SOLVING THE RELATIONSHIP PUZZLE
By Dr. Tom Merrill , Bobbie Sandoz Merrill
Published on: 06/11/04
Raise the bar: Settle for more
Question: I am very unhappy in my marriage. My friends think I should "get real" and be satisfied with what I have. This is what they have done, although they admit they are not happy. Is this the best way to deal with marital disappointment? Still Searching for Happiness
Bobbie says: No, it's not. Talking ourselves into feeling satisfied with lost dreams and unmet goals is a "faux fix" approach to accommodating life's disappointments. When we lower standards to align with results we are trying to trick ourselves into not being frustrated with the way things turned out.
I used to engage in this "cooking the books" approach to happiness. Now I think the illusion achieved is one of society's greatest cultural errors... people who do this progressively settle for less in increasingly more aspects of their lives.
As a result, restaurants and stores offer less value for more cost, the substance of movies and media is often substandard and many other business and service industries do not fulfill their promises. In addition jobs are often unrewarding, the quality of schools is rapidly declining and statistics show that relationships with partners... and others... fail more often than they succeed.
The cultural habit of settling for less is cumulatively bringing less to our lives, our hearts and our humanity. We respond by complaining about our losses or trying to repair the pain in haphazard spurts. Yet we know in our hearts that what's not working is our willingness to settle for less.
I recently realized I could have more in my own life when I met my current husband Dr. Tom Merrill. We had enjoyed brief mutual crushes in the eighth grade, but went separate ways into other marriages, careers, kids, and grandkids. However, when we reunited in our later years we fell deeply in love and had the wisdom at that juncture to cherish what we had found.
Yet others kept predicting that our happiness couldn't possibly endure and urged us to enjoy it while it lasted. Some even seemed to wait eagerly for our love to cool off so we would rejoin them in settling into the acceptance of less that so many have come to accept as "normal."
This reserved response to our great joy served as an inadvertent blessing because it awakened in us the awareness that we did not have to settle for less. Instead we agreed to stay awake to our love and to consciously do the things needed to keep it alive. In short, we agreed to not lower the bar, but to raise it, and in doing so to settle for more, not less.
As soon as we made this decision, we became more conscious of the feelings and attitudes that fed our love — and those that could undermine it. As a result, any time we began to slip into old habits destined to destroy the positive feelings between us, we stopped ourselves and discussed it. We then replaced these destructive pathways with alternate ideas and possibilities.
To our surprise, we benefited from our new course even more than we had expected. In fact we noticed that our love not only failed to diminish, but was growing deeper and stronger.
Our approach proved to us that nobody needs to live a life of pretend happiness. As a result, we decided to teach others how to join us in bypassing a culture that leads to flattened feelings rather than genuine joy.
Thus, I would suggest that you, too, hold onto your hope and stick with your instinct to settle for more. Help your husband understand that the source of his own discontent starts with his willingness to settle for less in what he offers your relationship. Ask him to join you in settling for more.
If you need outside help to support you, then find it. If your husband doesn't want to settle for more in your relationship, he may not be the right person for you.
Good luck to both of you in uncovering what you want and then keeping the faith that you can get there.
Tom Merrill, Ph.D., ABPP, and Bobbie Sandoz Merrill, MSW, are married and veterans of the relationship puzzle. Tom, a clinical psychologist, and Bobbie, a therapist and parenting specialist, bring their personal and clinical experiences to this column. They have co-authored Settle for More: The Art of Outrageous Relationships, to be published in fall, 2004. They welcome reader responses and questions: Merrill@lava.net.
EMAIL THIS
PRINT THIS
MOST POPULAR