Marriage Myths Revealed - Part 1

As I said before, I am dedicating the month of February to Marriage, Relationships, Heart Health, and Love.

I am going to start a series of posts regarding these topics and today I would like to start off with the first part of the two part post on the 5 most Harmful Myths about Marriage, I really want a discussion to develop on this one so please feel free to write your comments and let me know what you think about these myths.

I have been reading this really good book on Marriage called The Secrets of Happily Married Women and in the chapter called Take Charge of Your Own Happiness it describes 5 of the most destructive myths about marriage. The book says that believing these myths are actually detrimental to your marital happiness. I found this book to be very good, and it gives advice that I find valuable. However it is not for everyone as it is a man that writes the book and some of his comments might be seen by some as controversial. But to me they, are sound advice.

• Myth #1 - Marriage automatically makes you happy.

The book says that there is a difference between Personal Happiness and Marital happiness. Most people refer to general happiness as personal happiness, but in marriage there are times when one has to put aside their personal happiness in favor of marital happiness. The author explains that once a couple gets married they should put marital happiness first above personal happiness. Husbands and Wives need to consider how their actions affect each other. When couples take time to consider each other they will be happier as a couple. By being happier as a couple they then to be happier in general which works out to everyone's benefit.

I really think this makes a lot of sense, because in a marriage the happiness of one influences the happiness of the other, and the same goes the other way around.

• Myth #2 - Good Marriages are always Passionate and Heart Throbbing

The author says that he hears in his office many times women who come to him worried that they love their husbands but they are not "in-love" with them anymore. He says that when a wife says that she loves her husband but is no longer in love with him she means that she has a strong core connection but not that knock-your-socks-off attraction that was there at the beginning of the marriage. It usually means that the wife feels a sense of commitment, mutual obligation, trust and security, but not the raging fire of passion they felt when they where dating.

What I found most interesting about this is that the author says that for most couples that intensity of passion that was felt at the beginning of the relationship is usually a temporary state. The feelings that we all have when we fall in love come directly from our biological makeup. When we feel desire and longing it is because our brain is being influenced by the hormone estrogen if you are a woman and testosterone if you are a man. After that comes a phase of infatuation and the emotional excitement, brain activity and chemical body changes in both men and women in much the same way. It is the body's way to give the couple time to bond with their mate to insure the survival of the species.

Losing the thrill of passionate love is a jolt that hits almost every married couple eventually....
...that definitely does not mean "it's over." Absolutely not. In healthy marriages, the love is still there, but out of evolutionary and practical necessity, it has changed.

Those who are patient with this life change (and happily married women are remarkably patient) will see that these passions transform themselves into the kind of love that holds a marriage together for the long haul.

In its next stage, love pushes the brain to produce vasopressin and oxytocin-chemicals associated with feelings of attachment and contentment that encourage the sense of calm, peace, and security that couples feel with a long-term partner. This is the kind of love that is lasting and, if accepted and nurtured, will accompany you and your husband through many years of a happy marriage.1

I think that this particular myth is very significant. Many couples tend to think that they have fallen out of love, when the reality is that the love has evolved into a different stage. The reason why this myth is so detrimental is because it brings couples to sometimes look for another person outside the marriage looking for that passion they felt for their spouses in the beginning.  But these affairs also don't tend to last, because soon the passionate phase will also fade in the affair, and the damage will already have been made with the spouse. If  people understood that this powerfully passionate state is just a phase, then maybe less people would go out of their marriages looking for what they think is missing in their relationship. Instead of looking for a missing piece, couples who face this stepping stone in their marriage should instead look within each other and see where the relationship has evolved and in which ways it is bringing more stability to the relationship.

What do you think about these 2 first myths, do you agree or disagree with them? Have you ever believed any of these myths?

Next week we are going to be talking about the next 3 myths, these are very controversial and I know many of you will have different opinions on them


1. Scott Haltzman MD;Theresa Foy DiGeronimo. The Secrets of Happily Married Women: How to Get More Out of Your Relationship by Doing Less (Kindle Locations 1582-1584). Kindle Edition.