The truth about marriage

“ Having problems in your relationship doesn’t mean you have a bad marriage, it just means you’re in a marriage. ”

01

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In the era of non-arranged marriages, most people enter into marriage with beautiful expectations, hoping to be with another person for life and live happily forever. But the fact is that most people will experience relationship problems in marriage, get into trouble, and some even end up getting divorced. We have a simple wish, hoping that the intimate relationship formed can continue in marriage. But when the hormone of love fades, both parties face the fragments of life, big and small, conflicts and contradictions are inevitable. Most people have not been taught or learned from their parents' marriage how to deal with conflicts. They deal with them based on their instincts, which often results in a lose-lose situation. If there are children caught in the middle, they will become the biggest victims, causing a huge impact on their mental health, and will continue the relationship model with their parents into their own marriage, resulting in the consequences of being passed down from generation to generation. I wrote this article because I deeply felt from the adult cases that were once children, from the couples who came to me for consultation, and from my own marriage that there are many truths about marriage relationships that no one has ever told us, and more people need to know them. I hope it can be inspiring to those who read this article.

02

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Marriage is not for us to feel happy, but a place where we can show our true selves to each other. We all wear masks in other relationships outside of marriage, but in marriage, we take off the masks and show our true selves, because the other person is our new attachment object after our parents. Because of this, our relationship pattern with our parents will naturally appear in our marriage. The unresolved relationship issues with our parents will reappear in marriage, causing us pain, but also providing an opportunity for us to face the unresolved issues.

We have two ways to replicate the relationship model with our parents: one is reaction, and the other is modeling. Confrontation is a way to confront the way parents treat us. If parents treat us in an intrusive and boundaryless way, such as beating, scolding, controlling, making children their own emotional trash can, or becoming little adults to bear the family obligations that should be borne by parents, etc., we may show confrontational self-protection methods such as isolation, withdrawal, and retaliation in the marriage relationship. If parents neglect their children, such as sending their children to their grandparents to raise, and not giving their children the emotional needs they need during their growth, such as companionship, physical contact, care and guidance, etc., we may show over-dependence in the marriage relationship, lose temper, try to control the other party to meet our own needs, etc. For example, there are clients who have been sent to their grandparents to raise since childhood, and they are particularly dependent on their partners and lose their temper easily if they are slightly dissatisfied.

Modeling is the same way that our parents treat us. We learn to treat our partners in the same way as our parents treat us. Because this is an internalized way, we regard it as normal. For example, some people grow up in emotionally isolated families, where parents and children do not have real emotional interaction. When they grow up, they do not know how to communicate emotions and ignore their partner's emotional needs.

03

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We are all marrying our unfinished stories. The so-called unfinished is the pain we suffered in those stories of relationships with our parents, which has not been seen and dealt with. The pain will not disappear by itself, but will be covered up or forgotten by us. Some people will still feel it, and some people will not. Then we enter into intimate relationships, and we all choose partners who have some similarities with our parents, but are not the same. We enter into marriages because our partners are the same as our parents, or because they are different from our parents. Sooner or later, we will find that they have some similarities with our parents, but also some differences from our parents. This allows us to repeat the relationship with our parents in marriage, but at the same time provides the possibility of healing. The unfinished story is formed in the relationship with our parents and continues in marriage, waiting for us to discover the truth and complete it, and the pain in marriage provides us with the best opportunity.

But we often blame the other party for the hurt in marriage, saying that the other party has changed, is not the person we thought he was, or the other party's shortcomings are unbearable, etc. But we forget that the marriage relationship is the result of the interaction between two people. The transition from the initial mutual affection to the current unbearableness is the result of the joint efforts of both parties. It is not necessarily 50% and 50%, but it must be that both parties have a share. Moreover, we often ignore the parts of our partners that can heal us. Because of pain, we push each other further and further away, slowly moving towards separation, believing another partner accountable for it . Because it is unacceptable for us to admit that part of the pain is also caused by ourselves. Since it is the result of the interaction between the two parties, both parties can also have an impact on the future direction of the relationship. To change the result, it requires the joint efforts of both parties.

04

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Our society is already a society that regards divorce as commonplace. In 2022, China's divorce rate was 43.53%, of which four provinces and cities exceeded 50%, with the highest reaching 60%. In the United States and Canada, the divorce rate also reached 50%. Divorce is an option after the breakdown of a marriage, but it is not an antidote to the pain in a marriage. Problems in a marriage relationship does not mean that you have a bad marriage, but only that you are in a marriage. Marriage is a process of disharmony-repairing-harmony-disharmony-repairing again. We just don't know the root cause behind the bad interaction pattern and how to deal with the problems in the marriage. So we keep repeating negative interaction patterns and drifting further and further away from each other, because no one has ever taught us these. And the truth is that problems that have not been faced and truly dealt with in a marriage will sooner or later reappear in a new relationship, just with a different object. Moreover, divorce is only physically separating the two parties and leading them to different lives. If the two parties do not have the opportunity to truly see the problems in the relationship and choose to divorce, the entanglement of the relationship may last for a long time or even a lifetime.

And there are children. Children are the direct victims of poor handling of marital problems and failed marriages. How parents face and deal with marital problems not only affects the physical and mental health of their children, but also serves as a model for how they will face and deal with problems in the future. Choosing to escape or face it, choosing to blame each other or participate in the process of changing the interaction pattern, choosing to divorce in anger or both parties facing the truth honestly and breaking up peacefully, all provide examples for children's lives. They also affect children's future marriages, whether they continue to repeat the unfinished stories of the previous generation or leave a different legacy for their children. We cannot decide what kind of family we grow up in, but we can decide what kind of family our children, and even our children's children, grow up in.

Many marriage counselors have the impression that it is too late for clients to come for marriage counseling. Many people only seek out marriage counselors when the relationship problems have become irreversible, and often it is too late to save the situation. If you can find out in the early or even middle stages of the relationship problems, the results may be completely different. Marriage is the most secretive relationship in the world. If you don’t say it yourself, no one knows what is really happening in the marriage. The occurrence of domestic violence and other incidents is closely related to this secrecy. Tolerance and hiding are the ways many people deal with marriage problems. They don’t think of seeking out marriage counselors until they can’t bear it anymore or it leads to serious consequences. Moreover, we have never learned how to deal with differences and conflicts with our partners in marriage. This makes marriage like a roller coaster without brakes, ups and downs, following our emotions. We need brakes in marriage. If we feel something is wrong, we should stop to see where the problem is, why we repeat the same pattern, and how to change the pattern so that the car can continue to drive. If we can’t handle it ourselves, we should go to the repair shop to ask the technician for help. The sooner such braking action is done, the better. The relationship can be repaired as soon as possible, and it will not have much impact on the children, and it will provide a good example for the children.

05

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Finally, I want to tell you that almost everyone has an unfinished story, and almost every couple will experience some problems in their marriage, more or less, sooner or later. In the previous article, I said that pain is Bodhi. The same applies to marriage. The pain in marriage is an opportunity for us to truly face and complete our unfinished stories. Marriage can be our wound, but it can also become our medicine. Good marriage counseling may be a process of turning wounds into medicine. As long as we make good use of such opportunities, do not escape or pretend, no matter how the marriage eventually goes, we have gained the Tao of relationship taught to us by marriage , and what is even more amazing is that we let the unfinished stories passed down from generation to generation end in our generation, leaving a precious legacy behind.

By Yoly Lin

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