The Story You Tell Yourself About Your Marriage

How you describe the problems of your marriage will probably determine whether or not you can find the will to work on solving them. A woman came to me recently wanting help in deciding whether or not to leave her marriage. I could tell from the way she described the relationship that she had already decided to leave. The story she told herself said it all. 

Here is the gist of what she told me: “We should never have gotten married. We were completely incompatible from the beginning. My husband is a thoroughly negative person. He is always complaining about something. I am tired of putting up with him.”

What is it about her story that tells me that she has readied herself to leave the relationship and almost certainly is going to do so? 

* Her whole story is about her husband. Her view of the marriage is devoid of any awareness of her own contribution to the relationship and especially to its problems.

* All her statements are absolutes. Absolutes leave no room for change; “never,” “completely,” “always” and similar words indicate a point of view that is fixed. 

* For this person to consider working to change her relationship, she would need first to change her story so that it also included herself and her behavior. She would need to drop the absolute language and use relative terms instead. She would need to speak of their relationship, especially how they do it — in terms of skills and their absence. E.g., “We don’t know how to get along.” “We can’t make decisions together.” “We can’t handle conflict.” 

Seeing her marriage in terms of skills, she might still leave the relationship, but at least she would have to consider the possibility that she and her husband could learn what they don’t know and make a better relationship.