Do you think anxiety gets in your way? Research finds that you are right.
Anxiety — paradoxically — leads people to marry more readily than those without it, and (unfortunately) to divorce more readily, too, because of greater marital dissatisfaction.
What’s more, anxiety is self-sustaining: It creates just enough havoc in a marriage to increase the dissatisfaction in that marriage — which, in turn, leads to greater anxiety.
Murray Bowen (deceased) explained why all this happens and his explanation takes something that seems counter-intuitive and makes complete sense out of it. The story begins, of course, in childhood. When parents rob their children of trust in them — emotional trust — it makes children anxious. And they grow up to be anxious adults.
How would this happen? Surely parents love their children and would never want to take away their trust. But they can do it just the same. Here are some ways:
- Blame, criticize, chastise frequently
- When a child complains, hit their vulnerabilities. An example of this is the following kind of conversation:
Child: “I really wanted to go to X. (whining) Why didn’t [friend] invite me?”
Parent: “Do you think he would invite you after you did A,B,C?”
In other words, instead of soothing the child or having a constructive conversation, the parent pours salt into the child’s wounds, reminding him of his gaffs. This can be particularly painful even if the mistakes the child made were not so terrible.
The point here is not to examine why the parent acts this way. It happens all the time; it’s so common that I am amazed and pleased when I witness it not happening. Looking at what’s behind it with the parent is for a different article.
The focus here is what happens to that child, and in particular, what happens to his relationship to his parent. The answer is: This is what breaks down trust. The child learns to hide himself from his parent because if he ever shows a flaw or soft spot, he knows his parent can use that against him.
Hiding is a great solution because the less the parent interacts with the child, the less he knows his child — and the less chances to blame, criticize or scold.
But put yourself in that child’s shoes for a minute: The child never knows when he will get “caught” making human mistakes that can be held against him.
And that leads to anxiety. It leads also to low self-esteem and tons of self-doubt. This is true even for the child that hides literally, like the runaways. They’ve already gotten the fear of attack deeply imbeded inside.
Where will such a person look for the missing self-esteem, the balm for the anxiety? The obvious answer is in another person, preferably of the opposite sex. This explains the rush to marry.
Next, we have to look at the person they marry. Most people do marry someone that has a lot in common with them in spite of the truism that we are attracted to our opposite. And a careful look at families does reveal similar levels of self-confidence among couples. So the person looking for the anxiety cure in marriage theoretically made a good choice. After all, the spouse “gets” what they’ve been through because that spouse has had similar experiences and can relate to their feelings.
But he, too, is looking for the “cure” in the other person. By the way, this “looking” process is not conscious. We unconsciously pick the person who can help us to heal because they’ve been there.
Here is where the problem comes in. It is not easy to apply a “cure” to our spouse if we are suffering from the same thing, especially if that “thing” is anxiety.
It gets even more complicated because there are normal life stresses out there that we bring home with us. Then we wait hopefully for just the right response from our stressed-out spouse.
The right response does not come and the spouse feels more stressed as well as now having added-on depression. The other spouse, clueless as to what he or she did wrong is now more anxious, perhaps angry as well, leading to conflict and greater marital dissatisfaction.
Research also shows that there is a gender difference between men’s and women’s level of supportiveness. A 2005 study ” using observational and diary data from 169 couples revealed that on more stressful days women tended to provide more support, [italics mine] whereas men, even though they provided support, also increased the negative behaviors toward their partners such as criticizing, blaming the partner or providing inconsiderate advice.”
Uh-oh. Guys? You listening?
On this latter subject, therapist Terry Real weighs in, pointing out that our culture asks men to step away from their own feelings. He talks about the typical reaction of a young boy to his mother’s tears and fright. That boy might be upset, scared, and sorry for his mother but he is not allowed to show those tender feelings in our society. From the age of two on, he is told, “Be a man!”
We see from this research how anxiety in marriage breeds more anxiety and ultimate marital dissatisfaction.
Yet the elements that clearly caused the problem are the very wellsprings of healing for the couple. They can learn to really listen to each other, be emotionally present, and supportive.
There are very specific steps that couples can learn to take so as to get to just this result. In one version or another, therapists help people to take these very steps and make these changes. No matter where you look in the literature there seem to be 4 basic steps that people can take to achieve these goals.
- Learn to breathe, relax, clear your head. Whether you take yoga, or just listen to relaxing music, or sit silently for a minute, breathing, when you do this, your brain re-wires, your vital signs go back to normal, your stress hormones diminish, and you gain a minute to come up with a better response than the one you had in mind.
- Affirm yourself. Never let someone else define you. And your definition of “you” had better be good. If it isn’t, that is something to work on.
- Know what your feelings are. After all, they’re yours; shouldn’t you know what you feel? Bear in mind that anger is often a mask for the more vulnerable feelings of sadness and fear. Know all of them.
- Be assertive. This is the ultimate in self-care. Don’t let others push you around.