David Baxter PhD
Late Founder
Marriage and the Power to be Happy
By Steven Stosny, Psychology Today
May 25, 2009
If you want to get married, make yourself happy.
I continue to be amazed when people protest about the "unfairness" of having to work to make their lives and relationships better. Unless you are lucky enough to have a personality predisposed to happiness, it does, indeed, take work to make yourself happy. The fact that you can work to make yourself happy is empowering; waiting vainly for someone else to do it for you is the ultimate in powerlessness.
Happiness is not something we are entitled to, and, for the most part, it is not something that just happens to us. We have to work for it.
The most potent predictor of being happily married is being happy before you marry. Marriage does not make you happy, although the prospect of sharing life with a loved one can provide motivation to make yourself happy. What marriage certainly offers is someone on whom to blame your unhappiness.
You will never become happy in marriage by trying to manipulate your partner into doing what you want, even if he/she does what you want. The only path to happiness in marriage is to be true to your deepest values, that is, to be the best person and partner you can be. Then, by virtue of positive reciprocity, you have a decent chance of your partner responding in kind.
This means you have to be compassionate to get compassion, you have to be affectionate to get affection, you have to be loving to get a loving partner. If you're resentful or contemptuous at not getting those things, by the law of negative reactivity, you will almost certainly increase the frequency and degree of those negative states in your partner.
Marriage will not fill up any "holes" you may feel within yourself. For one thing, if you believe you have holes within, you will almost certainly find a partner with a small cup to fill them. That's because people with big cups are looking for other people with big cups, not big holes. Think of love (and the creation of all forms of value) as something that pours out of you, not into you.
Although it can sometimes feel that way, no one has holes within. But most of us long for growth, creativity, connection, and appreciation. To bring longing to fruition, we must use disappointment, sadness, anxiety, guilt, shame, depression, obsessions, etc., as motivations to invest in what we most value.
Emotional pain is most often a cry to improve, appreciate, connect, or protect. It tells you - not your partner - to do something, just as the pain in your bladder tells you, not your partner, to go to the bathroom. Provided that we do not short-circuit its motivational force with blame, emotional pain is the source of true power,
By Steven Stosny, Psychology Today
May 25, 2009
If you want to get married, make yourself happy.
I continue to be amazed when people protest about the "unfairness" of having to work to make their lives and relationships better. Unless you are lucky enough to have a personality predisposed to happiness, it does, indeed, take work to make yourself happy. The fact that you can work to make yourself happy is empowering; waiting vainly for someone else to do it for you is the ultimate in powerlessness.
Happiness is not something we are entitled to, and, for the most part, it is not something that just happens to us. We have to work for it.
The most potent predictor of being happily married is being happy before you marry. Marriage does not make you happy, although the prospect of sharing life with a loved one can provide motivation to make yourself happy. What marriage certainly offers is someone on whom to blame your unhappiness.
You will never become happy in marriage by trying to manipulate your partner into doing what you want, even if he/she does what you want. The only path to happiness in marriage is to be true to your deepest values, that is, to be the best person and partner you can be. Then, by virtue of positive reciprocity, you have a decent chance of your partner responding in kind.
This means you have to be compassionate to get compassion, you have to be affectionate to get affection, you have to be loving to get a loving partner. If you're resentful or contemptuous at not getting those things, by the law of negative reactivity, you will almost certainly increase the frequency and degree of those negative states in your partner.
Marriage will not fill up any "holes" you may feel within yourself. For one thing, if you believe you have holes within, you will almost certainly find a partner with a small cup to fill them. That's because people with big cups are looking for other people with big cups, not big holes. Think of love (and the creation of all forms of value) as something that pours out of you, not into you.
Although it can sometimes feel that way, no one has holes within. But most of us long for growth, creativity, connection, and appreciation. To bring longing to fruition, we must use disappointment, sadness, anxiety, guilt, shame, depression, obsessions, etc., as motivations to invest in what we most value.
Emotional pain is most often a cry to improve, appreciate, connect, or protect. It tells you - not your partner - to do something, just as the pain in your bladder tells you, not your partner, to go to the bathroom. Provided that we do not short-circuit its motivational force with blame, emotional pain is the source of true power,
