Marriage Series: Winning the Marriage Game

Almost everyone likes to play games, like golf or tennis.  Better yet, everyone likes to win!  The enjoyment gets better and better as players learn and practice the skills to play well and win more often.  Most people who do not learn the skills involved become discouraged with the game and often quit.  One way to think of marriage is as a game that can be a lot of fun, that both spouses can win at, but that spouses must learn and practice the skills to play marriage well.

Meet Barry and Megan: Megan had her eye on Barry from when she first met him at a birthday party for her friend Ellie.  It was one of those “their eyes met” situations, but neither of them did anything about it until Megan confessed to Ellie about being interested in Barry. Ellie then played matchmaker and told Barry to call Megan.

The dating period was exciting with only slight hints of some differences between them that might become problems. They ignored those potential trouble spots in favor of their excitement about one another. They even took the dating period slowly, met each other’s families and talked about the obvious topics (e.g., having children). When in a coffee shop, in front the other patrons, Barry got on his knees and asked Megan to marry him.  Their excitement was contagious and the whole coffee shop erupted in applause.

Two years after they married, Barry began to think that he made a mistake.  He felt that Megan was criticizing him “constantly” about his activities with his men friends and seemed to feel that she was in charge of their lifestyle and activities.  Megan, similarly, felt constantly frustrated with Barry.  She felt he had lost interest in her and in building a life together with her.  She tried to talk to him about how they kept their apartment and about saving for a house, but he would passively tell her she could do whatever she wanted.

What Went Wrong?

Absolutely nothing!  Absolutely nothing went wrong. Not every marriage begins like this.  Some spouses have serious problems (e.g., drugs) right from the beginning and have little chance of developing a successful marriage.  Others do not run into challenging differences until later in their marriage.  However, most people run into control problems when they have differences early in their marriage.   Differences lead to disagreements and both spouses want to win disagreements when they come up.

If nothing went wrong for Barry and Megan, what happened? A good way to think about this is that each spouse has an idea of what their ideal marriage should be, they want their spouse to play a part or role in that movie.  This was the basis of the famous, although now historical movie, “Stepford Wives.”  Men in a small town turned their wives into robots, although the method was never very clear.  The men were happy, but they were not married to a real person.  The hitch in real life is that spouses are real people, who have their own ideas about a perfect marriage movie.[1] In almost every marriage, those movies clash at times, no matter how much the spouses have in common.  This leads to arguments in which each spouse believes he or she is “right” and tries to get the other spouse to agree and comply.

Getting Things Right

Getting back to Barry and Megan, they are at a crossroad, with two options.

One option is that Barry and Megan will continue to have unresolved power struggles with one another, becoming more and more emotionally estranged from one another, blaming their spouse for the problem, and developing increasingly negative opinions about one another. Of course, with this option, they will move further and further into a painful frustrating marriage, with a high likelihood of divorce in their future.  The upshot is that they will be in an unsuccessful marriage and might even divorce.

The other option is that Barry and Megan will recognize the danger they are in and start addressing their differences more constructively.  Whether they manage this on their own, seek counseling and/or read our book, we recommend they begin to follow three specific steps and “play” the Game of Marriage well:

1. STEP ONE- CONSIDER POSSIBLE SOLUTIONS: First, they should ask each other: Do they have marital problems that have no solutions?  For example, is Barry unwilling to give up the benefits of being single in order to have a good marriage?  If they have a problem with no solution, they might consider a divorce as a solution, early enough to prevent more damage to one another. If they have a problem with one or more possible solutions, they should move to Step Two.
2. STEP TWO- ESTABLISH RULES AND PROCEDURES: If they have marital problems with possible solutions, next they need to decide on rules and procedures for the marriage that will keep each of them emotionally safe. For example, Barry might acknowledge that he is willing to give up some of the advantages of being single in order to make the marriage work.  Our book outlines other basic Rules and Procedures to accomplish this, but discussions might also include subtle modifications of those rules, specific to their situation.[2]
3. STEP THREE- PLAY THE MARRIAGE GAME WITH SKILLS: Once the Rules and Procedures are in place, the third step is to develop an approach to address their disagreements and differences, in order to reach solutions that work for both of them. This takes certain skills. Toward that end, we recommend our Seven Skills of Successful Married Couples. This book lists, defines and even gives training exercises for the seven research-based skills needed for resolving disagreements well.

Winning the Marriage Game

When playing marriage well, the inevitable disagreements in the marriage take about 20% or less of marital time, with most solutions working well for both of the spouses.  This leaves people like Barry and Megan sufficient time to enjoy their marriage 80% or more of the time.  Let us repeat this crucial point.  There will always be differences that lead to disagreements, but those can be resolved well with skills, and those disagreements take up very little time and most of the marital time is spent having fun.

The Dale Carnegie Story and the Key to Success

Dale Carnegie, one of the wealthiest men in history (who came from near dire poverty), was incredibly curious about success.  A question he wanted to answer was why were some people very successful.  He commissioned the study of successful men (because of the times, this did not include women).  Some were not financially successful (e.g., one was a Cardinal in the church), but all had succeeded at a high level.  The results of this study discarded almost all of the reasons that people had thought was the key to success (e.g., being smart, good background, education, good looking, charming, etc.).  In fact, the study concluded that successful people had only one common characteristic: they had a goal, they figured out the steps to take to get there and took those steps.

The Key to Marital Success

Drawing on the Carnegie Story, the key having a successful marriage is not reached by focusing on emotions.  It is reached by making the decision to have the goal of a successful marriage, figuring out the steps to get there and taking those steps to get there.  This is the point of our blog, and in a much more thorough way, the point of our book.

Having a successful marriage, means stopping doing what does not work and doing what does! This means: Winning the Game of Marriage.

[1] In current times, principally, men are having “love relationships” with computer generated, non-existent women powered by artificial intelligence.

[2] The Road to Marital Success is Unpaved: Seven Skills for Making Marriage Work.