In the United States, nearly 60% of marriages end in divorce, and more than 50% of those couples who do stay married say they would split up if it weren’t for issues like money or children. That means that of 100 marriages, only 20 would choose to stay together. But that’s an assessment of marriages only by the standard of survival. What do we see if we judge marriages by the standard of happiness? Isn’t that what we all really want from a marriage? After interviewing thousands of married couples, and after interviewing hundreds of marriage counselors, Dr. Greg Baer says this: “I’m being optimistic when I say that out of one hundred marriages, only one to two couples find the genuine happiness they had once hoped for.”

These are frightening numbers, to the point, in fact, that Dr. Baer says:

Despite these horrific consequences of marriages gone bad, we tend not to read or hear about them in the media. Instead we hear about murders or Iraq or AIDS or hurricanes, because these are more “newsworthy” issues. The truth is, unhealthy marriages are literally tearing our society apart, but we don’t read about them because they’re happening behind closed doors—and, more pointedly, behind our doors.

Let’s look at one such marriage:

Bill and Alison have been married for 17 years. From the outside, they seem to have the good life: three children, a beautiful home in a great neighborhood, even a cute little dog.  Bill is a successful business consultant, and Allison is a stay-at-home mom who also works as a part-time caterer and volunteer in a local theater. Everybody looks at them and thinks, “Oh, what a happy couple,” but behind their public smiles things are not well.

Bill and Alison have been to multiple marriage counselors, but despite all that professional help, their relationship has continued a steady decline. Alison openly states that she can’t put up with the way she’s being treated any longer and plans to leave her marriage.

For a day Dr. Baer simply observes the couple as they interact with each other, with their children, and with people at work and elsewhere. Bill listens closely to people, tries to please them, and does whatever he can to avoid conflict with them. Alison focuses more on the completion of tasks. She can be in the same room with one of her daughters, for example, talking and working on a project, but never look directly at her child or pay close attention to what her child is saying.

Alison likes to control the things and the people around her, and when she can’t do that, she becomes angry. This becomes quite a problem in relationships, because most people—in her case, notably her husband and children—don’t like to be controlled.

Dr. Baer has a brief conversation with the two older daughters, ages 14 and 16, to get their sense of the family dynamics. Couples naturally want their families to look good to outsiders, so if you want to find out what a family is really like, ask the children. The girls tell Dr. Baer that their parents argue all the time, sometimes for hours on end. They argue in front of the children and in front of the children’s friends, which embarrasses the children deeply. In fact, sometimes the girls’ friends call ahead to be sure the parents aren’t home before they come over.

The girls agree that it’s Alison who picks at Bill almost every day about something: Why did you do that, why didn’t you do that, and so on. Only then does Bill become defensive and fight back. The girls are quite angry at their mother for being the cause of the conflict between their parents and for always trying to control them (the girls).

Don’t give in to the temptation, however, to label Alison the villain in this marriage. She’s only the more visible problem. In order to make peace for himself, Bill backs away from conflict and passively avoids his responsibilities to create a loving marriage and family.

The one element essential to success in every marriage is love, but it’s obvious from the phenomenally high rate of failing marriages in our society that we’re not learning what we need to learn about that subject. What couples need in their relationships is Real Love, or the ability to be unconditionally loving. You can learn a great deal more about Real Love by clicking here. Without sufficient Real Love, marriages are certain to fail, as Bill and Alison discovered. 

We need love like we need air or water. When we don’t have enough love, we feel a painful emptiness that is intolerable, and then we react with behaviors intended to fill our emptiness and eliminate our pain. We get angry, we lie, we control people, we withdraw from relationships, and so on. And that is what Dr. Baer explains to Bill and Alison. He teaches them that all the unproductive behaviors in their marriage have been just a reaction to the pain in their lives, a pain flowing from the lack of love that existed long before they even met.

In any given situation, for example, Alison tends to control people and things, because it gives her a feeling of power that makes her feel temporarily better in the absence of the Real Love she needs. Bill tends to withdraw, which gives him a feeling of safety. But all this leaves both of them feeling unloved and empty, so they’re caught in a cycle of repeating the same unproductive behaviors, again and again.

As Dr. Baer talks with them, Bill and Alison realize that all the pain of their marriage has been a result of simply not understanding how to love each other. And then they begin to let go of all the blaming and guilt that had been poisoning their relationship for years. What a relief! And then Dr. Baer begins the process of teaching them how to love each other. They share with each other the mistakes they’ve made in their marriage, and they admit to their children that they have not been unconditionally loving parents.

Some conflicts appear to be so complicated, so convoluted, that there couldn’t possibly be a solution. But there usually is. People behave badly because they don’t feel loved. As we learn about Real Love, and as we find it and share it, we can routinely see dramatic changes in difficult situations and relationships. Click here to learn more about Real Love.

What’s the secret to a great marriage? What can you do to make yours better?

Although blaming our spouses for how we feel and behave often seems reasonable—how else can we feel and respond, we ask ourselves, when they say and do those thoughtless and unkind things?—our blaming is never justified. Until we see that, we’ll continue to point fingers at one another and repeat the unproductive feelings and behaviors that cause so much harm to our relationships and to our own happiness.

Although our spouses do affect the way we feel in any given moment, their contribution is minor. When we get angry or feel hurt in response to something our spouses have done, there are always many other factors that powerfully affect our feelings and behavior, none of which are determined by our spouses. In any given moment, we’re reacting to a lifetime of events and feelings, not only to something our spouses have done or not done. In fact, if we’re sufficiently unhealthy emotionally and spiritually, our spouses don’t have to do anything wrong to provoke a negative reaction from us. 

Other people are never responsible for how we feel. If we understood that, our marriages would change dramatically. How could we keep being angry at anyone after realizing that he or she is not to blame for our feelings?

So what does cause our feelings? Just as age, weight, lack of exercise, genetics, and other factors are the causes of heart attacks, what are the underlying factors that really determine how we feel and how we interact with our spouses?

The most important requirement for our emotional health and happiness is Real Love. Real Love is caring about the happiness of another person without any thought for what we might get for ourselves. It’s also Real Love when other people care about our happiness unconditionally. With Real Love, they’re not disappointed or angry when we make our foolish mistakes, when we don’t do what they want, or even when we inconvenience them personally.

Without sufficient Real Love, we can only feel empty and alone, which is our greatest fear. In any given negative interaction with your spouse, it is the longstanding lack of Real Love in your life that determines how you feel, not the behavior of your spouse in that moment—just as a heart attack is really caused by many longstanding factors, not just by a single moment of stress. In any given moment, you react to the amount of love you feel from everyone, past and present, not just from the person you’re interacting with.

Learn more about finding happiness in marriage by listening to a free chapter of the Real Love in Marriage Audiobook. Or purchase it in our online store.

Real Love in Marriage