What Makes Marriage So Valuable?

For the past 45 years I have been invested in the health & quality of marriages.  Many of my colleagues have asked me why?  The answer is that being in a marriage often opens the doorway for a person to get to know himself so much better, to discover things about himself that otherwise might remain hidden from him…and when that happens, the individual has a profound chance to grow personally in significant ways.

What’s special about marriage?  The emotional safety it affords, the promise of having predictability and stability in an important relationship, and the possibility of developing intimacy and deep sharing.  This is not to say that these particulars can’t be created in other relationship arrangements; it’s simply that marriage has historically lent itself so naturally to them.

In addition, there’s another feature to marriage that I want to mention…the chance to mature and grow personally as a human being…to transcend individual limitations in relating that have been learned over the years.  The Jungian author and psychoanalyst Adolf Guggenbuhl-Craig calls this kind of relationship an “individuation marriage” in his book Marriage – Dead or Alive.

I’ll share with you a personal example:  I grew up in a chauvinistic household and gradually became infected with the “chauvinism virus”.  My family members were used to it and we all became normalized to these counterproductive attitudes.  The chauvinism was not mean-spirited or overtly critical but it was clearly discriminatory and a subtle put-down toward women.  Ultimately my wife’s reactions to me helped me to see I was carrying unhelpful unconscious attitudes, and once all this came to consciousness I was then able to put energy into clearing up the “virus” and making my marriage a happier place to live.  In addition, I was able to grow as an individual and stop radiating unconscious hurtful chauvinistic vibes.  Clearly, I’m primarily the beneficiary of this piece of personal growth, but so is my wife, our children and our grandchildren.  Marriage set the stage for me to undergo this personal growth, and without it I don’t know if I would have ever woken up to the destructive attitude I was carrying.

So, give this some thought and ask yourself, “how is my marriage encouraging my own personal growth?”  Ask the question – ask your marriage partner – see what comes up for you!