in the relationship, then the couple should reexamine and rework the relationship or break it up. If a couple’s relationship does not yield a modicum of happiness and support, then it is unsuccessful. Several decades ago, Susan Campbell (1980) represented this perspective in The Couple’s Journey:
. . . coupling [is] a vehicle for attaining psychological and spiritual harmony or wholeness for the couple.. . . [C]oupling, like life, is a continually changing process. There are (almost) no insurmountable problems, since if we stay with a situation long enough it will change into something else (or at least our perspective on it will change).
Up to this point, Campbell seems to be following the Hollywood line. She soon shifts from this optimistic perspective:
Yet there are also (almost) no lasting solutions, since each “solution” sets the stage for the emergence of new problems.
The destination [of a couple’s journey] (never quite fully attained) is wholeness: that ideal state in which all my parts are in harmonious communication with each other, with my partner and with the world beyond our relationship. it is that state when “everything’s working together.”
A second school of thought about the desired mode of development among couples is filled much more with existential despair. A good relationship is one in which there is considerable pain and challenge. Two members of a “successful” couple will encourage one another to learn and grow — often in spite of themselves. The spirit of this approach to the development of couples is captured in the following quotations by Adolf Guggenbuhl-Craig (2009) (from Marriage: Dead or Alive):
A marriage only works if one opens himself to exactly that which he would never ask for otherwise. Marriage is not comfortable and harmonious; rather, it is a place of individuation where a person rubs up against himself and against his partner, bumps up against him in love and in rejection, and in this fashion learns to know himself, the world, good and evil, the heights and the depths.
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