The Inside Press

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Ph.D.

Understanding the Key Ingredients for a Successful Marriage

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When you commit to marriage, you intend to take on the most meaningful project of your life.  All projects take work but why are some couples happy and others miserable in the process? While chemistry and romance play a part some couples work together more successfully than others. Being open to the following ways of relating is likely why.

Paying Attention

When you pay attention to each other, you become aware of each other’s moods and preferences. Paying attention to each other’s thoughts and feelings enables you both to intuit and address each of your needs. When you feel seen and heard by your partner, you feel valued and special.

Considering Differences

Opposites tend to attract. Your personalities may be complementary, but they also may be polarizing. When they are polarizing, you feel angry and frustrated. Rather than try to prove your way is better, think about why you approach the same problem so differently. Just the effort of considering rather than judging your partner’s point of view will likely feel very meaningful to him or her. Sometimes a husband or wife asks me dumbfounded, “Why can’t my spouse do it the way I would?” Asking a question instead of reaming your spouse for doing it “wrong” engenders a discussion.

Feedback is helpful. Criticism is alienating. When your spouse makes an accusation or complaint it is quite helpful to consider whether it has some validity. You can then decide if you are wed to your way or wed to your spouse.

Working as a Team

Teamwork is about good communication, patience, and encouragement while combining your skills to work together toward a mutual goal. It involves listening, considering what has been expressed, and responding with ideas that take into account both of your perspectives.  Sometimes arguing is necessary to find solutions, but arguing to hurt or prove the other person wrong is hurtful and divisive.

The experience of love and hate in the process of finding a mutually satisfying solution actually keeps relationships vital.  If you stay on the same side believing that you both have good intentions you will be kinder to each other. A happy marriage requires negotiation and at least some compromise. Finding a mutually gratifying solution or taking turns giving in allows you to recognize and appreciate the sacrifices you make for one another.

If you feel alienated, it’s likely one or both of you is engaging in unhealthy ways of coping. Inflexibility, giving up, blaming others, denying problems or abusing alcohol and drugs are some examples of unhealthy coping. One trap is turning to friends or family to gain support for negative feelings toward your spouse. More often than not this increases defensiveness, arguing and discord.

Giving and Gratitude

The spirit of giving and gratitude also works to keep couples together. Expressing appreciation for the ways in which you prioritize meeting each other’s needs engenders positive feeling. Expressing gratitude for the ways you take care of your household together can make chores feel less burdensome. Feeling taken for granted, results in withholding, anger and hopelessness. A relationship based on giving and gratitude and shared responsibility engenders cycles of reciprocity rather than resentment.

Being Flexible

If you both stay flexible, conflicts resolve more easily. Try to think about why you may be holding hard and fast to a belief. If you both dig in your heels and fight about whose way is right, it will be harder to resolve the problem. If either spouse asserts: “I am not going to change. You need to accept me for who I am,” he or she is not working toward the greater goal of mutual happiness. Unhappy couples are resigned to the idea that “people do not change” so they act and react to each with anger, passive aggression, stubbornness, and resignation.

Offering Friendship

Ask yourself what do you like about friendship? Companionship, laughter, support, fun, and good natured competition are typical answers. Good natured competition means the goal is to admire the winner and take losing in stride. Couples that spend time together sharing activities like playing a sport or even watching a TV series feel identified and connected. Spouses who share the benefits of friendship are happier.

Couples who succeed are the ones who face life challenges feeling like a good team. If you resolve your conflicts, generate solutions together, and reach your mutual goals, you will continue to feel satisfied and happy in your marriage. When you value each other, and enjoy each other, you know you are better together than apart.

Danika Altman, Ph.D., is a clinical psychologist in private practice with adolescents, adults, and couples. She also works as a management skills and interview preparation coach. She has offices in Pleasantville, NY, and in Manhattan.

“The Best Things in Life aren’t Things” – Art Buchwald

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Richard Burr Photography
Richard Burr Photography

By Rachel Levy Lombara, Ph.D.

“A memorable quotation is a precious thing.” –Me

Let me explain why. Have you noticed that Facebook has become host to a parade of quotes? Dressed in decorative fonts and set on handsome back-grounds, we seem to love them. Quotes in social media, like energy bars, seem to fulfill a need in the fast-paced culture in which we live. Information is no longer a scarce commodity. Good quotes help us in our journey, directing our attention toward those most important sights along the way, reminding us when to rest, when to push, and what is really important.

As a psychologist who has spent years helping people resolve problems and improve their lives, I agree with this Winston Churchill quote: “It is a good thing… to read a book of quotations.” Quotes often distill the best of what a given teacher has to offer. Sharing quotes from leaders in positive change can educate and then mobilize the rest of us to take constructive action.

Over a year ago, I formed an online group to explore whether a virtual community could be created through social media that offered some of the same benefits of an actual community. This community, however, consisted of more like-minded individuals than one might find a physical neighborhood. Could the tangible benefits of what psychologists call “social support” be achieved online?

We discovered it could. Participants soon began revealing more of them-selves, rewarded by the support, understanding and helpful feedback. We shared ideas, learned more about our-selves from the feedback we received and learned a lot about each other.

One member introduced us to the concept of “Anam Cara.” In Celtic tradition, Anam (soul) and Cara (friend) is a connection with someone that goes beyond physical or even temporal boundaries. With Anam Cara, you reveal the hidden intimacies of your life, your mind, your heart. This special type of friendship cuts across all conventions; it is an act of recognition and belonging that joins us above and beyond all else.

We agreed there is a great need in everyone’s life for an Anam Cara, a relationship in which you are understood as who you are, without mask or pretense. It is when you are understood, that you truly feel at home and can heal, awakening the vast possibilities within you.

In September, members of our Anam Cara group, many of whom had never met in person, travelled from as far away as Vancouver, B.C., Florida and Maine, to join me and local friends and family in celebrating my birthday. It was, in fact, the Anam Cara group that planned and executed almost all the party arrangements. Contrary to what I expected, I felt no apprehension hosting people I’d never met in person. In fact, any distinction between “real life” and “online” friends disappeared.

As my virtual friends appeared at my door the night before the party, I was struck that they each were EXACTLY as I had known them to be. They were, in life, precisely who they were in our group, an impression we all shared and marveled at in the subsequent days.

The party was extraordinary. When I looked around that night, I saw old friends, new friends and my family all delighting in each other’s company, talking animatedly, laughing, grabbing each other’s arms.

I received great gifts at that party: fragrant candles, hand knit scarves, a painting, glassware, wine, wind chimes, lovely books, and a silver engraved Anam Cara necklace. Most of all, I received the shared warmth of friendship.

A week after the party, when the last guest left for the airport, I sat at the kitchen table, enjoying the last of chocolate cake #4. I missed my friends, who had ended up staying several nights longer than intended. Bringing my empty dish to the sink, my eyes lit upon the large silver gift box I’d yet to open. A lovely Armonk friend had quietly left it the night of the party.

I smiled at the thought of her. She’s wickedly funny and unfailingly kind. ἀis woman tirelessly and assertively advocated for vulnerable children. I lifted the the top of the box and pulled out a frame. On it, artfully written, was this quotation:

The Best Things in Life Aren’t Things

The ultimate quote, it somehow captured everything I believed to be true. The quote danced in my head for weeks afterwards. An amateur artisan, I found myself hammering it into leather cuffs, inscribing it on silver bracelets, and stenciling it onto t-shirts. The irony of writing, “the best things in life aren’t things” on “things” didn’t escape me. It made me smile.

Dr. Rachel Levy Lombara is a NYS licensed clinical psychologist and former scientist at Columbia-Presbyterian Med-ical Center. She now works with people individually in her Chappaqua office. Like quotes, she believes that therapy is best when it’s brief and to the point.