Martha and I are squarely in this phase of our marriage. We are actively supporting our three adult children in following their passions, building our own business enterprises, taking care of our health, enjoying visits with our three grandsons and thinking a lot about our financial security as we look ahead to the latter years of our lives together.

I was surprised to learn recently that the divorce rate among our cohort, i.e., baby boomer couples, is currently higher than the divorce rates for every other generation today. A primary reason for this trend may be that many baby boomer couples didn’t invest in the health and well-being of their relationship during earlier phases of their marital journey. These baby boomers are now dealing with the unhappy state of their marriages as their grown children are leaving home and their careers are winding down. I’ve had more people tell me about couples they know in this state of affairs!

It is my contention that many baby boomers today want to live lives that are creative, fulfilling and contributing on their own terms. If you are in this fifth stage of marriage, you may be feeling as though they are living parallel lives with your spouse. You may be yearning to reconnect with each other and rediscover a new purpose your lives and your marriage. Now is the time is to explore what you really care about. That might include taking on big projects like redoing your kitchen, volunteering in the community or writing a book as well as enjoying life’s simpler pleasures such as working in the garden and getting together with friends.

Martha and I have used our relationship as a resource to help each other to discover what we are passionate about, build our businesses, plan great vacations and enjoy time with our friends. We are finding that this stage of our lives is not necessarily a time to shrink back, but to step out boldly and contribute our unique gifts. Our partnership gives us a strong foundation for what we are building in our lives now.

Sarah Lawrence-Lightfoot (2009) suggests that many people at this time in life are willing to take big risks, be vulnerable and contribute to their family, community and wider society. Many older couples want to support each other in continuing to grow and develop in new and exciting ways.

In phase 5 of a partnership marriage, it is important that you have conversations for intimate connection, for clarifying what you are committed to and for being partners in writing the story of this next exciting chapter in your lives. It is a time to swing out, dream big and take risks…together in partnership.

Here are conversational tools that are important in Phase 5 of a partnership marriage:

• Nurture the Quality of Your Partnership. You want to reclaim time for yourselves to nurture your companionship, renew your passion and create romance. It is a time to plan special dates, weekend getaways and great vacations. It can be particularly fun to go on vacation to exotic lands with other couples you enjoy.
• Establish New Family Commitments. Have intentional conversations to clarify your relationship with important family members in your life. It is important to reassess your commitments to both your own parents and to your adult children.
• Ask “What’s Completing and What’s Opening Up?” Take stock of what you have accomplished and reflect on those dreams you have not yet attained. It is a time when letting go of past disappointments and hurts gives way to a new and exciting time of creativity, fulfillment and contribution.
• Dream New Dreams. Start dreaming again and, when you do, dream big. This is a time to have conversations “outside the box” and dare to do things you’ve never done before. What adventures to you want to create? What book are you thinking of writing? Are you ready to get your Ph.D.? How about running a marathon? How do you want to contribute?
• Create a New Purpose for Your Marriage. To this point in your lives, you and your spouse may have had as your main purpose the raising of healthy and happy children and launching them into life. Well, this is a great time to create a new purpose for you individually and for your marriage. This new purpose can be a simple statement of intention and commitment that is at the heart of the contribution you want to make.

If you are a baby boomer couple in this stage of marriage, I encourage you to reinvest in your partnership. I’ve heard people lament about their age and about getting older. The bigger problem is that, if you are a baby boomer, you may be living for two, three or four more decades! So, for those of you lucky enough to have a life partner and marriage that still has a warm, loving pulse, it’s time to turn up the heat and get on with creating a life you love…together!!

References

Lawrence-Lightfoot, S. (2009). The third chapter: Passion, risk, and adventure in the 25 years after 50. New York, New York: Sarah Crichton Books.

Miser, A. (2014). The partnership marriage: Creating the life you love…together. Charleston, South Carolina: Create Space Publishing.

When I work with couples, who are raising young children or children of school age, I often hear their complaint that they simply do not have enough time or space to attend to the well-being of their relationship or the quality of their marriage. I completely understand their dilemma.

I can remember that when our kids were younger, there was a growing social phenomenon in my neighborhood: An increasing number of parents showed up for all their children’s sports contests and school activities. When I was growing up in the 1950s and 60s, my brother and I would hop on our bikes, ride to our little league game, play ball and ride home. Only a handful of parents ever showed up to watch the game. It never occurred to me that my parents “should” have been there.

My wife, Martha, and I were parents of growing children in the 1980s and 90s. My generation gave rise to “helicopter” parenting, a tendency to be over involved in your child’s growth and development, academic achievement, extracurricular activities, etc.

Julie Lythcott-Haims has recently written a book, entitled How to Raise an Adult, in which she describes some of the cultural shifts that occurred in the 1980s that gave rise to helicopter parenting:

• Children’s faces began to show up on milk cartons because there were widely publicized child abductions.
• Parents were increasingly being encouraged to become more involved in their child’s schoolwork because U.S. academic achievement was falling behind that of other nations.
• Parents began to be involved in all aspects of their child’s development with an emphasis on cultivating positive self-esteem.
• And, because there was an increase in the employment of both parents, parents found new ways to be involved in the children’s play by getting them all together after school and on the weekends, giving birth to “play dates.”

If we fast forward to today’s world, parents are now increasingly involved in their adult children’s college life and in launching them into society, which is occurring developmentally later for many young adults.

Parents tell me they’re overwhelmed with their lifestyle and have little time to attend to the quality their marital relationship. I suggest to them that this is the time that they need to put their commitment and attention squarely on the quality of their marriage. I share with them the “co-pilot metaphor.”

When I fly on an airplane, as a passenger, I really only care about one thing. I care that the co-pilots have a great working relationship and together they will make sure that I fly safely and land at my destination. That’s how I know they care about me. The co-pilots work together in the cockpit and leave my needs to the crew of flight attendants who are paid to look after me.

I use this metaphor to emphasize an idea that your children, whether they know it or not, care about one important thing. They care that you, their parents, have a great relationship and a great marriage. They will get concerned about their safety, well-being and their future if they see you (i.e., the co-pilots in their family) constantly stressed out, not communicating or not getting along. To return to my metaphor, if I were to witness the co-pilots in the cockpit not getting along or not communicating well, my anxiety as a passenger on that airplane would rise quickly.

I have often said that the best gift you can give your children is to have a wonderful marriage. To have a quality marriage, you and your spouse must make a commitment to have the quality of your relationship be a top priority. Your children will be glad that you take some of your attention that you heap on them and put it on your marriage. As partners in parenting, you might find that you can let go a bit and learn to confidently say to your kids, like previous generations of parents have said, “Go play. Find something to do.”

Reference

Lythcott-Haims, J. (2015). How to raise an adult: Break free of the overparenting trap and prepare your kid for success. New York, New York: St. Martin’s Press.

For many couples, life events during the first five to nine years of their marriage can challenge their resolve to support each other’s happiness and success and that of their relationship. Whether a couple faces financial difficulties, extra-marital issues or communication breakdowns, each person in the relationship must call on their inner resources to renew their marital commitment.

In renewing their commitment to each other, a couple comes to discover that the glue that holds them together is, in fact, their commitment to each other’s happiness, success and personal development and to the growth and success of their marriage. A couple is learning to honor their values, to be true to their vision, to balance their work and family life and to be effective partners in life. It is a time when neither individual in the relationship is seriously questioning their commitment to their marriage. They have “all four feet in” in their marriage.

If you are at this stage, you have usually worked out your marital roles and household responsibilities. You are successfully meeting your individual needs and the needs of your relationship. You have gained some mastery at being able to communicate, problem solve and negotiate as you balance the demands of your work, home and community responsibilities. In short, you are learning to live in partnership together.

Couples in this phase place a higher priority on both the fulfillment of each person’s aspirations and the teamwork necessary for mutual empowerment and satisfaction. You may periodically need to re-examine your marital roles, household responsibilities and agreements in your marriage. Most importantly, you know that you are wholly responsible for your own happiness, success and personal development and committed to that of your partner.

Having put any doubts and concerns about the success and viability of your marriage behind you, you can fully participate in life, take risks together and take on bigger commitments. Attention turns to raising your children, creating family life, enhancing your careers and being involved in volunteer, church or community activities. You focus jointly on what matters most, what you are committed to and what you wish to build for your future.

Here are conversational tools that are important to in Phase 4 of a partnership marriage:

• Transform Disempowering Perspectives. Your shared view of your life has great impact on the quality of your marriage. Whatever perspective(s) you have adopted in your lives will shape the reality you share, impact how effectively you take action and influence how satisfied you are in your marriage. You can become aware of the impact of disempowering perspectives on the quality of your marriage. By being responsible for that impact, you can create empowering perspectives through which to view your lives together, thereby gaining mastery in determining the quality of your relationship.
• Maintain Balance. At times, you can easily feel that you have too much on your plate and not enough time in the day to get everything done. Managing all your commitments can begin to crowd out your attention to the quality of your relationship and the well-being of your marriage. Balance can be restored by identifying where you and your spouse experience having little choice and by aligning with your spouse around the commitments you are taking on as well as those you are saying “no” to.
• Align on the Vision of Your Partnership. Alignment in a partnership marriage implies that both people are committed to moving in a direction that not only supports each other but also their relationship. Over time, you can learn to have conversations to bring alignment to the kind of lifestyle you desire, the values you share, the future you envision, the projects you create and committed action you take to realize your dreams. Being in alignment engenders trust and, like being in balance, is a mechanism for a couple to be true to their experience of partnership.
• Align on a Vision of Your Future. Another way you and your partner co-create your lives is through inventing a specific future for your lives. To create the future, visualize and share with each other your dreams for the future, irrespective of time. Bring your whole lives to the process, looking at the all areas of your life, such as your home, family, friends, community, work, career, retirement, play, recreation and health. As you share your vision of the future, step into those future images and experience what it is like having that future be real for you. How does it feel for you both? What do you experience? What does it look like? What is it that lights you up about what you see
• Make Important Choices Together. The ability to work together in making important life choices makes a world of difference in how satisfied and how fulfilled you are in your marriage. When you and your partner have an important choice to make, such as buying a new house, changing careers, creating a business, buying or leasing a car or enrolling a child in day care, take time to clarify and align on each specific, possible scenario that you might be considering. Discuss all the “pros” and the “cons” for each scenario and make your choice freely and independently of your partner after complete consideration of all the pros and cons of each scenario. Finally, if you each make the same choice, you are aligned. If you haven’t made the same choice, continue to discuss your hopes, desires and concerns for the various scenarios you are considering. Important choices and commitments require your time, energy and a dedication to a process in order to arrive at a choice you can both be responsible for and be happy about.
• Design and Fulfill Partnership Projects. You can create a partnership project in any area of life, such as home improvement, financial well-being, children/family, career, education, community or vacation and travel. Projects are designed to be time-limited and have a specific measurable result. To create a project, you and your partner determine what you want to accomplish and by when. Identify any disempowering shared or individual perspectives that might unwittingly shape your relationship to the project and then create an empowering perspective that supports the two of you. Next, brainstorm all the interim accomplishments that will occur during the course of the project and all the actions that will be taken inside the project. As you do this, put the actions and accomplishments in a timeline from the present time to the fulfillment of the project. Give your project a fun name. Finally, meet regularly so you can evaluate what you are accomplishing, recommit to your commitment and get into action to fulfill your future.

Phase 4 of a partnership marriage is a time when you are in your marriage with “all four feet,” taking the long view and working together day in and day out to create the life you love…in partnership. With big dreams in front of you and walking side by side with your partner, you create your life together one step, one day at a time.

Reference

Miser, A. (2014) The partnership marriage: Creating the life you love…together. Charleston, South Carolina: Create Space Publishing.

The central focus in Phase 3 of a partnership marriage turns to the personal growth and success of each individual and to that of the marriage itself. This stage of marriage often begins in the fourth or fifth year of marriage when a couple is busy raising children, managing dual careers, managing their home and socializing with friends. In these early years of marriage, couples must learn to work and live successfully together while managing all these responsibilities.

Phase 3 is a time when both individuals in the marriage are asking questions that are at the very heart of who they are and what they are committed to. If you are in this stage, you may be asking yourselves, “Can I grow and develop in this marriage?” “Can I get what I really need and want?” “Can I fulfill my dreams in my marriage?” How you are able to meet each other’s needs, support each other’s goals and be real with each other has consequences for the long-term viability of your marriage. To accept each other, to grow and to be successful individually and together, both of you must commit to the quality of your marital relationship. This commitment is the major challenge of Phase 3 of a partnership marriage.

It is important to know that in this phase it is normal for you to re-assess and question your commitment to your marriage. You both may become disillusioned with each other, unable to come to grips with different parts of each other, such as personal habits, individual interests, attitudes, idiosyncrasies, political viewpoints, prejudices, etc., that are upsetting, troublesome or unacceptable. It is in this third phase of marriage when you may be asking, “Is this it?” or “Is this all there is?” and you each may be thinking “I’d be happier if you’d change!”

In Phase 3, the innocence of the first period of marriage gives way to a more mature re-examination of what each of you wants in the relationship. With time, you come to the realization that, for your relationship to work, each of you must be happy and able to fulfill your dreams in your marriage. You may need to shift your marital roles and household responsibilities. You begin to place a higher priority on balancing your individual goals with the teamwork necessary for your mutual satisfaction.

In Phase 3 of a partnership marriage, self-development and personal growth of each person take on a greater priority. You become more aware of patterns of interaction that don’t work and your part in those patterns. You become aware that you can’t change your spouse. You learn to accept your spouse for who they are and also for who they are not. You must learn to be responsible for what you want, make requests and negotiate with your partner so that you are mutually satisfied. It is incumbent on both of you to learn to communicate well and to bring self-awareness to the task of finding solutions that will work for your relationship.

The health and well-being of your relationship become a priority in which you both are able to support one another in getting your needs met, in fulfilling your goals and in caring for your quality of your marriage. You ultimately get committed to your commitment to accept each other, grow together and work successfully as partners in life.

Here are conversational tools that are important to in Phase 3 of a partnership marriage:

• Commit to having all four feet in your marriage. The struggle and the courage to create partnership require keeping both feet (in this case, all four feet) in the relationship and staying committed to the vision of a fulfilling and successful life together. When you have all four feet in your marriage, you are “standing together” for the quality of your marriage.
• Learn to fight fairly. When arguments and conflicts occur in your relationship, having ways to “fight fairly” is very important. Fighting fairly means that both of you have a mutual interest in taking care of the relationship as you work out your differences in a context of respect and understanding. Such conversations may be difficult, emotions may get heated and feelings expressed, but nobody gets hurt.
• Expand your self-awareness. Being aware of your role and responsibility in the quality of your relationships is paramount to being able to have great relationships with people generally and an enduring, loving partnership with your spouse specifically. Self-awareness begins with considering yourself as being at the origin of the quality of your life. That realization allows you to begin to observe or examine who you are, what points of view you have and what you are doing that is related to the quality of your interactions with your spouse. If your relationship is not working, ask yourself first what you might have to do with it. Look at yourself before you start looking at your partner. What point of view are you attached to and being right about? How are you being or what are you doing for which you’re not being responsible? What impact are you having that you may not be aware of? If your spouse is not happy, what are you committed to?
• Set aside time with each other to resolve issues that arise. Issues and problems are a natural part of life and, in this context, a natural part of marriage. An enduring, fulfilling marriage over a lifetime is not a marriage that is free of conflict, disagreement or argument, but rather one in which both persons in the relationship get their voices heard and their needs met, while at the same time take care of their relationship. When something is not working for you in your marriage, set a time to talk together to get the issue resolved. Remember, the issue might be a concern for only one of you. But if one of you has an issue, there is a problem for the two of you to resolve.
• Heal hurts in your relationship. There are times in every relationship when couples say (and do) things that are hurtful to each other and trigger feelings of anger, upset, disappointment, frustration, etc. At these times, you both will experience a break in connection or in being related. When one of you is feeling hurt and angry as a result of what your partner either said or has done, the sense of “us” is disrupted for both of you. If you can learn to express your feelings in responsible ways, resolve conflict, heal hurts and restore love and wholeness in your relationship, you have a great advantage in living a life of fulfillment and partnership. If you are committed to loving connection, teamwork and partnership in your marriage, you learn to restore your relationship to wholeness when hurtful things are said or done through apology, forgiveness and recommitment.

These conversational tools allow you to expand your awareness of your role in the problems you encounter with each other, solve those difficulties with greater ease and effectiveness and, ultimately, experience the strength and viability of your partnership and your marriage.

Reference

Miser, A. (2014) The partnership marriage: Creating the life you love…together. Charleston, South Carolina: Create Space Publishing.

Phase 2 of a partnership marriage begins when the two of you commit to creating a future together. You take the plunge together, get engaged and commit to getting married. Phase 2 often extends into the first few years of marriage.

As you look forward to your wedding day, you must learn to balance your individual needs and your relationship needs with those of your family members. This is often a new frontier and a wonderful, yet challenging, testing ground for your commitment to each other. Not only are you planning the ceremony and celebration of your public commitment to each other, but you are also learning to navigate through the expectations of your extended family members who plan to be in your lives for many years.

Once you are married and living together, you must learn to work out your marital roles and your household responsibilities. You must learn to communicate, problem solve, negotiate and plan together. In short, you are learning how to be an effective team.

This second phase of marriage is a time when you get to know what living with your loved one is really like, day in and day out. Each of you is now a witness to your partner’s behavioral patterns and habits that you may or may not have seen or known before.

Personal differences begin to emerge, expectations are challenged and disappointments burst those ideal images of how you each thought it would be. You find out that you each do the laundry, wash the dishes or organize your dresser drawers in different ways. What your partner likes to eat, how they like to spend their free time or what they like to watch on television may be in sharp contrast to what you had expected going into marriage.

Early in our marriage, Martha and I had no clear system of agreements around our roles and responsibilities. In our first attempt to clarify who was going to do what, we struggled but we managed to come up with a system of negotiating our household responsibilities. We were committed to equality and fairness to which we added the essential ingredient of choice. Without the experience of having choice in the matter, nothing was going to work to sustain a sense of teamwork.

Our conversations around daily chores eventually led to workability and effectiveness in managing our household activities. Over the years, when the circumstances of our lives have changed, we have returned to the task of negotiating household activities many times over.

Many couples go into marriage with a vision of starting a family, buying a house and having successful careers. Phase 2 is a time when teamwork is critically required and you must learn how to have many important life conversations that promote workability and happiness in your relationship.

Here are conversations that are important in Phase 2 of a partnership marriage:

• Explore your ideas and notions of marriage. If you can, talk about the kind of marriage you want to have together prior to getting married. If you are like many young married couples, you won’t discuss your beliefs or ideas about marriage until after your wedding day. Once you’re married, you may find out you have very different ideas about how you want to design your marriage.
• Share what you are committed to in your relationship. Create who you are for each other and for your relationship. When you do this, you share a stake in the quality of your relationship and the kind of marriage you want to create. Examples of commitments you can make to each other are “I hold you as an equal in our relationship,” “I promise to honor you and be faithful to you,” and “I love, trust and respect you.” Another possible commitment might be, “The quality of our relationship is a top priority for us.”
• Establish boundaries that support your relationship. Have conversations to set boundaries with each other regarding privacy and personal space. Important boundaries for you to consider are around reading each other’s mail, text messages or email and being on each other’s computer (if you both have one). Also, establish healthy boundaries with your family and their friends that build trust and confidence in the integrity of your marriage.
• Create time for “us.” Find times to connect throughout the day to support the health and well-being of your committed relationship and/or your marriage. Find times to be intimate, to play, to be together, to relax, to date, to get away for a weekend and to enjoy a fabulous vacation just for the two of you!
• Pay attention to the quality of your interactions. Maintain a healthy balance of positive and negative interactions towards each other. Stable marriages exhibit a 5 to 1 ratio of positive to negative interactions.
• Create teamwork around household and other responsibilities. It could be said that to have a successful marriage in today’s society, you have to learn to negotiate everything! Given that most men and women today are pursuing careers and working full time, both of you need to be involved in discussing your roles and household responsibilities. The effectiveness of your conversations and the workability of your arrangements around completing household tasks, managing money, parenting, keeping community commitments, etc. are critical to the quality of your life together and to having a clear pathway to creating the future you both want.

By engaging in these kinds of conversations, you each can step boldly into your future, trusting in each other, having confidence in your new marriage and knowing that you can take on any challenge so long as you tackle it together.

Reference

Miser, A. (2014) The partnership marriage: Creating the life you love…together. Charleston, South Carolina: Create Space Publishing.

“No union is more profound than marriage, for it embodies the highest ideals of love, fidelity, devotion, sacrifice, and family. In forming a marital union, two people become something greater than once they were. As some of the petitioners in these cases demonstrate, marriage embodies a love that may endure even past death. It would misunderstand these men and women to say they disrespect the idea of marriage. Their plea is that they do respect it, respect it so deeply that they seek to find its fulfillment for themselves. Their hope is not to be condemned to live in loneliness, excluded from one of civilization’s oldest institutions. They ask for equal dignity in the eyes of the law. The Constitution grants them that right.”

 Justice Anthony Kennedy on June 26, 2015

Several years ago, I was sharing with a group of couples in one of my workshops about my second date with Martha, when we attended a community theater production of “Some Like it Hot.” I shared with them that it was on that date when Martha and I first fell in love. Martha, who was at the gathering that evening, said quite spontaneously, “No, we didn’t.”

For a moment, I was off-balance and confused. I looked at her and said, “Well, then, what did we fall into?” She looked back at me hesitatingly and I could see she didn’t quite have words for it, only that she had a sense that something happened that night. After a moment, she looked at me and said, “We fell into us.” On that early date, something had been born. The way I expressed what happened between us was that we had fallen “in love.” Upon reflection, we had fallen into “us.”

I call Phase 1 of a partnership marriage, “falling into us.” At this time early in your relationship, you engage in questions that are at the very heart of what is important for having a happy, healthy connection. “Do I like this person?” “Can I trust him?” “Do we trust each other?” “Can I be myself with this person?” “Is she open and honest with me?” “Do we share similar values?” “Can we communicate with each other?” “Does he understand me?” “Do I care for this person?”

Some of the first conversations you have in a new relationship are around what you enjoy doing, your interests, childhood memories or special hobbies. You may enjoy conversing about important past experiences in your lives, where you have lived and where you have traveled or you may talk about politics, civil rights or world issues. As you get to know each other, you also may connect around your cultural backgrounds, family values and work ethics. These conversations weave a tapestry of common experience that results in the feeling that you belong together.

As you get to know one other, you begin to spend more and more time together, testing out being an exclusive couple. “How well do we get along?” “Do I feel at home with this person?” “Do I see a future being with this person?” “Is this relationship the real thing?” It is a time of exploration, play, discovery, intimacy, risk-taking, sharing and learning to be successful in having a mutually satisfying relationship. Being happy in the relationship, trusting each other and being free to be one’s self with one’s partner are all of paramount importance during this early stage of a relationship.

It is during this time that you make your first important commitment to each other: You invest in the possibility and promise of having a committed relationship. Each of you asks and considers the question, “Is this person ‘The One’?” “Is this relationship ‘it’?” Having many conversations for connection adds depth and breadth to your new relationship and is key in the formation of an exclusive relationship where each of you feels seen and heard.

Here a some of the conversations, which are important to have at this time in your relationship:

• Find ways to nurture your friendship. Get to know each other by sharing your interests, hopes, dreams, values and preferences as well as your dislikes, beliefs and attitudes with each other.
• Find playful activities that you enjoy together. Such activities can include recreational activities, such as dining out, going to movies, sightseeing or going to sporting events and leisure activities, such as reading, watching television, playing games or putting puzzles together.
• Understand each other. Understanding what your partner says to you is one of the most magnificent gifts you can give to them. They will feel validated, seen and acknowledged when you understand what they say.
• Accept and embrace each other’s feelings. One important lesson to learn early in a new friendship is that feelings and emotions are a natural and normal part of any human relationship.
• Communicate your needs to each other. Let each other know what you need, what you want and what you desire in the relationship. When your needs, wants and desires are taken into consideration, you can relate to each other in an honest, straightforward and loving way.
• Share what is important to you. The foundation of your committed relationship rests on a set of shared values, which can be seen as intrinsic to your “couple-ness,” the glue that keeps you both deeply connected.
• Clarify your commitments with each other. The quality of the new bond of friendship between the two of you is strengthened though the commitments you make with each other. The commitments you make to each other allow you to create a strong container for your relationship, where you both feel safe emotionally, socially, physically and sexually.
• Share what you appreciate about each other. When you appreciate each other and what you have with each other, your relationship grows in value. Appreciation acknowledges and reveals the quality, the brilliance and the essence of your unique relationship.

By having these kinds of conversations, you will have the freedom and the safety to risk opening up and sharing your lives intimately with each other. You will be able to create a relationship in which you both have permission to be yourselves and accept your unique sense of “us” as special in your lives.

Reference

Miser, A. (2014) The partnership marriage: Creating the life you love…together. Charleston, South Carolina: Create Space Publishing.

In my book, The Partnership Marriage: Creating the Life You Love…Together, I outline six distinct phases of marriage. Many stage models in the marriage literature are strikingly similar. In The Partnership Marriage, I focus on describing the marital commitments and kinds of conversations that are central to each phase of marriage. It is the premise of my book that marriage is fundamentally a network of conversations for creating a fulfilling and enduring partnership.

As your marriage grows and matures, you deepen your commitment to each other and to your life together. Within each phase of marriage, you engage in important conversations upon which the quality of your marriage is built. At each phase in the development of a long-term marital partnership, you invest in a new promise and possibility for your marriage.

Understanding the essential conversations at each phase of marriage can transform how you view your marriage over the long haul and how you relate to each other every day. By learning to successfully engage in important conversations at each phase on that journey, you both grow individually and can nurture the quality of your relationship. The kinds of conversations you are able have at one stage stand on the success you have had at previous stages and also set the foundation for your being able to have increasingly effective conversations in subsequent phases of your marriage.

Here are the phases of a partnership marriage that I discuss in my book:

1. In first phase, the central conversations for the couple are exploring what is important to them, creating a loving connection and clarifying their commitments with each other.
2. In the next phase, the key conversations for the couple are exploring their unexamined ideas about marriage, exploring the workability in their marriage and creating a powerful sense of team.
3. In the third phase, the essential conversations for the couple are being responsible for their own happiness and expanding self-awareness by identifying disempowering patterns of thinking and ways of being that get in the way of effectively communicating and solving problems. Couples at this stage also learn to align with each other’s visions of happiness and success and to declare their commitment to their individual well-being as well as to the quality of their marriage over the long-term.
4. In the fourth phase of a partnership marriage, the central conversations for the couple are learning to be in alignment around what works in their marriage, their values, their vision and their commitments while at the same time balancing all that they are responsible for. They are also learning to be powerful partners in creating a long-term vision for their life together and designing projects to manifest their dreams.
5. In the fifth phase, the important conversations for the couple are mastering the challenges of living in the empty nest period of their lives (if they’ve had children) and re-examining what is important to them. Couples at this stage express the wisdom of their relationship, develop their purpose anew and contribute in ways they have never imagined before.
6. In the last phase of partnership marriage, the key conversations for the couple are taking care of their health and well being, staying connected to family and friends, exploring a new sense of playfulness and talking about the legacy they are leaving to their family and friends.

In the next six newsletters, I will summarize in greater detail the marital commitments and conversations of each of these six phases of a partnership marriage. You and your spouse can learn to be masterful in having many different kinds of conversations that will have a profound impact on what is possible in your lives and on the quality of your marriage.

Stay tuned!

Reference

Miser, A. (2014) The partnership marriage: Creating the life you love…together. Charleston, South Carolina: Create Space Publishing.

On September 20, 2014, Emma Watson, British actor and Goodwill Ambassador for UN Women, launched the HeForShe initiative for gender equality at the United Nations. She gave a moving speech, in which she called on men and boys to join women and girls in advocating for a world in which both sexes have equal rights and opportunities, socially, politically and economically. Her speech touched me deeply. You can listen to her speech here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gkjW9PZBRfk.

As a father, I want all societal limits on my daughters’ access to opportunity and equal rights to disappear. I want my daughters to be afforded the same respect in the workforce as men and to be paid on an equal basis with men. I want them to know they are as valuable, capable and resourceful as anyone else, male or female. I want them to be able to fulfill their dreams, whatever they are.

I want my son as well as my grandsons to know that it is OK to be sensitive and strong. Being vulnerable, sharing feelings and expressing love are keys to health and well-being. Cooperation, teamwork and partnership in marriage are important to long-term success and happiness.

As a husband, I want to be a partner in assisting my wife, Martha, in fulfilling her dreams, all of them. I want Martha to be fully expressed and to be able to have the same rights, privileges and opportunities that I have as a male in society.

We both know that our marriage only works when Martha and I hold each other as equal human beings, regardless of our sexual identity. When we do, Martha and I have an egalitarian relationship, we are on an equal footing with each other and we treat each other equitably. True partnership in our marriage is made possible.

Her thoughts and ideas are as valuable as mine. My feelings are as important as hers. Our individual accomplishments as well as our failures strengthen our marriage. Her wins are my wins. Her struggles are mine. My challenges are hers. My successes are hers. We are partners in life together.

As Emma Watson advocates, I am for her. She is for me. We are for us. The quality of our partnership in our life together rests on the principle of gender equality. As a man, as a husband, as a father, as a grandfather and a human being, I stand with Emma Watson in her call for gender equality in all societies around the globe.

Marriage has been transforming over the last four hundred years. The institution of marriage has changed as a reflection of evolving human ideals and social ideas of society. Specifically, there are six radical shifts that have taken place in the evolution of the marriage since the first Europeans came to America.

1. Civil marriage is invented. Civil marriage was invented in The Netherlands. When the pilgrims lived in Leiden prior to sailing to America, local justices granted marriages to many couples who were not Roman Catholics. Until then, only marriages performed by the church were considered legal. In the United States, marriage has been a legal contract between two people, traditionally between a man and a woman.

2. Marriage is a personal and private choice. The Age of Enlightenment in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries influenced relations between men and women in radical ways. In Western Europe and America, marriage was being redefined as a personal choice between a man and a woman. This freedom to choose whom one could marry was an utterly new idea. It ushered in a new realm of personal responsibility for the state of marriage. This choice was a personal and a private choice that replaced arranged marriage as an economic or political tradition.

3. Couples marry because they love each other. With men and women being able to choose whom they could marry, another new and very radical idea began to take hold. Couples began to marry for one simple little reason: They loved each other. Couples had new challenges now that they were marrying on the basis of love. For a marriage to be successful, a couple was responsible for keeping their connection alive over time and experiencing an enduring love for each other. 

4. Marriage is redefined on the basis of equality. Marriage in the 1970s was redefined as a legal entity between two equal partners (Coontz, 2005). Legal precedents of this period forced a societal re-examination of the roles of men and women in marriage. Many couples attempted to establish more equitable arrangements at home around accountability for household and parental responsibilities. More and more couples today want to create their marriages in the spirit of equality, fairness and choice.

5. Married couples want to grow individually and together over time. Since the advent of the human potential movement in the latter part of the twentieth century, both men and women want to develop themselves personally and fulfill their life goals inside of marriage. Most couples recognize that they must continually grow and develop throughout their life together or their marriage will stagnate. Today, that requires a commitment from both partners to support each other’s personal and professional growth as well as that of their marital relationship.

6. Marriage is a right of all people, regardless of sexual orientation. In the last twenty years, a vast number of Americans now see marriage as a right for all people, regardless of sexual orientation. It is only a matter of time before marriage rights will be extended legally to all same-sex couples. The societal conversation for marriage as a legal right for all people is fully underway and is likely to have important ramifications for years to come.**

These six radical historical shifts have transformed marriage over the last four hundred years. Today, we take for granted that you have the right to choose your lifelong marital mate. No one else can make that choice for you. Also, culturally, we know that the vast majority of couples who do marry do so on the basis that they love each other and that their commitment to marriage requires a love that lasts a lifetime. Today, increasingly, two persons who join in wedlock conceive of themselves as true equals, in other words, as having an equal and equitable contribution to the health and vitality of their marriage. Also, both individuals, more than any time in history, see their marriage as an arrangement that must allow for the growth and development not only of each person, but also of the couple’s relationship. And finally, more and more Americans are recognizing that civil marriage is a legal right that should be extended to every citizen, regardless of sexual orientation. These historical shifts in human values and ideals have shaped the institution of marriage, as we know it today.

Reference

Coontz, S. (2005). Marriage, a history: How love conquered marriage. New York, New York: Penguin Books.

**Same-sex marriage became legal in the United States on June 26, 2015, when the Supreme Court struck down all state bans on same-sex marriage in all fifty states.  The Supreme Court also required all states to honor out-of-state same-sex marriages.