Guggenbuhl-Craig offers a quite pessimistic view regarding the future of this foundational institution:
The so-called happy marriage is unequivocally finished [in our society). Marriage as a welfare institution has no justification anymore. Psychologists who feel themselves committed to the goal of well-being would do better, if they really took their standpoint seriously, to recommend and suggest other forms of living together, rather than to waste their energy trying to patch up a fundamentally impossible institution with a lot of technical treatment modalities.
Another somewhat less gloomy representative of this perspective (who was influenced like Guggenbuhl-Craig by the work of Carl Jung), Thomas Moore (1994, p. xiv) suggests that: “pain and difficulty can sometimes serve as the pathway to a new level of involvement. They do not necessarily mean that there is something inherently wrong with the relationship; on the contrary, relationship troubles may be a challenging initiation into intimacy.”
Other observers of the development of couples similarly suggest that neither the optimistic nor existential viewpoints are quite accurate—though each has a partial grasp on what seems to be a typical developmental pattern for couples. McGoldrick, Carter and Preto (2015) offer a family life cycle model, proposing that couples (and families in general) move, as do individuals, through developmental “plateaus” and periods of “transition”. The plateaus are “extended periods of relative structural stability” — they typically involve some change. This change is of a “first-order” variety, i.e. involving more or less of something, rather than something new and different. The Transformational periods involve “second-order” change, according to McGoldrick and her colleagues, in which some fundamental change occurs.
Sometimes, these changes involve “normative events”, such as marriage, birth of a child or retirement. These normative events are the “givens” in most relationships. Virtually all couples can expect them to occur, for they involve the basic issues of life and death, love and work. Other significant, transforming events are labeled by Carter and McGoldrick as “Para normative” — they include conflicts (marital separations or divorce), illnesses (e.g. miscarriages), relocations of the household, changes in socioeconomic status and external events, such as war, that can result in massive dislocation for the couple or family. At least one or more of the Para normative events are likely to occur in most relationships–and require that second-order transformation take place.
The Process of Remarriage
In the study that we have conducted neither the optimistic nor existential viewpoints were quite accurate, though each has a partial grasp on what seems to be a typical developmental pattern for couples. As in the case of McGoldrisk’s family life cycle, our couples typically described themselves as moving through periods of relative stability and considerable contentment, followed by periods of significant stress and disillusionment, often accompanied by profound changes in the structure or goals of the relationship.
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