Structure Your Relationship Intentionally

Part 2: Adventure? Or Complacency?

(photo from the author)

Continuing from the last post…

Peterson talks a lot about a meaningful life being the quest for adventure, undertaken voluntarily. I believe that the pursuit of the most fulfilling possible marriage is the grandest of all adventures. (So is parenting, by the way. They’re right on par with each other.) Peterson also argues that the biggest treasure is guarded by the fiercest dragon. I believe that we are better off against that dragon with our partner by our side (and as they age and mature, also with our adult children). In the healthiest of marriages, we are each leaning into the other, like the ultimate three-legged race, pushing each other to be the best possible versions of ourselves, and then pushing the relationship to be the best possible version of itself.

We work toward the most fulfilling relationship possible by first taking care of the self, and then orienting our interactions with our partner from a framework of voluntary self-sacrifice and servant leadership, as described above. A lot of the work is individual, but oriented toward the benefit of the relationship. I have to put effort into cultivating and improving my emotional self-awareness and emotional regulation. It is not possible to be both other-focused (obviously necessary for voluntary self-sacrifice and servant leadership) when you are emotionally reactive (which quickly becomes purely egocentric). Emotional reactivity kicks you back into the amygdala, the fight-or-flight part of the brain; being other focused demands that you are in the prefrontal cortex, where you can behave guided by logic and reason.

From a place of emotional awareness and regulation, you then behave with the greatest degree of intention that you can manage, in every single thing you do, “all day, err day.” I firmly believe that the more intention we bring to literally everything about our lives, the better our lives will be. Specific to your relationship, this means that you pay attention to your partner, communicate with your partner, and most importantly truly listen to your partner. 

Actually listening to another person is really hard. We all bring our own preconceived concept of reality into the way we interact with the world (I wrote about that here). When I do this in conversation with you, that means that I am predisposed to interpret things a certain way oriented to be about me, passing them through my own subjective filters. True listening means that I have to temporarily suspend everything about me to make it only about fully understanding you. Not the “you” that passes through my own filters, but the you that is truly you. 

Pure listening, oriented toward intentional interaction with you, means that I bring a genuine curiosity to hearing your words. I want to understand your wants and needs. I want to become familiar with your triggers and your past traumas. I want to understand your hopes and dreams. I’m trying to learn how to show up for you, as your support crew. Then, with that information, I behave with intention, oriented toward what you need and what is best for you, and even anticipating what you need instead of just waiting to react to things after the fact. 

Pure listening is necessary so that we can work collaboratively to figure out what to do about a situation in which we are not originally fully aligned. That means that I have to work on understanding your experience, follow the path of how you got there, and have empathy for the fact that you are there and how being there feels to you. That also means that I have to intentionally allow your perception of the thing the possibility of some influence over my interpretation of that thing, rather than just “double down” on what I interpreted through my own filters. There is no place for rigidity in pure listening, or in genuine connection.

Sometimes it will be really hard to really listen and to prioritize your needs over my own, especially if I allow selfishness to creep in. If I forget “we > me,” I will focus on feeling like I am not getting my needs met, and then I will either protect myself or punish you by pulling away from you. Then, likely, resentment and indignation will creep in, which is very disconnecting. Ironically, that’s the best way to make sure I continue to not get my needs met. We > me means that you come first, so that we come first, which then allows me to then get what I need.

The fact that voluntary self-sacrifice is hard is part of what makes marriage the grandest of all adventures. But we are not called to live a life of complacency. It is not in our human nature to settle. Michael Easter wrote about this in his book, The Comfort Crisis. Our brains are not designed for constant, short-term reward. That’s why addiction is so destructive. Our brains are designed for constant challenge, the constant pursuit of better. It is fundamental to the very essence of what it means to be human to not settle, but rather to pursue betterment, meaning, and fulfillment.

This lesson comes out of the Old Testament story of Abraham. God calls to Abraham (then named Abram) when he is 75 years old, living a life of ease because his parents are well-off. God tells Abram to leave the comfort and ease of his unearned security and go out into the world on an adventure into the unknown, guided only by faith in God’s direction. God’s promise to Abram for taking on the adventure of his life has four integrated parts: 

1 - He will receive God’s blessing; 

2 - He will become known by all for his own accomplishments; 

3 - He will establish a lasting legacy;

4 - He will do all of that in such a way that he will be a blessing to everyone else. 

Applying these promises into the marriage context, answering the call to adventure, pursuing the healthiest, most meaningful, and most fulfilling relationship possible, offers you: 

1 - The supportive environment that is best for creating your own personal well-being;

2 - Your reputation is better for the effort you put into prioritizing your relationship;

3 - Through children, then grandchildren, etc. you create a generational legacy;

4 - Living this way becomes a blessing first to your family, then to everyone around you.

In contrast, living a life of complacency, whether that is based on avoidance of discomfort or short-term hedonistic indulgence, inevitably means a descent into dissatisfaction and ultimately nihilism. Dostoyevski wrote about that in Notes From Underground (which I wrote about here). If we lived lives of constant satiation, we would eventually get bored, then bitter, then destructive. In contrast to the promises God made to Abraham, a life of complacency leads to:

1 - Chronic dissatisfaction with life that will create anxiety and / or depression;

2 - Mediocrity that causes your reputation to decline, eventually disappearing completely;

3 - Complete lack of positive influence on future generations, likely a negative influence;

4 - You become a net drain on the world around you rather than a net positive.

In marriage, an attitude of complacency is actually a really high risk because it can happen so subtly. It’s much like the anecdote about how you boil a frog: turn the heat up very slowly so the frog doesn’t notice until it’s too late. Complacency in your marriage will lead to devastating consequences, but the progression is subtle and easy to miss until the damage is significant. It starts in small ways when we neglect to prioritize our connection. I have worked with couples who put in the effort when they were dating, but once they were married, they just took things for granted, which is why they ultimately ended up coming to see me. 

Sometimes complacency takes root in a marriage simply because the ordinary demands of work and kids make prioritizing the relationship very difficult. But sometimes it’s even more pathologically manipulative: one partner shows up a certain way just to win over the other, but inauthentically. Then after getting the other to commit (ie, after they’re married or have a child), the partner completely changes and stops doing all the things that convinced the other to commit in the first place. That’s tyranny taking over the marriage, and it will inevitably destroy all connection and love in the relationship.

The end-stage result of complacency in a marriage is neglect. Neglect within an intimate partner relationship is a profound and deeply intimate betrayal. Neglect means that you stop pouring into your partner, stop nurturing your relationship. We are all social creatures; we all desperately need connection to be emotionally healthy. But neglect means that you shut your partner out, do your own thing, don’t give any effort toward meeting any of your partner’s needs, and just expect your partner to accept it. The result is a profound disconnect and then loneliness, ironically and most hurtfully, within the very relationship that should be the most connected of your life. Nowhere is loneliness more damaging than within the very relationship that should be everything but. This will also inevitably be detrimental to the partner’s mental health and ability to find meaning in life. Nowhere is stripping away a life of meaning more damaging than with the very relationship that should be the most meaningful. That’s why complacency, and the resulting neglect, is such a profound betrayal. It is also one of the most common causes of divorce.

I believe that marriage, properly oriented, has more potential than anything else we might ever pursue to create a life of maximal meaning and fulfillment. More than money or fame, more than power, and unquestionably more than short-term orgiastic liaisons. But our orientation is the key. Are we both showing up from a place of love, in good faith, prioritizing the relationship over self? Are we both oriented toward servant leadership and voluntary self-sacrifice? Are you a loving partner, playing with me for the rest of our life together, or a tyrant holding me hostage and crushing my soul? Are we both in for the grandest adventure, or are you betraying me with complacency and neglect? We get to make our marriage whatever we want it to be. Make it an adventure.