What Happened to Happily Ever After?

THE GIBBON IS a small primate found in Southeast Asia. It is one of the few mammals that mate for life. When two gibbons decide to tie the knot—boom!—it’s permanent. These miniature apes take “until death do us part” seriously.

I know what you’re thinking: “Have I picked up a National Geographic book on apes by mistake?” In a way, you have. But this is going to be about marriage. Trust me.

Few human beings are aware of the day-to-day life of the married gibbon couple. You will now join that privileged few. I can sense your excitement. Not only will you be able to amaze your friends with your knowledge, but you’ll also learn something very significant about your own marriage.

After a courtship that can last months, the male and female gibbon become a couple and move in together. They leave their families of origin and settle down in an area of leafy trees, choosing one specific tree for their home tree. Once they move into their home tree, the gibbons begin to practice a daily routine they will follow without variation for the rest of their lives together.

Each morning, just before dawn, the male and female gibbons rise and sing. Together, they belt out a song that can last up to two hours. They sing this same song the same way every morning.

The male and female gibbon spend the rest of their day swinging from tree to tree in their area looking for food. When they find food, they go through a cycle of eating, grooming, and resting. They groom each other the same way every time—the left hand parts the hair, and the right hand picks through it and cleans.

Every evening, the gibbons return to their home tree and groom each other again the same way. Sometimes they have sex.

You’ve always wondered how gibbons have sex, haven’t you? Well, haven’t we all? Here are the titillating details.

Up in the tree, the male gibbon swings past his woman several times to indicate his interest. Taking his cue without hesitation, the female assumes the position. She never complains of a headache. She never tries to get away from him. (You see, ladies, what we can learn from the animal kingdom?) The male hangs from a branch and quickly completes the act while swinging back and forth like a pendulum. (I told you this would be exciting.) Near the end of the sex act, the female cries out in her gibbon language, “Oh, honey! Yes, yes! You are the biggest gibbon stud in the forest!”

In fact, there is no passion. Just the mechanical, instinctive act. The gibbons have sex in exactly the same way every time. At the end of the evening, they hold each other in the manner they always do, and then they go to sleep.

The married gibbon couple performs these same carefully programmed rituals day in and day out for years until one of them dies.

Why have I described for you the daily life of the gibbon couple? What can we learn from them? Am I going to recommend that you sing together in the front yard of your home for two hours every morning? No. It might be fun, but no one has the time. Besides, the neighborhood SWAT team—I mean, the community association board—would send you a nasty letter.

Am I going to recommend that you have sex like the gibbons, with the male swinging in on a branch? Yes, yes, I am. This is the secret of a happy marriage. Actually, no. You could try it, but that’s not what I have in mind.

We can learn from the gibbons that, though we are human married couples, we are just like them. We perform rituals—rigid, patterned behaviors—day in and day out for years in our marriages. Many of these rituals are in place two years into a marriage. Two years!

By describing the gibbons and their daily behaviors, I have described the typical human married couple. I may have come dangerously close to describing your relationship.

Let’s take a close look at the typical couple. After a few years together, the man and woman have settled into a basic, unchanging daily routine. I could set my watch by their rituals. He’s getting the morning paper . . . now. He’s finishing his breakfast and belching . . . now. She’s asking him how he slept . . . now.

This couple does the same old things every morning. They repeat the same lines at the breakfast table:

WIFE: Morning, honey.

HUSBAND: Morning, honey.

WIFE: It’s gonna be a hot one.

HUSBAND: Yeah, feels like it.

WIFE: Looks like rain.

HUSBAND: Sure does.

WIFE: Have a nice day.

HUSBAND: You too.

WIFE: See you tonight.

HUSBAND: OK.

As they part in the morning, they engage in the time-honored ritual of the good-bye peck. Their lips, thinned out to hard nubs, touch for the briefest of instants. No moisture. No opening of the mouths. No warmth. No lingering of any kind. No fun, either. But that’s the way they kiss good-bye. They do it the same way every morning.

This gibbon—I mean, human—couple does the same old things every evening too. She’s working on dinner and getting started on some household chores. He’s sitting in front of the computer. She’s helping the kids with their homework and getting them off to bed. He has the television on and is zipping through the channels with his remote. She’s on the phone with a friend. Now she’s reading a novel before bed. They practice the same basic routine every evening.

They do the same old things every weekend. Do the yard work. Wash the cars. Cart the kids to sporting events and birthday parties. Go to the mall. Go to the grocery store. Play with the kids. Visit the grandparents. Watch sports on television. Go to church.

This couple performs these rituals over and over and over. Day in and day out. Week in and week out. Month in and month out. Year in and year out. These rituals are familiar. They’re comfortable. And they’re boring. Mind-numbingly tedious. No surprises. No spontaneity. No intimacy. No passion.

This couple communicates—or doesn’t communicate—in the same way every day. They use the same lines they’ve used for years! They act as if they’re following the script of a soap-opera episode.

The wife tries to get the husband to open up and share something personal. She wants to stir up a little conversation. She wants to find out what’s going on in his heart and mind. She wants to create some closeness. And so she asks the question she has asked for years: “How was your day?”

Reading from his script, he gives her one of the five responses he always gives:

These male human responses are designed to provide the female human with zero information and to shut down the conversation. And that’s exactly what they do. This is all part of the daily communication ritual.

The ritual usually continues with the wife making more attempts to develop some dialogue with the husband. I think you’ll recognize these female conversational approaches and male responses:

WIFE: Did anything interesting happen today?

HUSBAND: No. [Or] Not really. [Or] I like to leave work at work.

WIFE: What’s on your mind?

HUSBAND: Nothing.

WIFE: [Asks any question that probes for information.]

HUSBAND: I don’t know. [Or] I don’t want to talk about it. [Or no response—he says nothing at all. She checks him for signs of life.] [Or] Please, honey, not now. Let’s talk about that later. [Of course, later never comes.]

After hitting a dead end with her questions, the wife will go to the next stage of the ritual. She’ll share her own personal information about her day and life experiences. She’s hoping the husband will respond with interest and join her in the conversation. Of course that doesn’t happen. He faithfully follows his part of the ritual: He gives no response, acts distracted and fidgety, then asks her to stop rambling and cut to the chase. Finally he tunes her out and stops listening altogether. She catches him not listening and gets angry and hurt. Any hope for intimacy has been killed again.

In another key part of the communication ritual, the wife describes a problem she’s facing with a coworker, family member, child, fellow church member, or friend. She wants her husband to listen, understand her feelings, show concern for what she’s going through, and try to walk in her shoes. But that’s not his script in this ritual. Instead, he uses logic and tries to fix her problem. He plays devil’s advocate and tries to help her see the other person’s point of view. He says incredibly unhelpful things, like:

When they get angry with each other, this couple automatically moves into the “here’s how we deal with conflict” ritual. They act out the same behaviors and deliver the same words every single time. And every single time, they get the same results: another unresolved conflict, simmering resentments, and a relationship that is a little colder and more distant.

She says those four words that strike terror in his heart: “We need to talk.” His throat tightens and his bowels begin to loosen. Inside, he recoils as if she had just said, “I’m going to tie you to a chair and torture you until you scream with pain.” He immediately goes into his avoidance routine. He says nothing as she talks. He does not make eye contact. He refuses to engage. He will not respond. After ten or fifteen minutes of trying to talk to him, she stops and goes into the bedroom. She’s angry, hurt, and completely frustrated.

Or here’s another conflict ritual. After listening for several minutes to her expressing her feelings and point of view, he calmly interrupts and informs her that she has it all wrong. Totally ignoring her feelings, he “corrects” them. After all, doesn’t he know better how she feels? He proceeds to tell her in a rational, unemotional manner what actually happened. She is overpowered by his articulate, logical, and persuasive presentation. She realizes she’s wasting her time, so she gives in.

In another common conflict ritual, both spouses escalate tension quickly. Both shout. Both interrupt. Neither listens. Suddenly the man has had enough and walks away. The woman becomes even angrier and follows him, continuing to make her case in a loud, sarcastic way. He locks himself in the bedroom or drives off in his car.

It’s time for the typical couple to make love. Will it be a spontaneous, playful, and unpredictable experience? No, it won’t be. They will make love the same way they always do. Just like a synchronized swimming team, they’ll go through the same motions. From his pinch on her bottom signaling it’s her lucky night to her pat on his back when it’s all over, every move and every word is carefully choreographed.

Sex is about as thrilling as washing the car or cleaning the bathrooms. It doesn’t make any difference if you do those chores the same way every time. But it makes a huge difference if you follow the identical sexual routine every time. Boring. Boring. Boring.

I’ve heard many married couples in my therapy office describe their stale, predictable sex lives. I ask them, “Why don’t you videotape your sex and then watch the tape from then on? That would be about as exciting as the real thing.”

Now, tell me. What is the difference between this typical human couple and a gibbon couple? There is no difference. They’re the same! So don’t laugh at the gibbons. You and your spouse are the gibbons. If I took two gibbons from Southeast Asia and moved them in next door to you and your mate, you couldn’t tell the difference.

The gibbons’ rituals don’t kill their intimacy. They don’t have any intimacy—they’re animals! The gibbons can go forty or fifty years with their rituals and never get bored or lose intimacy. They’re not unhappy. There aren’t any gibbon marriage counselors. Observers have not recorded a single incident of a gibbon getting tired of marriage and leaving. Ape experts have studied this in the forest.

The rituals do kill the intimacy of us human couples. Doing the same things the same way and saying the same things the same way kills our closeness—and the process doesn’t take very long. In most marriages, intimacy is on life support two to five years after the wedding.

Husbands and wives say to me, “We fell out of love,” or, “Sometimes love just dies.” I say, “Baloney. Love has to be killed, and your rituals killed it. You ought to go to prison for killing your marriage. It’s marriage slaughter. You didn’t mean to. It wasn’t premeditated. But you killed it.”

Slavishly following your rituals is like eating a cheeseburger with onion and mustard at every meal. Cheeseburger at breakfast. Cheeseburger at lunch. Another cheeseburger at dinner. And doing it for months and years. After a while, a cheeseburger—once exciting—is nauseating. The pleasure and passion are gone. You know exactly how it will taste. You want to eat something different, something new, but you don’t know how. The cheeseburger is all you’ve ever known. You’ve never dared try something else. So you keep eating it. You won’t die of starvation, but you’ll wish you were dead.

The same lines. The same approaches to conversation. The same attempts at intimacy. The same defensive maneuvers to avoid closeness. The same daily behaviors. The same kisses. The same routines. The same married life every day. You’re boring each other to death when you could be exciting each other (almost) to death.

You still love each other, and that’s good. But if you keep on doing the same old things the same old ways, you’ll lose your love. And then you’ll be in real trouble.

It’s time to do something new in your relationship, isn’t it? It’s time to break the old patterns, get rid of the old rituals, and start fresh. It’s time to get your real needs met. It’s time to build a marriage that really works—for both of you.

1. Talk about the rituals in your married life. What do you do over and over in the mornings, in the evenings, and on weekends?

2. What are your communication rituals? How does the wife try to get conversation going, and how does the husband respond? What basic communication scripts do you follow?

3. How do you deal with conflict? What is your conflict ritual—meaning, what happens when the two of you are involved in a conflict? What is the sequence of events? Which classic ritual named in this chapter most closely resembles how you two handle arguments?

4. Are you doing sex the same old way every time? How would each of you say your love life is these days?

5. Agree that you’re both going to stop your rituals and start fresh. Pray—right now—for God to help you build a new marriage.