A couple is in front of me. They sit side by side but you can feel the coldness between them. They don’t look at each other, their faces are frozen. The wife speaks most of the time. Rarely her husband puts in interjections. They speak about mutual alienation, the lack of interest in each other’s affairs. They are surprised themselves why they haven’t divorced yet…
There are plenty of stories like this, but the reason is in one thing – the relationship is frozen, there’s no dynamics in it, the development has stopped, or maybe hasn’t even started…
Few newly-weds about the basic stages (or crises) of the relationship. Meanwhile without fully living one stage it is impossible to the next. What are these stages?
- The romantic stage (it is also called roses and candy stage). It seems to be quite simple, however few people know that the time frame of this stage is one year – A YEAR. Is there a young family which was created after a year of relations! They do exist but they are in minority. Basically, the marriages are precocious nowadays (in my practice there were couples who had known each other for two months before getting married). And now it is a rule rather than exception. So they, having been married for more that 7 years, desperately lack of that romantic lightness which they lost in the premarital relations.
- The marriage. The appearance of a family. This stage also lasts for a year. Why do we need this stage? This stage is needed to form family rules and values. While consulting the couples I always ask the rules that exist in their families. And I have never heard a more or less convenient answer. Moreover, for them the question itself seems to be odd: what kind of family rules? And here the first «pitfall» ruining the young families appears: according to the statistics the majority of divorces happens during the first year of family life. Why is that?
The point is that after getting married young people unconsciously bring to it the rules those rules that existed in their parental home. May be those rules weren’t spoken about weren’t discussed but THEY DID EXIST. And here come most of the mismatches. For example, the father was engaged in buying products in the parental home of the young wife. It was the rule; and she expects that her husband would do the same. However in his family the mother always bought products, and he can’t even imagine that things may be otherwise. How can you resolve this important question? It can be resolved only through the open discussion of one’s expectations, the quest for a compromise and the adoption of a corresponding rule. For example, the solution of this conflict may be going to the market of to the supermarket together on Saturdays and buying products for a week according to the proposed menu, which also can be discussed beforehand.
- The birth of the first child. If the stage of creation of family rules is passed successfully the couple would pass through this crisis without significant difficulties. Because they have learned the most important thing – to talk to each other openly and to listen to each other. These skills are vital on the third stage of marital relations. According to Hervé Bazin «An entirely strange woman returns to you from the maternity hospital». And spouses have to re-build their relationships and to implement new rules of family life.
- The birth of the second child. In my opinion the preparation of the firstborn to his birth is the key issue here. Do you know about the «sibling conflict»? This means the eternal conflicts between children which psychologists have been paying a lot of attention to in recent years. I’ll say only one thing: whether this conflict would arise depends only on one thing – the proper distribution of parental warmth and care among all the children who live in the family. Because children are fighting for the only prize – their parents’ love.
- The first child’s achievement of school age as a necessity of its socialization and the beginning of formation of responsibility. According to my observations, in most families the mother is engaged in the child’s school life. This is acceptable in case of the daughter. But if you have a son this should be done by the father. Because in the boy’s understanding – only what his father does is really matters! This is the structure of the modern system of education that boys are surrounded by women everywhere – in the kindergarten, at school, and even at university. Where and when can a boy develop the masculinity if his father is at work or in front of TV and only women are around him? I was told that in some Eastern cultures, a woman has no right to reprimand the boy. It is the prerogative of a man. In my opinion this is quite wise.
- The children’s awkward age. This is a big and difficult subject. I’m going to devote a separate article to it.
- The «empty nest syndrome» – adult children leave their parental home. In my opinion this crisis is quite indicative in the couple’s relationship. It shows what has been in the heart of the family for all these years – whether there has been a real spiritual, emotional and physical intimacy in the couple. Or the childcare was the main issue of the family. And this is the second significant figure in the divorce statistics – after more than 20 years of marriage when the children have grown up, the spouses understand with regret that on being left alone they are essentially lonely.
There is a quite significant issue in the story which I began from this article: despite the external alienation these people have something to lose. And they are afraid of that. There is something in their hearts reminding about the former intimacy. And this is the essential issue in their relationship. The point in the family therapy is that if the couple came to a specialist the family can be saved. The only thing that matters is the motivation of both the spouses. After all, it may happen that one of the spouses comes only to make a favour to the other. But if the couple comes consciously, thus in collaboration with a psychologist they can really set the Thames on fire – which means understanding which stage of relationship they are passing, identifying in what situations they are wrong and proceeding to a whole new level in their relationship.
Author Natalia Tarasenko
Translator Sofia Tretyakova
Original text Семейная жизнь от А до Я. Или про «подводные камни» супружеской жизни
