The Conventional Wisdom and Dr. Phil Are Wrong
By Sam R. Hamburg
There is a conventional wisdom about marriage in this country. It
was formulated in part by marriage counselors and therapists, and it
goes like this: "Marriage is good. So if your marriage is bad that
means there is something wrong with you: You don't communicate effectively;
you don't handle conflict properly; you aren't committed enough to your
marriage; you aren't working hard enough at it; you haven't healed your
psychic wounds from childhood."
Now comes Phillip C. McGraw, aka Dr. Phil. In his recent book "Relationship
Rescue," he makes additions of his own to this litany of faults:
You haven't been "true and right with yourself"; you have
lost touch with your "core of consciousness"; you have become
a "contaminator in your relationship." Dr. Phil also cautions
us against erroneous ideas about marriage that can lead us astray--he
calls them "myths"--such as "A great relationship depends
on a great meeting of the minds," and "A great relationship
requires common interests."
The conventional wisdom is wrong, and Dr. Phil is wrong. What he condemns
as "myths" are actually deep and enduring truths.
The conventional wisdom is wrong because there is nothing wrong with
many of the individuals who find themselves in unhappy marriages. There
certainly has been nothing wrong with many of the hundreds of unhappy
couples I have worked with in my 25 years as a marital therapist--including
the couples with the most heartbreaking problems. They were effective
communicators; indeed some of them were lawyers, teachers, public relations
people, even writers. They muddled through conflict about as well or
badly as the rest of us do. They were certainly committed to their relationships,
having stuck it out over many years of disappointment and frustration.
They had worked hard on their relationships--with me, and often with
one or two other therapists before me. Most important, as individuals
they were mentally healthy, free of childhood wounds, honest with themselves,
and well in touch with themselves.
The only problem for these couples was that they had married the wrong
person. They had married someone with whom they were not compatible
enough for lasting love.
To understand why compatibility is the key rather than communication
and the other usual suspects, you first have to recognize that marital
problems are not communication problems. They are failures of understanding
despite perfectly adequate communication. We all have experienced something
of this in our non-romantic relationships: You're discussing some important
issue, say gun control, with someone whose opinion is in opposition
to yours. You understand what the other person is saying--you don't
have a communication problem. What you don't understand is how that
other person could possibly think and feel the way he or she does. And
that's because, at least in that one respect, you are too different
from each other. Couples who are incompatible are different from each
other in many ways and bump up against that failure of understanding
despite adequate communication everywhere they turn.
Shared interests and a meeting of the minds are, of course, essential
components of compatibility. They are also the foundations of friendship.
Dr. Phil counsels unhappy couples to focus on their friendship and rekindle
it--and this is where he goes wrong. If the partners don't share interests
and don't have a meeting of the minds there will be no friendship to
rekindle. Many incompatible couples never had a true friendship--a romance
maybe, but not a friendship--as they themselves realize once the romantic
phase ends.
Think of your own friends. None of us is able to be friends with just
anybody. We must share at least some interests with another person to
be friends, otherwise there would be no point in spending time with
them.
Now think of your best friends. They are your best friends specifically
because you have a meeting of the minds--because you're on the same
wavelength. To ask incompatible couples to focus on their "friendship"
is like asking them to make an omlette out of Ping-Pong balls.
What Dr. Phil and many others fail to appreciate is that all love
between men and women is based on mutual affirmation. In romantic love
what is being affirmed is each other's physical-sexual self, and that
is so important to us and so powerful that is makes affirming many other
aspects of each other virtually automatic. But once the romantic phase
ends, as it always does sooner or later, the couple can continue to
affirm many aspects of each other only if they are compatible: You can
affirm an aspect of someone else only if you understand it, and you
can understand it only if you are s similar enough to the other person
in that respect.
The reasons that so many of us marry the wrong person are clear enough:
the social pressure we all feel to get married combined with our sense
that our choices are limited, and an insufficient understanding of compatibility.
Not only do many of us make this mistake, we're encouraged to by society.
Then, when things don't work out, that society tells us it's because
we are defective, piling insult upon injury.
The good news is that people have it in their power to choose the
right person, as many people do in their second marriage. People can
develop an accurate understanding of compatibility, systematically assess
their compatibility with a romantic partner, choose the right person
to marry in the first place--and avoid the stigma and agony of having
to identify what's "wrong" with them.
Back to Visiting Authors
