Marital crisis: 5 keys to understanding them
Personal relationships and affective bonds evolve over time. Many times this means reaching a greater degree of rapport and intimacy, but in others the passage of time does nothing but accentuate the intensity of the entrenched conflicts.
The marital crisis is the consequence of many of these processes: a point at which the relationship stays stagnant and one or both members of the couple feel that the marriage has lost its reason for being.
Understanding marriage crises
Although everything that refers to marital crises seems to be related to emotions (and, in a certain way, it is), in that emotional cyclone there is a logic. These 5 keys serve to better understand what is behind these stages of stagnation.
1. When the idealization fades
Our brain likes to make our thoughts fit well with our emotions. That is why, in the initial stages of a relationship, the emotional and sentimental frenzy are matched by beliefs about the beloved in which it appears idealized. All those aspects of our partner that we do not know are filled by our imagination with an unusually optimistic version of his personality and capabilities.
In short, during the first moments our vision of that person is very skewed and affected by the neurochemical and hormonal imbalances produced by the drug of falling in love. However, over time the realist's story of the other person is imposed, as each time they are knowing more facets of him. This process is very fast during the first months of the relationship, but it can also go on for years and enter the marriage stage.
The marital crisis can be understood as the moment in which the veil of idealization falls.
2. Personal evolution
Marital relationships tend to last a long time, and in the time they occupy people change. That means that a marital crisis does not have to show that the marriage was never founded at any time. It can also mean, simply, that one or both members have changed to become totally different people, either by their biological maturation or by the way in which their experiences have changed them .
In addition, this process of change does not have to make the personalities of both people always fit; in fact, they may become antagonistic.
3. Marital crisis does not equate to arguments
The downside of marriage crises is not essentially summarized in the appearance of constant arguments and disputes. What defines these stages is apathy and emotional stagnation, which may be accompanied by arguments or not.
4. Inertia
A marriage is not maintained only by the mutual feeling of love felt by a couple. There are also many other more objective elements that maintain the union: the habitual coexistence with the children, the circle of friends in common, the fact of living in the same house ...
In short, there are times when the marital crisis is just a symptom that a relationship in which love has ended is "alive" while, in reality, it is dead, sustained only by the objective elements that surround it and that in theory are accessories.
5. The difficulty in finding a way out
In marital crises it is very difficult to start looking for a satisfactory exit, due to several factors.
On the one hand, doing so would imply facing a series of problems that would disturb the day to day : move to another home, attend couples therapy, etc.
On the other hand, asking for help through couples therapy would imply facing their own responsibilities in past disputes, something that not all people are willing to do, since that would imply showing vulnerability to the other person.
- It may interest you: "How to know when to go to couple therapy?"
