Love doesn’t just sit there, like a stone, it has to be made, like bread; remade all the time, made new.
—Ursula K. Le Guin
Embrace. Kiss. Fadeout. With few exceptions, an ecstatic clinch marks the end of most romantic movies and reality TV dating shows. (Have you watched The Bachelor or The Bachelorette?) From then on, the implication is, the couple lives happily ever after. But that is fantasy, of course. (TV’s “true love” pairs usually break up within months.)
We may like to dream that relationships are fixed at their most joyous state, but we know better. Relationships are not static, frozen-in-time unions; they are living, breathing organisms, reacting through the days and years to the outside world and their own internal dynamics.
Relationships are tested constantly. We are well aware of the trials caused by accidental or intentional cruelties, such as illness or infidelity. But less well recognized is the profound challenge presented by even the most desired and welcome events. What the revolutionary new science is teaching us is that long-term relationships go through distinct periods—an initiation phase and three major subsequent stages—and that within each are critical transitions that shake every couple, even the most secure and serene.
The prelude to every relationship is what I call the Spellbound phase, during which two people become infatuated and increasingly obsessed with each other. When the two shift into a more explicit dependency and commitment, they enter the first stage of a relationship, which I call Formal Bonding. This typically occurs between one and two years into dating. The second stage, Parenthood, centers around the appearance of a couple’s first child. This is an especially trying time for women, many of whom become deeply unhappy and even clinically depressed. A couple enters the third stage, Mature Love, usually when the last child is ready to leave home. Another stressor, retirement by one partner, may occur at the same time or later.
These are crucial transitions; partners’ lives change dramatically and unpredictably as new challenges arise and different needs come to the fore. The smooth, known path suddenly becomes uneven and strange. While lovers may experience intense joy, pride, and excitement, they also grapple with massive stress and uncertainty. A couple often falters at such times. The usual explanation is that the general strain of these life transitions has proven too much. But more is at work here than has previously been understood.
These relationship shifts are actually potential bonding crises in which our need for connection and the nature of our bond is the core issue. A couple’s emotional balance wavers; partners’ faith and trust in each other often come into question. At such times, the bond has to be reshaped and renewed, or it may break under the weight of the new reality and each partner’s changed expectations. The more we understand these stages and shift points and the relationship needs that arise from them, the more equipped we are to deal with them.
At the very beginning of love there is infatuation and obsession. We tend to think that this is strictly the result of sexual desire. But right from the beginning, there is also emotional yearning. Indeed, as psychologist Paul Eastwick of the University of Texas, Austin, observes, passion is best defined as a combination of sexual connection and attachment longing.
A budding relationship is fraught with tension and anxiety. We whisper to ourselves, “Does this person want me? Am I going to be rejected?” The longing and apprehension push us to take risks, to reach out and move closer. Our anxiety is soothed as we get positive responses from this person, and gradually he or she becomes what John Bowlby called “irreplaceable.” The process of feeling anxious and vulnerable and finding that another can and will respond is the basic building block of love.
In movies, protagonists often dislike each other at first sight, but once they slay a few dragons together and discover solace and protection in each other, they realize that they are in love. Psychologist Lane Beckes of the University of Virginia, Charlottesville, has found that, indeed, any kind of threat automatically turns on the attachment system, calling up our need for comfort and making others who are potential sources of this comfort more attractive. Beckes assessed 48 students on their level of attachment security and then asked them to view on a computer screen brief clips of four smiling faces of men and women that were paired with subliminally flashed pictures of either neutral objects, say, a rolling pin, or disturbing images, such as a striking snake. Then students were instructed to press a key if the letters that flashed on the screen made up a word.
Researchers found that the students were much more likely to recognize attachment-associated words, such as nurture, comfort, and trust just after they saw the snake image. In addition, those who were assessed as insecure were better at identifying such words as rejection and vulnerable. Students also rated the pictures of faces as more attractive, warm, and likable after the scary images.
Anxiety and threat automatically call up the need for comfort and prime us to find security in another. If someone is there at a vulnerable moment, we begin to bond, and every risk we face together thereafter strengthens the sense of connection.
Many romantic partners break apart when one person starts to ask, “Are you there for me?” and cannot get a clear answer. It is one thing to accept you’re having a casual amorous adventure and another to face up to another person having a hold on your heart. Then you question how much you can really depend on that person, how strong is the devotion on his or her end. Many couples founder at moving into an explicit commitment, which frequently takes the form of a willingness to marry.
But is formalizing a bond really such a significant shift, such an emotional event? This may strike many as a silly question, given that so many couples today live together before marriage. About 41 percent of U.S. couples now cohabit before they wed, compared with only 16 percent in 1980. So how much of a change can there be after an official ceremony? A lot, researchers have found.
Living together may fully acquaint you with someone’s everyday habits and likes and dislikes—he drops his dirty laundry on the floor or in the hamper; she wants the right or left side of the bed—but it often stops short of complete emotional linkage. It’s like bouncing on the diving board but not plunging in. Moreover, cohabitation seems to have a hangover effect. Data show that couples that have lived together are more likely to be dissatisfied with marriage and to divorce. Why this is so is unclear, but it may be that couples who live together have more general reservations about marriage, more ambivalence about long-term commitment, and are less religious. Religiosity seems to encourage partners to wed and, when problems occur, to struggle to stay married.
Marriage allows full emotional commitment in two ways. It formally transfers attachment from one’s parents to one’s partner. It also allays anxiety about attachment and lays the groundwork for a long-term bond to grow. As a colleague said to me, “Standing up in front of all your close family and friends and putting a ring on each other’s finger is a statement of your intention to be this person’s love and home.”
The significance of getting married has emerged, with a certain ironic clarity, in the fight gay couples have been waging to be able to legally marry. Many conservatives who oppose gay marriage still assume that the gay lifestyle is naturally promiscuous and that gay men, especially, are uninterested in long-term commitment. But recent surveys corroborate the fact that gay youth, who now can be “out of the closet” and thus have no need to resort to the casual mating that often accompanies a hidden life, overwhelmingly want to form stable, lasting bonds with their lovers. They don’t want to just live together or have civil unions, they want to get married. “I don’t want to be Stuart’s ‘friend’ or his ‘live-in lover,’” Owen, a marketing consultant in his thirties, tells me. “I want to be his spouse—to have that commitment and for us to take that leap, to say we will be together no matter what.”
The early months of marriage are emotionally wobbly for nearly all couples. The wedding itself is often a roller-coaster ride of highs and lows. The bride is immersed in preparation for what marketers have cleverly labeled “the most important day of your life”—finding the gown and the venue for the ceremony, choosing the bridesmaids and their dresses, and ordering the food and cake. And that’s before the emotional demands from parents, relatives, and friends pour down. There’s little energy left for the groom, who often feels pushed aside and neglected, a postscript to the event. The TV series Everybody Loves Raymond captures these feelings perfectly in the episode when Debra, upon becoming engaged, pulls out an inches-thick album, a wedding planner she’s been putting together since the age of twelve. “But you didn’t meet me until you were twenty-two,” says a shocked Ray. “Well, you’re the last piece of the puzzle,” says Debra.
Once the acute turmoil is over, couples undergo a more subtle but more formidable emotional shift. The rules for making marriage work were pretty clear-cut just fifty years ago. The husband was the breadwinner; the wife was the homemaker. I remember my granny telling me when I was very young that when I grew up I had to tell a man how clever he was, keep the house clean, and know how to make a good steak-and-kidney pie. “But I want to have adventures,” I responded. “I don’t want to keep the house clean, and I don’t like steak-and-kidney pie.” I never did learn to make the pie, but I did learn to tell a man he was clever, and I did get married, perhaps because the rules changed!
We tend to forget just how significantly expectations have altered. It wasn’t that long ago that marriage was considered an alliance aimed at fortifying defenses, preserving wealth, and achieving financial security. Now marriage is seen primarily as an emotional venture, a commitment to the creation of a very particular kind of bond. In fact, in the United States, “emotional support” and “friendship” have replaced the rearing of a family as the central motive for marriage, according to a survey by the Pew Research Center, in Washington, DC.
Consequently, whatever disturbs the emotional relationship is paramount. A 2000 survey by the Center for Marriage and Family at Creighton University, in Omaha, discovered that the number-one problem reported by modern newlyweds is balancing job and family; the second is frequency of sex. Studies show, however, that even though satisfaction with the relationship tends to decline somewhat in the first years after marriage, the sense of security increases. Partners are less worried about abandonment and more comfortable depending on their spouse.
“It’s not all roses and bells, like it was when we were dating,” acknowledges Samuel, 29, who has been married for three years. “We fight more than we used to when we lived apart, and sometimes we have different ideas about what a husband or a wife is supposed to do. But for me, I know more than ever that she is the one I want to be with, and I think we can make it, even if we face problems. She is my wife. We count on each other. We are just going through a rough patch right now.”
Newly married folks are more accommodating, according to a study by psychologist Scott Hall of Ball State University, in Indiana. They tend to minimize problems and anxieties and excuse harsh actions and words with statements like “He didn’t mean to say that” or “Maybe I’m being too sensitive.” These couples focus on the positive aspects of their new situation.
One consistent research finding is that the more insecurely attached people are, the shorter their significant relationships tend to be and the more likely they are to divorce. This fits with University of Texas professor Ted Huston’s landmark study of couples married for five years. He found that the most important factor in predicting a marriage’s collapse was not the amount of conflict present but rather the couple’s lack of emotional responsiveness, a classic sign of insecure attachment.
A greater emotional jolt occurs when two become three. Scores of studies conducted since the 1980s document the fact that relationship quality plummets when the first little one arrives. A 2007 study of 130 young families by psychologist John Gottman of the University of Washington, Seattle, found that in the three years after a baby was born, marital satisfaction dropped significantly in two-thirds of the couples.
Why is this? For both partners, there is less money, less sleep, more tasks, and more conflict over how to parent: new moms and dads have eight times as many arguments as childless partners. Parents suddenly see their roles shifting. Men may begin feeling hugely responsible for their expanded family’s financial well-being and, as a result, pitch themselves into work. Women become the chief baby caretakers and can find their home workload tripled, according to the Center on Population, Gender, and Social Inequality at the University of Baltimore. “I have to get that promotion,” say new fathers, and they put more hours into the office just when their wives are demanding, “I need you to come home at five o’clock and relieve me. I’m going crazy being home with the baby full-time.” And there is no outside relief. Couples used to live close to relatives, now they often dwell states away. Grandpa and Grandma are only occasional visitors, not ever-ready babysitters.
New parents can soon wind up feeling isolated from each other. The most significant drop in relationship satisfaction seems to happen about one year after the first child is born. Partners find that they have little energy to put into intimacy and sex. They are out of sync. New mothers appear happy to have sex every few weeks, while new fathers want it three times a week. Some of this is probably the result of women’s fluctuating hormones; oxytocin surges during breastfeeding, bonding mother and child, while testosterone and other desire-fueling hormones take a dive.
Terry, 35, a restaurant manager, who wanted desperately to be a dad, finds himself telling his wife, Chan, “Look, it’s hard to say this because I feel like a wimp, but you are in love with the baby! And I am, too, but you are breastfeeding and snuggling for hours every day. The closeness we had in sex has kind of disappeared; for you it is almost like a chore. I can’t help feeling left out and kind of deprived. And maybe this is ridiculous, but I watched my brother’s marriage come apart when his kid was born, and I find myself getting freaked out and resentful. I don’t want that for us. I am working harder at work, too, because suddenly I feel like the family provider. I don’t want to pressure you. You’re a great mom.”
The strains of parenthood are so well known that only about 40 percent of Americans now believe that children are crucial to a successful marriage, reports the Pew Research Center. And couples with kids are more likely to divorce in the first seven years of marriage than are childless pairs.
The decline in marital satisfaction after baby’s arrival is about twice that reported by new parents in the 1960s and 1970s, reflecting the new centrality of emotional connection. Loss of time and intimacy is more troubling because it is more valued. Partners are no longer expected to be just dependable teammates, they must be intimate loving soul mates as well.
“You think being a parent is changing a diaper once a month,” Cindy says accusingly to Dan. “You leave everything to me, and then when I am exhausted, you want sex.”
“You are right,” replies Dan. “I probably don’t do enough as a dad. But I am still struggling with how we have changed. Is there a we anymore?”
New parents who have difficulty after baby’s arrival tend to be the ones who were having trouble creating a secure bond before. Jack and Naomi had struggled from the beginning. Naomi is anxiously attached; she had an abusive first marriage and was reluctant to trust any subsequent lover. She insisted that Jack prove his love by moving across the country to be with her. After much arguing, he had agreed, but had then withdrawn into his work, trying to regain the success he had been forced to give up.
Their disconnect surfaced in the delivery room. Naomi was attended by her doctor, a midwife, and a doula. In the midst of a contraction, she said to Jack, “I want you to come and put your arms around me.” Jack turned away and responded with a flat “no.” Naomi felt wholly abandoned. “I felt replaced,” Jack explained. “She had all these people taking care of her. I felt superfluous, incompetent, and unnecessary. I knew that whatever I did was going to be wrong, and I was just in the way. I guess I got scared—the birth wasn’t going all that well, and I couldn’t do anything.”
Jack and Naomi’s sense of isolation and rejection has not abated. Three years later, they still fight about what happened in the delivery room and about events since then, when Naomi has felt dismissed. In one incident, Naomi was deeply worried that her newborn son was throwing up too much and becoming ill. Jack responded by searching the Internet and presenting her with statistics showing that this was common among infants. He called her anxiety “ridiculous.” She was not reassured. The distance between them widened, and conflict escalated.
If this couple had developed a more secure bond before moving into parenthood, they would have been better able to heal the original injury and to tolerate each other’s different ways of handling baby-related anxiety as well as Jack’s lapses into coldness. The effects of attachment insecurity always become more apparent when people face challenging situations.
Avoidantly attached mothers and fathers are apt to be ambivalent about becoming parents to begin with. Often they do not actively choose parenthood; they agree to it to placate their partner, or it results from contraceptive mishap or absence. They find tending to a child unsatisfying and frustrating when it interferes with their personal interests and activities. Their complaints are not centered on a partner’s lack of support—they dismiss their need for support most of the time—but rather on their own irritation and discomfort. “I used to go the gym every day,” protests Carl. “Now I can’t get out of the house.”
“We used to go out for brunch on Sundays or to a movie with friends on the spur of the moment,” complains Sylvia. “Now on Sundays we’re always taking walks in the park with the baby. And we can only see friends with a lot of planning. Which means almost never.”
Avoidant people are less available and responsive to their partners and, as hundreds of studies of parents interacting with their infants demonstrate, to their children as well. The weak bond makes transition periods especially difficult for couples and also generates a less effective parenting style, which can adversely affect the growing child.
Couples with a secure connection are not immune to trouble during life transitions. They, too, can feel overwhelmed by the challenges, miss each other’s signals for help and reassurance, and move into negative cycles, for example, habitual blaming followed by defensive withdrawal. But they are better able to tolerate and recover from the inevitable periods when a partner is less responsive and available. They have faith in their partner’s love and their ability to renew connection when opportunities occur. They will even make the opportunities occur. John Gottman calls such flexible pairs “master couples” of the transition to parenthood.
Cindy, for example, hears Dan’s message that he needs her attention. She tells him that if he can arrange to come home early a few days a week and care for the baby, she will take a nap instead of doing laundry. That way, after the baby goes to sleep, she’ll be rested and alert and the two of them can enjoy dinner conversation and the evening together.
To what extent are partner-bonding issues related to the rise of clinical depression in new mothers? Postpartum depression is estimated to occur in between 7 and 15 percent of women, and the less severe but still distressing “blues” in between 30 and 50 percent. Sarah, 35, tells me, “I have never felt so overwhelmed in my life. I am so scared of not being the perfect mother and I am so exhausted and the demands are so constant. And Gerry just doesn’t seem to understand. I feel more distant from him just when I need to feel really close.”
Depression in new mothers traditionally has been viewed as the result of the powerful hormonal changes that occur during childbearing and birth—that is, as a purely physical medical issue. It’s only recently that researchers have begun considering the impact of the attachment relationship between partners. John Bowlby himself pointed out that uncertainty and stress heighten our need for a “safe-haven, secure-base relationship” and that perceived abandonment and rejection, or even a lack of comfort and support when we need it most, naturally generate depression and despair.
We now have strong evidence that, although hormonal changes play a role, depression is deepened and perpetuated by relationship anxiety and distress. This is particularly true for anxiously attached women, who tend to be highly sensitive to their partner’s actions and so are more likely to perceive that their need for support is not being met. They report more anguish and anger and have a higher incidence of postpartum depression than either their avoidant or securely bonded peers. Studies suggest that many of these women may also be depressed before pregnancy and motherhood. In addition, anxious women see themselves as less competent, and this affects their ability to adapt to their new role as mother.
Highly avoidant women suffer less depression than do anxious women after baby’s appearance. They tend not to enjoy caring for children, and so are more detached as mothers. They endorse harsher methods of discipline and expect their children to become separate and independent at earlier ages than do mothers with other attachment styles.
The women who fare best when the “blues” or depression strikes are those who are securely bonded with their mate. They are less hesitant to ask directly for support and caring and recover more quickly. Even when depressed, these mothers can parent effectively and sensitively. Carolyn and Philip Cowan, psychologists at the University of California, Berkeley, followed 96 couples from pregnancy to their child’s enrollment in kindergarten and beyond and found that depression only seriously compromised a mother’s ability to be warm and responsive to her children when she felt that her marriage was also in jeopardy. Secure bonding protects us—and our offspring—from negative emotions that are triggered in times of stress.
Depression after a baby’s birth occurs in men as well as women, though it is less recognized. This may be because of the delay in its appearance. Women can sink almost immediately into melancholy; men typically become ill two to three years later. Unlike women, men experience no hormonal turmoil; it’s strictly an emotional problem. Researchers now link it to distress in the couple’s relationship. A toxic feedback loop develops: the frayed bond leads to conflict, which in turn leads to depression, which further weakens the bond, and so on.
Treatment has typically focused on the individual parent, usually the mother, but new research indicates that it would be more effective to treat the couple. Shaila Misri, clinical professor in the department of psychiatry and obstetrics at the University of British Columbia, studied 29 couples in which the new mother had been diagnosed with postpartum depression. Half the mothers met alone with a counselor for four sessions to discuss how to cope with a new baby. The other half attended sessions with their baby’s fathers. There they were encouraged to talk about how to handle the baby and household chores and also how to talk to each other about these issues. At the end of the intervention, the couples in which the mothers were seen alone reported decreased relationship satisfaction. The “together” group, by contrast, showed an increase in happiness as well as a lessening of the mother’s depressive symptoms, such as crying and hypersensitivity.
Another program, Bringing Baby Home, developed by psychologists John and Julie Gottman, has had similar results. During the two-day course, couples perform communication exercises and view videos that demonstrate how to care for and play with a baby. Couples enrolled in the program were happier with their relationship and had fewer signs of depression compared to couples who did not attend.
Strengthening the bond between spouses is the best way to ease the transition to parenthood. A secure relationship not only makes partners feel safe, it also instills confidence in their individual abilities. Such faith when we are entering a new stage in our relationship and our life can be amazingly effective in enhancing our ability to cope.
In our last session, Elaine told her husband, Mark, “I was used to feeling so sure of myself at work. But suddenly, when Joey was born, I had no confidence at all. I felt so overwhelmed when he wasn’t sleeping and was so difficult to soothe. I didn’t know how to do this—this thing that all women are just supposed to know by heart. I was failing the Madonna test. But then you gave me all this emotional support. You didn’t tell me what to do. You told me that you saw how exhausting it all was and that you were sometimes unsure, too, about how to be a good parent. Best of all, you told me that you thought I was a great mom. You appreciated me for working so hard to figure out how best to comfort Joey even when he wouldn’t suck properly, and you felt lucky to be married to me and to have me as the mother of your son. You told me that you knew I could do this and we would figure it out together. That changed everything for me. I would think about you saying that when I was alone in the house, exhausted, and Joey was crying.”
There is, of course, even more at stake here than the quality of the relationship between two people. How a couple deals with becoming parents and functions as a caregiving team inevitably influence their children’s emotional and mental health. Irritability and withdrawal, both part of depression, will threaten any child’s sense of secure connection. Depression, particularly in a mother, is one of the strongest predictors of emotional and mental problems in children and adolescents. As such, how a couple navigates the shift to parenthood shapes future generations and our society as a whole. Indeed, in this as in many other concrete ways, the strength of our romantic relationships impacts us all.
As we grow older, relationships have to accommodate to critical challenges: children leaving home, spouses retiring, and partners aging and becoming physically frail. A more secure bond improves our ability to deal with these transitions and to renew and grow our relationships.
Children ultimately leave home, of course. For some parents this transition is painless and even positive. They can celebrate this shift as the beginning of a second honeymoon, a chance to celebrate their bond. Marta and Ken were sad to see their last child choosing to take his first job in a faraway city, but they decided it was a chance to look at their relationship and maybe even plan to renew their vows in the church down the road, where they had married thirty years before.
But for others, moving into this stage of love is rife with grief, loss, depression, and marital conflict—so much so that many couples wind up divorcing. The empty nest syndrome, as it’s been dubbed, has usually been ascribed to a parent’s—commonly the mother’s—overinvestment and overinvolvement in the offspring. The attachment lens, however, reveals a new explanation: children flying the nest exposes a big emotional gap between partners.
For many couples, kids have been the bridge over the attachment abyss in their marriage. For years, they’ve been joined in parenting but not much else. Once the buffer of the children is gone, their disconnection becomes overt and inescapable. They find that they are incapable of reaching out to each other to deal with the loss of the parenting role and the everyday intimacy with their children. They are not each other’s safe haven.
Kali, 54, is contemplating separating from her husband after thirty years of marriage. “From the beginning, we had lots of problems,” she observes. “I always felt kind of inferior to Frank, so I would hide and withdraw. But when we had the kids, it really pulled us together. We were a great team, and that was the basis for our closeness, I guess. We were twenty-four-hour-a-day parents. I was a mother first and foremost. But then our youngest left for college, and suddenly I had no idea what to do with myself or what to say to Frank. There was this empty space in the middle of our relationship. I felt so lonely, and I realized how much I had counted on the kids for closeness.” Kali turned to her husband for help with this loss of identity and connection, but he was unresponsive. “I needed to talk. I needed his help, but he just went off, back into his career. Then I got good and mad.”
Women like Kali not only get emotional sustenance from their children to compensate for the lack of nourishment from their spouse, they also often actively tamp down their own anguish to keep the family intact for their children. After years of such bottling up, when the last child is launched, they erupt. Staying together for the kids is hard at the best of times, but it is impossible once the kids have gone.
Spouses who are securely connected are less threatened by and better able to cope with the loss of the parenting role. They are able to seek their partner’s support and in return be responsive to their partner’s needs. They can go through this transition as a couple. For them, this period can be an opportunity to not only affirm the bond between them but also use their connection as a secure base from which to vault into a new life and develop fresh interests of their own.
Claire, 53, an attractive but shy mother of three sons, is married to Simon, 55, a busy lawyer. Claire homeschooled her children, all of whom have learning disabilities. Her youngest, Todd, recently went off to join the navy. Simon, his father, was ecstatic. For him, this event signaled success as a parent and a new freedom. But he was concerned about how Todd’s leaving was affecting his wife. In my office, they discussed what was happening.
Simon: I am worried about you and about us. You mope around all day and tidy up the house when it doesn’t need tidying. I don’t know what is happening with you, but you seem very distant, and we don’t seem to share or cuddle. I want to help you cope with the kids leaving. It must be hard. I think you should start going to the gym. I want to help.
Claire: I don’t want to go to the gym. I am fine. [She sounds angry, so I ask her about that.] I guess I am. I have lots of conflicting feelings here. I have looked forward to not being such a hands-on mom, and now that that time is here, I feel lost. And you [she points at Simon] keep trying to manage me and cheer me up, tell me how great everything is, how we can travel now. Everyone keeps telling me that I should feel really good that Todd got into the navy and all my boys are launched. Maybe I should. So I keep quiet.
I ask Simon how he feels about Claire’s silence.
Simon: I don’t like your quietness. You miss the boys, but I miss my wife. I miss you. I don’t know what is going on with you. So I suggest stuff like the gym. And you just get irritated with me. It’s been weeks now. Where are you, Claire? Where did you go?
Claire: [She smiles and tears up at the same time.] I just need to be sad for a bit, and my sense is that you can’t hear that because you are relieved that it’s just us at last. So I go be sad by myself. I liked being a mom, even when it was hard. [She cries.] Now they don’t need me, and it feels bad. I know there are other things I can do—another page to turn—but right now…
Simon: [He leans forward, his face soft.] You are a great mom, sweetie. Your kids will always turn to you. In a way, I am relieved, but I miss them, too. I don’t want you to feel so sad. It worries me.
Claire: I guess I just need some comfort from you and some time. I can’t just turn around and remake my life. I feel a little raw here. And unsure of who I want to be now. I need a little help with my feeling sad. I can’t just act like nothing has happened.
Simon: [He reaches for her hand.] I will help. Whatever you need. Sorry if the “go to the gym” idea was off. I was trying to help. I guess you need to grieve a little here. To be sad. I will be here. [After a long silence.] And I hope that you will get to the place where you are happy with us just being us, a couple, and be happy with that. Do you think?
Claire: [She laughs.] Oh, yes. You don’t have to worry about that. We will be fine.
She looks at me. I sense her wondering about my silence. I tell her that they don’t need me at all. They are doing just fine helping each other find their feet and move off into a new dance together.
A few months later, Claire went back to school part-time and took up photography so she could take pictures on the trips she and Simon were planning. She told me that she had fallen in love again with the guy she had married twenty-seven years earlier and that this was strange but good.
The Beatles song “When I’m Sixty-Four” highlights yet another transition that we are only now beginning to understand: becoming elders. Today, our life expectancy has increased; many of us will live well into our eighties and even nineties, and some will make it to one hundred or more. And we will need to love and be loved during all those years.
Traditionally, researchers have believed that marital satisfaction follows a U curve: it’s high at first, dips through the child-rearing years, and then rises again once the demands of parenting and work have lessened and a couple has more time for each other. There is some evidence that older couples do tend to fight less, have fewer negative emotional responses, and show more affection, even during arguments.
Yet the facts belie the U curve model. Unlike the divorce rate for younger age groups, which has been holding steady since the 1980s at around 45 percent in the United States, the rate among those age fifty and over is on the rise. Tipper and Al Gore, who split after forty years together, are the best-known example of “gray divorce.”
Women in particular are not as willing as they once were to stay in empty-shell marriages, according to a 2004 AARP study of divorce at midlife and beyond. Sixty-six percent of the splits were initiated by women, and 26 percent of the men stated that they never saw the divorce coming. Among men and women ages 65 and older, the divorce rate has at least doubled, and we should expect to see more breakups as the population ages: 13 percent of Americans are now over 65; by 2030 the figure will be 19 percent. This is in spite of the fact that there is evidence that partners tend to mellow, fight less, and generally become nicer to each other in their later years.
Various explanations are offered for gray divorce: we stay healthier longer; baby boomers value personal happiness; women now have the financial means to live on their own. But these are what permit couples to separate—they aren’t the root cause. The foundation of contented, sustained relationships is the faith that your partner is there for you. And that trust can be brutally rocked in the elder years.
The first shock is retirement. A partner’s leaving the workforce can prompt many of the same feelings as the last child leaving home—and reveal the same emotional breach. Partners are thrown together after years of spending considerable time away from each other, and their goals and needs may be poles apart. They can feel like they’re living with a stranger.
John, 66, has just retired from his law firm and wants his wife, Carrie, to take up golf and go on cruises with him. Carrie, 55, is balking. The interior design firm she founded is thriving, and she has no plans to give it up. In fact, she feels that at last she has found her stride and is fulfilling her dream of having a career. “We had the kids you wanted,” charges John. “Now I’m retired, and all you can do is talk about your work. Who am I going to play golf and have lunch with?”
Sarah, 62, has taken early retirement and wants to travel, take university courses, and learn ballroom dancing. Her husband, Craig, 67, never intends to stop working. He wants Sarah to come and help him run his new and expanding import-export firm and is appalled by the idea of taking time to learn the fox-trot. “You can’t be serious,” he says with a snort. “You want to go off learning to dance and take workshops in bird-watching. That is ridiculous. I am not even going to talk about that.” He leaves and goes back to work.
If couples have a secure bond, they can work through such impasses and reach a compromise that is satisfactory, or at least tolerable, to both. When Carrie and John can have a calm and open conversation, in which they share their needs and fears and he can hear how deeply important it is to her to see her company grow, he actually offers to help her with drawing up contracts. She agrees to take at least six weeks every year to travel with John, and they plan their first trip together. She draws the line at golf, however! This couple’s bond offered them a secure base on which they could stand and explore each other’s emotions, fears, and needs and find a way to deal with them together.
But Sarah and Craig are deadlocked. They cannot find a way to help each other deal with the shifts that make up this stage of their relationship. As Sarah becomes lonelier, without the companionship of her children, she gets angrier. As she demands more of Craig’s time, he turns away more and works later. Sarah tells him in a high, agitated voice, “I have been married to you forever, but I can’t remember a time when I felt you put me and our relationship first. I think our sex life and our kids held us together, but both of those are gone now. I am lonelier than I have ever been. I might as well leave. After all the hurts and injuries over the years, I don’t know what I am doing here. I’d be better off by myself.” Craig, who has no idea how to respond to his “hysterical” wife, turns away and closes down. “Fine,” he mutters.
They will divorce. Indeed, retirement precipitates divorce in many long-term marriages. In Japan, where husbands routinely devote years to advancing their careers and rarely see their families, there is even a special name for this malaise—shujin zaitaku sutoresu shoukougun, which literally means “one’s husband being at home stress syndrome,” or “retired husband syndrome” for short.
Retirement can be an acute crisis, usually lasting for a year or two at most. But then there are all those years after retirement. What keeps a love relationship going in our waning years? And how important is it?
A multitude of studies show that a positive, close relationship is one of the best predictors of longevity and physical and mental health. In one pioneering study, University of California psychologist Howard Friedman and his colleague Leslie Martin analyzed data on 1,500 middle-class folks who were born around 1910 in California. The voluminous records traced their lives over eight decades until their deaths, detailing their experiences and habits through prosperity, the Great Depression, and two world wars. The notations included everything from the happiness of their parents’ marriage to their career choice to the number of books they had in their home.
Friedman concluded that medical advances play a minor role in extending life span. “Most people who live to old age do not do so because they have beaten cancer, heart disease, depression, or diabetes,” he says. “Instead, the long-lived avoid serious ailments altogether through a series of steps that rely on long-lasting, meaningful connections with others.”
In other words, you can eat special organic and gluten-free foods, gulp down multivitamins, get yourself to the gym, and meditate into a stress-free zone, but the best tonic for staying healthy and happy into old age is probably toning up your relationship.
Being attached to a partner buffers us when illness strikes. Psychologists Anthony Mancini and George Bonanno of Columbia University questioned more than 1,500 elderly married couples living in Detroit. One member of each pair had a heightened sense of mortality due to a physical disability that made routine tasks, such as bathing, dressing, climbing stairs, and picking up heavy objects, difficult to accomplish on their own. The researchers discovered that self-esteem was higher and depression and anxiety lower in the handicapped people who had an emotionally responsive mate. Having a spouse who was willing to listen to their worries and made them feel loved made more of a difference to their mental well-being than did help with buttoning shirts, tying shoelaces, and the like.
Other studies reinforce these findings. It is emotional support—expressing concern and allowing partners to express their feelings—that sustains health and helps maintain optimum functioning of our body’s cardiovascular, hormonal, and immune systems. And it is emotional support, not physical assistance or pragmatic advice, that most cushions us from the stress and strain of illness when it occurs.
Sybil, 68, suffers from chronic arthritis. She tells her husband, Harry, a spry 75, “You can help me best by being there for me and showing that I am important to you and you care. I don’t need all that advice; it just distresses me. I need you.” Harry looks puzzled, but I can assure him that she means this literally and that his closeness can make a real difference. As we grow older, secure connection with a loved and loving partner becomes an even more vital resource.
The end of this stage in a love relationship comes when one partner faces death. Even in this final transition, close ties can help both the dying and survivors, as a program at Princess Margaret Cancer Centre in Toronto affirms.
“I saw that partners were as devastated by the diagnosis of terminal cancer as the patient,” observes psychologist Linda McLean, the program’s director. “They were swept away on a wave of helplessness and anticipated loss as they watched their loved one decline. I knew that losing a partner put these people at risk for all kinds of health problems later.” Indeed, survivors are physically as well as mentally very fragile in the year after a partner’s death.
McLean and her team offered 42 couples who were dealing with a terminal disease at home either standard care—that is, practical advice on how to cope with the illness—or a modified version of my Emotionally Focused Therapy, which concentrates on shoring up the bond between spouses. Partners were counseled to talk about what they were facing, make joint decisions about how to control symptoms, and plan how to spend their remaining time together. In couples who received EFT, patients felt more heard, understood, accepted, and cared for by their spouses. And spouses felt less burdened by and more appreciated in their caregiving. They found satisfaction together in reviewing the dying partner’s life and in creating a narrative of their time together.
“This project was so intense and so rewarding for everyone involved in it,” says McLean. “It was a privilege to be with people in their last days and moments and to feel that we had helped them reach some kind of serenity and calm. After the patients died, the caregivers also expressed tremendous gratitude to us. They told us that the sense of resolution and connection they felt with their partner was invaluable. That this had helped with their helplessness and their grief.”
Secure connection to a loved one not only helps us handle grief better and experience fewer traumatic symptoms but also can nurture and sustain us the rest of our lives. This is contrary to conventional wisdom, which urges survivors to let go of the departed so as to turn back to the living. We do need to accept that a partner is gone, but we can also hold on to our bond with our loved one by accessing memories or imagining exchanges and using them as a source of strength and comfort.
“It was so hard to lose him,” a friend who lost her husband told me eighteen months after his death. “But now, when I see something lovely, like the snow falling very gently on a winter evening, I find myself telling him how beautiful it is, and knowing how much he would like it makes that moment even more beautiful. And when I am down, I remember how much he loved me. I still feel loved. So I am okay.”
Her thoughts immediately brought to mind a line by Elizabeth Barrett Browning: “I shall but love thee better after death.” Some pains are sweet.
* * *
Life is a series of transitions and transformations. One day you realize that you want to marry this man who last year was just a friend; then you turn around and you find you are having a fight on your seventh wedding anniversary. One day you run home with the news that you are pregnant; then suddenly your baby is an adolescent, and the next day he gets married. One day you and your husband walk into a new retirement condo, just the two of you. The next day you watch him as he picks up his tiny granddaughter. One day perhaps you sit and remember all the fights you had when you were newly married and feel amazement that you are still with, and still love, this person who always drops his socks on the floor and gets stupid in arguments.
If we are honest, what we hope for is that, in all these transformations, we find a way to hold and be held by our loved ones. Each shift at each new stage tests old ways of connecting and requires that we renew our bonds. This is what makes life worthwhile and what keeps us healthy and happy as we move inexorably from milestone to milestone.
Think of a transition you have been through in a key relationship. Perhaps moving to a new apartment, renovating your house, leaving school, finding a job, or switching careers. Choose any period when you had to adjust to an uncertain situation.
How did this stress influence your day-to-day interactions with your partner?
See if you can write down one way each of you responded that invited the other person to draw closer so you could work as a team through the transition.
Now write down one way you made it harder for you and your partner to come together and help each other through that period. See if you can share these with each other.
Here is an example of a couple learning to work together as their life shifts under their feet:
Linda tells her husband, Eric, “We are dealing with this whole move into retirement differently. We still have a mortgage, you know. I am working hard, selling my cosmetics line, and even though I told you it was okay for you to retire—after all, you’d been in the job for thirty years, and it was killing you—now I am resentful. You are not pulling your weight. My friends say that once the kids leave and work slows down, things get better. But I am taking care of my mom as well, and right now I just feel angry with you. I know I like my work, but there you are playing in the universe while I am…” [She throws up her hands, and tears well up.] “And then you just dismiss my worries. You get defensive, and that drives me wild.”
Eric responds, “Look, I intended to work part-time on projects, but they just haven’t come through. And I like being retired. At last I am not stressed out. I like having time to read and go to the gym. I like not being driven. And I kept us going for thirty years, so don’t you tell me to feel bad about not working. We do have enough money, you know. We could easily downsize and not have a mortgage. But we can’t seem to talk about this together. You get mad like this, and then I freak out and shut down. I guess I do get defensive. But we know this dance. We’ve done it for years. And you’re right. I’m starting to avoid these conversations. I am starting to avoid you! And I know that doesn’t work. But you’re talking to me these days like I have turned into some kind of lazy loser. I want you to accept me a little here and trust that I don’t want you to feel stressed and scared about money or caring for your mom or anything.” [He laughs.] “Even though you never use that word—scared—I think that is what I hear when I calm down and look beyond your irritation. I am trying to listen to you. Tell me what you need here. We can work this out.”
Linda calms down and admits she has a hard time articulating what she needs from Eric. This has always been hard for her. She agrees that she gets critical and admits that this isn’t fair to him. They talk about how he can support her emotionally, and at the end of the conversation he has also agreed to go visit her mother a couple of times a week and to take a paying project that has just come up for the following weekend.
What did Eric do here that helped both of them keep their balance, stay connected, and problem-solve some of the issues in the transition they are going through? See if you can name at least two things he said that helped his wife.
Think about a transition you are in right now in your personal or family life, or the next transition you will be in or hope to be in. It might be starting a family or going into retirement.
Write down the main way that you think your partner can help you through this transition. Be specific: What exactly could he or she do and when? Write out how you would ask for this help.