For a long time I’ve been thinking about wedding vows and how they can be a well-intentioned but problematic way to begin a marriage/partnership. I’ve tried to come up with a wedding vow that not only promises lifelong fidelity, but lifelong growth and maturity–even if that growth might lead to the end of the relationship.

Practically speaking, this is probably just a little mental exercise for me, an attempt to write a wedding vow that would never actually be taken by someone. I say this because weddings and union ceremonies are highly emotional events, and the couple in question invariably wants to emphasize the “until death do we part” theme. On a wedding day, nobody wants to think about the things you go to couples counseling to work on. And often enough, there’s nothing wrong with that. Some couples seem to be made for each other, and their wedding-day bliss makes for a great opening scene to a long and nourishing life together.

But most couples–and I count myself in this group–go through the ordinary developmental crises that intimate relationships face: the need for both persons to grow and mature; the difficulties they face at different stages in their lives; the ways they handle (or mishandle) anxiety, anger, distrust, and discord; and the inevitable ups and downs of sex, money, in-laws, kids, careers, substance use, and…well, you get the idea. For me, phrases like “in sickness and in health, for richer or poorer” just don’t cut it.

So here goes: my attempt at a wedding vow that gets a little closer to what I think a healthy marriage/partnership is. I’ll start with two examples of typical vows, then offer my own.

Here’s a traditional vow that most people hear at most weddings (particularly in the movies): “I take you, _____, to be my _____, to have and to hold from this day forward, for better or worse, for richer or poorer, in sickness and in health, to love and to cherish, until we are parted by death. This is my solemn vow.”

That’s your basic vow–short and eloquent, with the usual polarities (healthy/sick, rich/poor). One concern, though: it doesn’t say much about the inevitable difficulties couples face in the dynamics of a typical relationship, and I wonder if more marriages would last if the couple had words for what they would do if their relationship were in real trouble. This vow is short and elegant, but to a fault. It doesn’t say enough.

Here’s the vow I took in a blessing ceremony with my partner in 2003: “I, _____ give myself to you, _____, and these things I promise you: I will be faithful to you and honest with you; I will respect, trust, help, and care for you; I will forgive you as we have been forgiven; and I will share my life with you, through the best and worst of all that is to come, until death parts us.”

That’s better. It assumes there will be conflict (”I will forgive you…”), it stresses the importance of honesty and respect, and it drops the usual “sickness/health” language for “the best and worst of all that is to come,” which to my ears rings with a deeper wisdom.

But I still think we’re not there yet. Here’s my first stab at a vow that might bear the “Therapist Seal of Approval”: “I, _____ offer myself to you, _____, and these things I promise you: in times of rejoicing, I will celebrate with you; in times of sorrow, I will weep with you. When we fight, I will be honest with you; when I am wrong, I will seek your forgiveness. I will strive to share with you a life of respect, trust, growth, and love, through the best and worst of all that is to come, until death parts us.”

Hmm… I think that’s better. For starters, I like “I offer myself to you” more than “I give myself to you.” It implies the freedom of the other person to say, “No, thanks” to my giving of myself, and even though this is really not the best moment to do that, it’s healthy for couples to remember that they are freely offering themselves to one another, and freely choosing not to say No to the offer. This vow also assumes that not only will there be conflict, but that the person taking the vow will sometimes be wrong.

And finally, that last line: “I will strive to share with you…” That’s the line that I think would be hard for couples to say to each other. There’s an obvious (and big!) loophole: striving to do something isn’t the same as simply doing it. If I promise to strive, that implies that I could decide at some point that it won’t work, and the striving isn’t worth it. It’s the kind of thing a hospital might tell a patient: “We will strive to save your life…” If the patient dies, well, the hospital still strived. It also sounds a little klutzy, I think. It sounds like the kind of language you hear in Therapyland.

But I can’t figure out a better way to take a healthy wedding/partnership vow. There are millions of well-intentioned, good people in the world who take the traditional vow and wind up divorced. And because they assumed all along that they both made promises of unconditional fidelity, it’s hard to see the divorce as anything but a dismal failure. But many divorces are actually the healthiest option for the couples in question. Can you imagine a few scenarios in which divorce is the better choice? I’m sure you can. Again, it’s probably in bad taste to raise these issues on a wedding day. Lots of people would probably be superstitious about it–that if you talk about it, you’re tempting fate. But I maintain that a healthier vow makes for a healthier marriage.

As for the klutzy language, all I can say is, I’m working on it!

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It’s been a while, so I want to link again to this list of relationship tips by John Gottman, a master therapist and researcher. He studied couples who reported that they were happy—he took their word for it—and discovered these insights. I think my two favorites are “Accept Influence” and “Have High Standards.” In my work with couples, I find that couples are happier when they listen to each other and respond non-defensively (”Accept Influence”), and when they have high expectations of one another. That’s right—high expectations. Often enough, people will say, “Maybe I’m just being unrealistic, and demanding too much of him.” And I think, no, the reverse is true. Gottman’s research shows that the happiest couples are the ones who expect very good relationships with lots of give and take, lots of love, and lots of exciting intimacy.

But there’s something to think about here. You may have high expectations of your partner and come to find out that your partner simply is not interested (or able) to meet them. If so, this is upsetting, and it could lead to the end of your relationship. If that’s the case, the problem is not that your expectations were too high. It’s just that you were looking to the wrong person to meet them. And here’s maybe the hardest part to understand and accept: your partner (or now-ex-partner) was not wrong or bad for not meeting your expectations. They are your expectations, and no one was put on earth to meet them. You just need to find someone who wants to strive with you to have the high-expectation, high-quality relationship you want.

Oh - and I’ll add this: your partner may have promised you something that s/he ended up not willing (or able) to deliver. If that’s the case, then it makes perfect sense if you’re feeling frustrated and resentful. But if that’s not the case, your best option would be to take ownership of your expectations, keep them high, and keep searching for someone who wants to have the happy adventure you long for.

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Lately I’ve been reflecting on a story (or is it a legend?) from my own family history. If any of my siblings or cousins read this, please know: I don’t know how much actual historical truth there is in this story. I think the substance of the story is true. I’m fairly sure that if certain parts of the story didn’t actually happen, they at least were imagined by the persons involved. In any case, it’s a truthful story, if not a factually true one, and it led me into some insights that I think are useful. So…end of disclaimer!

Here’s the story.

In the mid-nineteen-seventies, my maternal grandfather was dying of Alzheimer’s disease. His wife—my grandmother—had been trained as a nurse when she was younger, so she came every day to his care center and helped the staff take care of him. At this point in his illness, he had forgotten her, and all the other members of his immediate family. But—and this part I know is true—he remembered his Mercedes. My grandfather was a successful businessman, and his good car was a source of pleasure and pride for him. For reasons passing understanding, he retained a memory of this car, even as his beloved family fell away from his awareness.

One day, after a few days of rainy weather, he turned to my grandmother—his wife—and said, “Nurse, can you make sure they put my Mercedes down there, on the opposite curb, so that I can see it when I look out this window? And can you make sure they wash and wax it?” My grandmother was a salty Irish mother, no taller than maybe five and a half feet. I can imagine her eyes narrowing as she heard this request. But she complied. She agreed to do this, and she went downstairs, drove home, took the Mercedes to the car wash, and parked it outside my grandfather’s window.

But before she did that, she drove the car to a street that—after the rains—had lots of mud along the roadside. She got out, went to the far side of the car, and kicked mud onto the clean doors and panels of the Mercedes. She took care to confine the mud to the side of the car her husband wouldn’t be able to see.

On one level, this story is a great joke. It’s a funny tale of my irreverent grandmother’s Irish temper, and her passive-aggressive response to her husband forgetting her. But as I reflect on the story, I think there’s more going on here. I think there’s something about the mud that speaks to her love for her husband, and her refusal to relinquish him to the inexorable darkness of his illness.

I think that her act of kicking mud onto the car was her way of insisting that there was some part of him that still belonged to her, and still knew her. It’s hard (if not impossible) to be truly angry at someone who is wholly unaware of your existence. You can have an abstract anger for someone you don’t know—for example, I spent eight years being angry at Dick Cheney—but the kind of anger that would inspire this muddy scenario is an intimate anger, a loving anger. If she had fully accepted the tragedy of his illness, and said her final goodbyes to him, she would not have acted on—or even felt—this anger. I think there was something resembling faith and love in this act of hers. She wasn’t going to fully let him go, not while he was still physically alive, and still interacting with her.

In short, if she had simply washed the car and parked it outside his window, I think she would have devolved into one of his nurses. He would have lost his wife, and she would have lost her husband.

I’ve worked with couples at all the different phases of the relationship cycle: new couples, couples married for 40 years, and couples in between. And I have two friends who have been married for (no kidding!) 62 years. Sometimes I think that my job is simple. My job is this: to help and support people who want someone in their life who will kick mud onto their Mercedes, and want to be the kind of person who would kick that mud. My grandmother’s comical Irish anger was actually (if you ask me) just another gift of love to her beloved spouse, another way to say to him, “I love you, dear one. I love you so much that I will reserve my deepest rage for you!”

I am thankful that I had a grandmother who threw mud on her husband’s car, right up to the very end.

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For those of you who learn best by reflecting on images and poetry, here’s a poem (below) that I think offers a good image of how loss and painful change can help us take our relationships to the next level. If you’re worried that something is broken in your relationship, you might want to reflect on how its breakage is making possible a new, more solid structure. I found the poem here.

Scaffolding
by Seamus Heaney

Masons, when they start upon a building,
Are careful to test out the scaffolding.

Make sure that planks won’t slip at busy points,
Secure all ladders, tighten bolted joints.

And yet all this comes down when the job’s done
Showing off walls of sure and solid stone.

So if, my dear, there sometimes seem to be
Old bridges breaking between you and me,

Never fear. We may let the scaffolds fall
confident that we have built our wall.

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So, this happened.

Back in June I posted on the then-revelatory news that South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford had had an affair (and a spectacular one, at that). And ever since then, I’ve felt increasingly uncomfortable with my June-09 take on the story. The hapless governor has looked worse and worse in my view. And it isn’t just the emails. It’s that after he disclosed his affair to his wife Jenny, he then asked for her permission to visit his lover. Maybe this is obvious, but that’s a no-no.

He never came to me for advice, but here’s how a better man (or woman) in that situation would handle it: 1) if you’re not planning to end it—or are at all ambivalent about ending it—tell your spouse about the affair; 2) if you can honestly say that you want to move in the direction of reviving your marriage (or bringing it to life for the first time), then by all means seek counseling; 3) stop telling the world about it and respect your spouse’s privacy, if not your own; 4) if you want to visit your lover, then visit her, but you’ll need to go back to step one and reconsider whether you really want to honor your spouse with a legitimate reconciliation process.

Since Gov. Sanford did none of these things, when I learned that his wife filed for divorce, I thought it was a good move. To borrow a line from one of my favorite therapists and authors, Mark Sanford forced Jenny Sanford to choose between her integrity and her marriage. I’m glad she chose wisely.

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Recently I acquired a new Flip camcorder so that I can videotape counseling sessions for my own learning and development as a therapist. To do this, I must obtain the written permission of the client, so please hear this loud and clear: the camera won’t be running when you come into my office! But I want to offer you the opportunity to have a videotaped session, and I’ve reduced my fee to $90 for a videotaped session (offer is good for one session per couple) to give you an added incentive to do this.

Here’s why it’s helpful: back in 2003, when I was licensed by the state of Washington as a Marriage and Family Therapist, I was finally allowed to stop working with a clinical supervisor. But I kept meeting with him. His insights and leadership are too valuable for me, and I know that the possession of a license doesn’t mean much if I don’t keep challenging myself and developing my skills. The best way for us to work together, though, is by viewing a video of one of my sessions and reflecting on the things I said and did in the session. Why did I lead the client this way? What’s my theory when I’m asking that? Have I considered how gender plays a role in their problem? Having a video makes all of this a much richer learning opportunity.

And there’s also a benefit for you (beyond the ten bucks!). If you’re willing to give written permission for a videotaped session, you’ll be letting my supervisor take a look at your problem and offer his insights. (You won’t meet with him, but I can let you know if there’s anything we discuss that might help you.)

If this isn’t your cup of tea, that’s just fine. But if you’re interested in doing this, let me know. It can lead to lots of learning and growth—and not just for me.

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I just saw this post from three days ago on the Stranger website. I’m not an avid reader of Dan Savage, but I’ve read him over the years and enjoyed his appearances on the national stage. But I have some quarrels with his take on monogamy, non-monogamy, and what’s “natural” and “unnatural.”

First, just so you know I get the joke (if it is a joke), I wouldn’t be surprised if Savage was just being provocative and sarcastic when he said monogamy is “unnatural.” After all, the people he tends to criticize are the people who love to separate “natural” human behaviors (such as, say, heterosexual missionary-style sex) from “unnatural” human behaviors (every other kind of sexual act, particularly if both participants share the same gender). Since I don’t read Savage too much, I’m happy to give him the benefit of the doubt. But on the chance that he’s being serious—that he truly holds to the view that long-term monogamous relationships are “unnatural” for humans, I would only say that he needs to clarify from what perspective he is stating this opinion. Is he reasoning as a sociologist or an anthropologist? I doubt it. And if not, then he’s just making a claim based on his own values and experience, and his label “unnatural” is, for the purposes of any serious debate, nonsensical.

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A lot of couples come in for help with communication skills, intimacy problems, emotional issues, or relationship crises (like an affair). When the conversation gets around to sex, a lot of people back off and say, “It’s not just sex that I want to work on in our relationship,” or, “I’m not just worrying about our sex life,” as if it would be shallow or wrong to complain about sex.

I say, complain long and hard about it! Sex is a central, vital dimension of any romantic/partnered/married relationship. You’re not shallow for wanting it to be healthy and pleasurable.

I’ll use the euphemism “intimate” to make my point. When a couple says they were intimate recently, it might take me half a second to realize they’re talking about sex and not non-sexual emotional intimacy. Rather than letting the euphemism stand and dodging a frank discussion about sex, I might mention that the best sex includes emotional intimacy, so we’ll have to use the actual words–’sex,’ ‘having sex,’ and all the other words that so many people worry are not fit for polite conversation.

Let me unpack this a bit more. Imagine that you meet the person of your dreams, the two of you date for a few months, and you decide excitedly that this is it, this is the relationship you’ve been looking for all your life. You start to prepare to move in together. You’re elated by this positive, nourishing relationship in your life. You move in together, and over time (often not that much time) you start to run into sexual problems. One of you starts having orgasm trouble. One of you starts to lose desire. One or both of you starts feeling anxious about the fantasies you keep having, or not having. One of you develops a medical problem, or suffers a loss or setback elsewhere in your life, and the sex goes haywire.

At this point, if you’re like most people, you might start to feel a little panicked. Was I wrong? Is this person not “The One” for me? If you’re smart, you’ll decide to talk to a counselor–even at this early stage in your relationship–to work through these issues. If you come in and talk to me, you might be tempted to downplay the sex problem. Why? I think it’s because I’m a nice guy, my office looks all calm and therapy-esque, you’re holding a cup of hot tea… and maybe you read People magazine in my lobby and the sex portrayed in those pages is a lot flatter and sillier (or hotter!) than anything you’ve experienced. It could be any of those reasons, or just your natural, understandable shyness when you’re talking to a clinician about your private life. One common worry is that I will judge you, that I will see you as a shallow person, a sex-obsessed person.

I promise you, I will not do this! Sex is one of the most powerful ways—if not the most powerful way—to connect with your partner at the deepest level of emotional and personal intimacy. To be literally naked in the presence of one another—without withdrawing your full self, with all your thoughts, feelings, hangups, and strengths—is a sure-fire way to grow and develop as a human being. I will even go as far as to say that sex is, at its best, one of the holiest activities two human beings can share together.

So, let’s talk about it. You’re not shallow. Far from it. You want the full benefits—and full challenges—of a serious, sexual relationship? I’m glad! And I can help you get there.

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When I work with couples, sooner or later I have to come clean with them and tell them that one of my jobs is to challenge both of them: each of you will be confronted with something hard, something very hard, that you need to wrestle with if you want your relationship to move forward. Maybe you need to be more assertive, and for you that is just simply terrifying! Or maybe you need to do the opposite–open yourself up to the other person, and maybe notice them (and their perspectives, and their needs) for the first time. Or maybe your challenge is something else entirely. In any case, one of my jobs is to challenge you.

But the other half of my job is to instill hope. And I mean it. I’ve posted before on the problem of hopelessness and discouragement in relationships, and I am convinced that this is a pervasive problem that frustrates and confounds us in our effort to relate well to others and, well, just be happy. So here’s my mini-manifesto on hope:

Be encouraged: you most likely can make the changes you want to make in your relationship, and even if you can’t—even if you or your partner finally decides to put an end to it—you can handle that disappointment, move forward, and gain wisdom from the experience. Either way, you will make it. I’ve worked with many hundreds of individuals and couples over the last eleven years—I think I’m in the thousands now!—and I have many inspiring stories to tell (if only they weren’t confidential!) about people who thought they couldn’t handle something, but then discovered that they were able to deal with it.

They thought they couldn’t improve their communication with their partner, and they learned new skills—and discovered courage they didn’t know they had—to break new ground. Or they thought they could never regain sexual attraction to their partner, and they found out to their delight that with a little relaxation, self-examination, and faith, they could open up to their partner in a new way, and get the chemistry back. Or they believed that they could never overcome the trauma and heartbreak of their past, but learned to their great relief that they are still capable of having a healthy, honest, non-abusive relationship with someone.

And there’s only one catch. (And I have to be honest about this!)

Here’s the catch: there’s lots of reason for hope, but almost 100% of the time, the happiness and satisfaction you seek will come to you only after you confront your demons, or overcome your fears, or wrestle with your usual way of doing things. Something difficult nearly always precedes the deep satisfaction of a new relationship.

When we work together, you can look forward to two things: a challenge, and a hopeful vision. They go hand-in-hand. I’ll even say that they depend on each other: without hope, the challenge is depressing, discouraging, even debilitating. And without challenge, hope is just a pipe dream. Couples therapy helps you work on both of these things. Be challenged…but also, be encouraged!

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Couples, don’t miss this question about picking up your partner from the airport. It’s one of those little couple interactions that can reveal a lot of wisdom (and problems) in your relationship. It’s a perfect example of small-time everyday situations that activate a couple’s relationship dynamic. Watch and learn!

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