Hidden Brain - When Did Marriage Become So Hard? Flashcards
Summary
- Modern marriage runs the risk of suffocation.
- New emphasis on achieving a sense of personal fulfillment in the way of personal growth.
- Michelangelo effect (sculpting actual versus ideal self)
- A relationship is a high-maintenance grape (like Pinot Noir)
- Fundamental attribution error (Character/Disposition vs Context)
- Growth vs Destiny mindset
- Diversification of social portfolio
We have radically higher expectations of marriage now.
The earliest marriages had nothing to do with feelings or attraction. Marriage was much more about economics and acquiring powerful in-laws.
A different idea started to become more common in the 1700s. Jane Austen may well have been the trailblazer.
By the second half of the 19th century, the Jane Austen model of marriage had taken firm hold in the United States. The idea of marrying for anything other than love came to be seen as old-fashioned.
The new model of marriage began to celebrate the coming together of people who were supposedly radically different from one another.
Social psychologist Eli Finkel has studied the psychological effects of these historical changes.
There is a new emphasis on achieving a sense of personal fulfillment in the way of personal growth. So in the terminology of psychology, we want to self-actualize through our marriage. We want to grow into a more authentic version of ourselves.
It’s a very modern idea that we are entitled to a sense of real fulfillment and personal growth through the marriage. If our marriage is falling short, many of us consider it to be a reasonable option to end the marriage for that alone.
ESTHER PEREL: We come to one person, and we basically are asking them to give us what once an entire village used to provide.
Give me belonging. Give me identity.
Give me continuity, but give me transcendence and mystery and awe all in one.
Give me comfort. Give me edge.
Give me novelty. Give me familiarity.
Give me predictability. Give me surprise.
And we think it’s a given and toys and lingerie are going to save us with that.
Marriage for a long time served a relatively limited array of different functions. Over time we’ve piled more and more of these emotional and psychological functions.
Instead of turning to our close friends and other relatives for deep intimate disclosure, our spouse has replaced a lot of what we used to look to our broader social network to help us do.
Michelangelo effect
Michelangelo, when he talked about the sculpting process, talked not in terms of revealing a sculpture but in terms of unleashing it from the rock in which it’s been slumbering.
The sculptor’s job is not to create something new, but merely to refine and buff and polish and maybe scrape away the rough edges of what was already nesting within the rock. That’s a really good metaphor for how partners today try to relate to each other.
All of us have an actual self - the person that we currently are - but we also have an ideal self, a version of ourselves that’s aspirational.
And we look to our partners to be our sculptors, to help us until we actually grow toward the best, ideal version of ourselves.
The best relationships today - the sorts of relationships that I call the all relationships in the idea of the all-or-nothing marriage - they’re well aligned in this sense.
They’re able to bring out the best in each other and connect in a way that facilitates each other’s personal growth and, therefore, helps to produce a really profound amount of emotional connection and psychological fulfilment.
It’s changed from an institution approximating cabernet, which can just grow anywhere and thrive even when it’s neglected, to a much more delicate, fragile institution that requires a lot of tending and maintenance.
When there’s the right grower and the right context, the flavors are just haunting and brilliant and subtle and ancient.
A relationship is a high-maintenance grape. It takes a lot of work. And if you aren’t careful and attentive, you’re going to be disappointed in it. It’s going to fail you. But if you work hard enough, you can have something truly exquisite. And that is where we are today with the all-or-nothing marriage.
Marcel Proust argues that mystery is not about traveling to new places but about looking with new eyes. And the love hacks are exactly that. They’re ways that we can try to experience the same relationship but view it in a different way and therefore be a little bit happier in the relationship itself.
Psychologists have long talked about the fundamental attribution error, which is sometimes when we see someone behave in a way that we don’t like, there’s two ways to interpret it: 1/ They’re a bad person, or 2/ There’s something in the context, there’s something happening around him or her that’s causing him or her to behave this way.
And one of the hacks that you suggest is to reinterpret negative behavior from your partner in a way that’s more sympathetic rather than critical.
In relationships, a growth mindset is a useful thing.
People differ in the extent to which they think intelligence is something that’s fixed and stable. There’s good research now on the extent to which people feel like compatibility is something that is fixed.
You could call this a destiny mindset. People who think partners are either compatible or they’re not, versus more of a growth-oriented mindset who think, there’s a lot of room where you can develop compatibility.
Going through difficulties in a relationship isn’t a signal we’re incompatible people. It’s an opportunity to learn to understand each other better and strengthen the relationship through the resolution of the conflict.
We can try to make ourselves adopt a more constructive, growth-oriented approach to thinking about conflict in the relationship rather than a more destiny-oriented approach that can often view conflict as a deep sign of incompatibility.
People who’ve diversified their social portfolio tend to be a little bit happier.
