There are some prospective mates who will survive all the tests we have given you thus far and in fact look like ideal partners, and yet will bring you grief every time in marriage.
In studying marriage failures it has been found that again and again certain types of mates make a marriage seem intolerable. We’ll introduce you to nine of the worst troublemakers. They are hard to detect, but usually you can spot them if you have had several months really to know them before you commit yourself to marriage.
The Jealous Mate. Perhaps a man becomes excessively jealous because his young wife is attractive to other men or because she has been accustomed to traveling with a more sophisticated crowd than he has. On the other side perhaps the wife—with little cause—becomes insanely jealous of her husband’s secretary.
We know from investigation that jealousy causes at least one out of every five quarrels that occur between American husbands and wives. And furthermore, in divorce cases jealousy turns up as a factor in almost half of all divorces. That is not hard to understand because a jealous person inevitably becomes a difficult person to live with. He or she is usually suspicious, quick-tempered and disagreeable. It is hard to love a person who is jealous of you. You lose your respect for him, and you can’t be natural with him.
When you do try to be natural he will set you on your guard by some snippish and unprovoked remark and will question you awkwardly at length to check on your movements. Frequently he will fly into temper outbursts or sink into black moods.
Psychologically jealousy is a feeling of frustration, which in turn produces anger and dejection. The person is frustrated because he fears he is losing the love of the mate or fears that the mate is being unfaithful.
Jealousy may be real or imaginary. Evidence uncovered at the Penn State clinic would indicate that frequently it is the latter. In real jealousy the mate knows, or suspects correctly, that the other person is flirting or acting in a questionable manner. In imaginary jealousy the jealous person is that way simply because he lacks confidence in himself. He would probably be jealous of anyone he married, because he has strong feelings of inferiority and is usually unstable emotionally.
Any prospective mate who is habitually in such a mental stew without real cause would make an extremely poor husband or wife.
The Mate Who Wants to Improve You. There is sound psychology behind the thought in the marriage ceremony that you take your spouse “for better or for worse.” At the wedding each mate should be accepted for what he is with no reservations for the future.
Marriage is a partnership in the true sense and if one partner takes it upon himself to teach or improve the other, that relationship is sorely disturbed. One starts feeling superior and the other either inferior or indignant or both.
It is terribly easy for some new husbands and wives—after the glamour has worn off—to see flaws in their mates that should be corrected immediately. Their intentions may be kindly but soon they are continually criticizing and imploring the mate to change his or her ways.
A constant urge to improve a mate is closely akin to nagging. In fact nagging means oral pressure, and when applied to a spouse it invariably produces discord. The nagger in marriage is one of the major troublemakers.
If the attempts to improve a mate are made in public—as they frequently are—the affronts then clearly become intolerable. Nothing produces greater resentment. Even if the aggrieved partner can absorb such criticism without slashing back he will seethe inwardly and seek revenge for such an assault on his dignity.
Let’s look at the “improver.” It has been found that such a person is rarely the happily adjusted, emotionally mature person. Rather he could stand some self-improvement himself. Usually he is trying to improve the other either because of his own underlying feeling of inferiority, or because it gives him a mean, petty advantage over the other.
If after reading the above you still feel that your own mate or prospective mate has faults that could well be improved, why don’t you try one of these tacks?
First, remember that if you maintain high standards yourself your mate will gradually rise to them. Set a good example. Couples grow more alike every day they are married.
If you are anxious to have immediate results, use indirect rather than direct suggestions. A wife, for example, might say to her husband that she appreciates the fact that he has been more considerate of her during the past few days. This may be hokum. But even though he has not been any more considerate, the compliment will encourage him to be more considerate in the future.
Or suppose that a man thinks his fiancée shows appalling taste in her clothes. A frontal criticism would wound and probably infuriate her. But if he starts out by complimenting her on the few presentable things she wears, he can use them as springboards for getting across to her the kind of clothes she should wear to make herself most appealing to him. Few women can resist such suggestions.
The “Nervous” Mate. Many wives neglect their husbands, and many husbands quarrel with their wives, because they are emotionally insecure. They are at loose ends with themselves. In scientific language, they are maladjusted or neurotic.
Marriage in itself rarely cures an emotionally unstable person. In fact it may aggravate his trouble by adding new frustrations. A person who is unstable before marriage is apt to find that the increased responsibilities and decreased liberty under marriage impose new burdens. His frustrations become aggravated.
Every marriage counselor knows from experience that unhappily married couples usually present difficulties that can be traced to the emotional maladjustment of one or both of the mates. Perhaps the husband flies into a rage if supper is late or if his pipe rack has been moved. But any psychologist knows such tantrums are merely symptoms, symptoms of the man’s basic maladjustment to life. They will appear when he meets any sort of frustration.
If the wife is careful to have supper on time and keep the pipe rack in the same place the eruptions will appear somewhere else. They will appear, that is, unless the husband can get hold of himself and grow up emotionally. This may require help from an experienced psychologist who can get at the roots of the man’s difficulties.
Here are some other thoughts for easing a situation where one or both of the couple are high-strung.
When either mate is upset the other should make it easy for him to talk his troubles out. Talking things over dispassionately is a wonderful way to ease tensions. Psychologists now realize its importance and refer to it as mutual psychotherapy.
Sometimes the tensions are produced by physical and mental fatigue. Perhaps one or both mates are working too hard and relaxing too little. If so they should try to modify their routines to get in more rest, sleep and relaxation.
The Financial Critic. Money is not the root of all evil, but it certainly is at the root of a lot of marriage unhappiness. All studies that have been made concerning the reasons why married couples quarrel agree that financial arrangements cause more friction than any other one phase of marriage. For example, couples quarrel five times as much over money as they do over the rearing of children, which is a well-known troublemaker. One half of all divorced couples say that financial problems were a part of their difficulties.
Unless the couple is really poor, the lack of money doesn’t cause the troubles as much as bad management of it. The average couple should be comforted to know that too much money causes trouble almost as much as too little money.
A girl considering marriage with a man who has an irregular or uncertain income should face frankly the fact that the situation may become the source of bitter quarreling if the two aren’t careful. Regularity of income and job security seem to be more important than the size of the income. Couples who save money are happier than those who don’t, other things being equal.
Both girls and men selecting a future mate should be wary of people who are disorganized in their personal lives or are prone to carping. Those two types of people are most apt to inspire or provoke quarrels over money.
The main grievance of wives financially is that their husbands are too tight and the main complaints of husbands are that their wives are too extravagant or too chaotic in their budget-keeping. Husbands, interestingly, complain much more about the extravagance of their wives than wives complain about extravagance of husbands.
The Alibi Artist. Beware of the excuse-maker. Alibi-making is not mentally healthy. In fact it is one of the early signs of emotional confusion and mental deterioration. If a man or girl sees in the other during courtship indications that excuse-making is an ingrained habit, he would do well to break off the courtship and seek a mate elsewhere.
That may sound like a harsh way to deal with the purveyor of “little white lies” and excuses but it has been clearly established that such a person is a very bad marriage risk. The individual usually excuses his own lack of accomplishment or ability by projecting the blame for his failures on other people. Bit by bit this projection becomes devastating.
Continued excuse-making gradually brings the individual closer and closer to the gulf that divides the real from the imaginary, the sane from the insane. In its most pronounced form it is paranoia, a type of insanity.
The alibi artist has little respect for the truth, cannot be predicted, evades his obligations and is generally not dependable. The test designed to measure this tendency to alibi, which psychologists call “tendency to rationalize,” has already been discussed. The victim rationalizes or excuses his own conduct. The amazing thing is that this one test is an extremely accurate device to predict, by itself, marriage happiness or failure. Investigations have established that persons obtaining low scores in that one test have consistently proved to be unsatisfactory mates in marriage.
No husband ever gets conditioned to excuses for the lateness of meals, the unmade beds, the buttons that have not been sewn on. He doesn’t resent the inconveniences as much as he resents the wife’s constant excuses for failure to show some improvement.
The Escapist. The escapist is a close relative of the alibier, but somewhat more honest. He finds himself unable to cope with his everyday problem of living in a modern world so he turns and flees from them. This flight may be physical. That is, he may become a hermit or may go into the armed forces where he can shed all responsibilities for directing his own life. But more often nowadays the flight is into a dream world, via narcotics or alcohol.
Heavy drinking is steadily becoming more serious. Many distillers are even urging moderation in their advertisements. It is not merely on a moral basis that marriage counselors will warn you to shun the heavy drinker. As a husband or wife he’s a hard person to live with. And marriage rarely cures dipsomania or any other mania. So don’t think you can cure a fiancé or fiancée who habitually tipples.
The causes of drunkenness are not too well known but one thing is sure: the habitual use of alcohol is just a symptom of the person’s basic maladjustment to life, and not the cause of the maladjustment. In alcohol he forgets his problems, or imagines that he has found brilliant solutions for them.
The person who drinks excessively is always a psychological problem and an amateur cannot hope to be too successful in tackling it. Even a sanatorium cure brings only temporary relief unless the basic conflicts that impelled him to drink are resolved. Usually very careful counseling of the alcoholic is necessary to uncover his troubles and help him work out a solution for them.
The Disorderly Mate. To be successful in marriage or almost anything else in life, a person must keep his affairs in a fair degree of order. You should be wary if you find that a person you are considering for marriage is sloppy in his or her appearance or affairs.
If a girl’s apartment looks like an unmade bed, you can consider that a fairly accurate forecast of how she would manage your home. Or if a man is habitually late for dates or shows up without a tie or with unshined shoes, you can be sure he would be even more sloppy and inconsiderate as a husband.
Neatness, of course, can be overdone. One wife we know objects to her husband sitting in certain chairs until he has changed his clothes. Another will not permit her husband to enter the living room—which she prizes—until he takes off his shoes, unless there are guests.
Some people are fastidious about the way they dress and yet are disorderly in organizing their lives. Others are the other way around. But when disorderliness becomes general an intolerable strain is imposed on a marriage.
The Mate with Clinging Relatives. Statistically, in-laws cause about as much marriage woe as drinking. Many a promising marriage has been marred by them.
In the past six months, more than ten per cent of the troubled married couples consulting the Penn State Marriage Counseling Service had problems aggravated or initiated by their in-laws. We read recently a letter from a young wife who bewailed the fact that her husband’s mother insisted on going along with them on their honeymoon. She had told her son she needed a vacation and would like to go with them. Without consulting the bride he agreed. The bride lamented:
“I spent far more time alone with my mother-in-law than I did with my bridegroom!”
Living with in-laws at any time creates a hazard for most couples and should be avoided if possible, but it is particularly irritating during the first few months of marriage. Those months are crucial because of the adjustments the two people are making. It is then that they get fully acquainted, adapt their habits, work out compromises.
Any person contemplating marriage shows lack of foresight if he fails to consider the attachments his prospective mate may have to close relatives, or if he fails to weigh the chances that these relatives will ever live with the couple, and the outcome if they do.
One little-known aspect of this is that some in-laws in a couple’s home cause more trouble than others. The husband’s mother, for example, is apt to produce more difficulties than the wife’s mother because it is the wife who must spend the most time with the woman.
The husband’s mother often becomes a rival of the wife for the husband’s attentions and—as the husband’s own mother—may become head of the household.
Likewise a wife’s father in the household presents more difficulties than the husband’s father.
It is not necessarily fatal to live with in-laws. In fact the hazards are relatively small if the man and wife are both grown up emotionally and very happily married.
If you do find yourself eventually living with an in-law in the home, remember most of all to keep all financial arrangements clear-cut, and abide by them even more scrupulously than you would if they involved total strangers. Further, don’t borrow money from them.
The Flirt. Whether male or female, the person with the roving, aggressive eye is a poor prospect for marriage. The flirt is a poor prospect because he is basically a shallow, conceited, inconsiderate person, incapable of genuine love.
He will prove a difficult, unsatisfying person to live with as a marriage partner, because the wedding ceremony will not change his fundamental characteristics. You will have trouble establishing a give-and-take relationship with him. Then, when the glamour of the wedding wears off and the normal difficulties of marriage adjustment confront him, he will find this humdrum and start recalling his premarital conquests. Soon he may be flirting again and you may find yourself with a triangle on your hands. Triangles are responsible directly or indirectly for at least a fourth of all divorces.
Every person is a little jealous of his or her mate. But there is a point where the jealousy becomes excessive—and dangerous. Whether real or imaginary, the jealousy puts you in such a dark mood that anything you do may harm rather than improve the relationship.
If you answered fourteen or more of these with yes you are a victim of extreme and unhealthy jealousy. If however you answered less than four with yes you apparently don’t even love the person.