Factors contributing to a successful marriage in early adulthood

Factors contributing to a successful marriage in early adulthood

Introduction
Marriage is defined as the emotional and legal commitment of two people who share economic resources, physical and emotional intimacy (Olson & DeFrain, 2006). Marriage is an indication of commitment with an expression of closeness and mutual support (Saxton, 1996). According to Boyd & Bee (2013), married adults live longer and happier with lower rate of psychiatric problems than single adults. It is because married adults lead a healthier lifestyle as single men typically more engage in the risky behavior such as smoking, drinking and drug use. According to Lauer (2012), marriage is also good for men in career development. They can focus more on their careers, as they know that their wives will look after the daily chores such as their meal, laundry and childcare. Moreover, married couples also accumulate more financial wealth by combining income and more responsible in their spending because two people are involved in the decision about spending (Olson, 2006). According to Lauer (2012), men need to be married more than women. However, women have a higher drive to marry than men. All of the above show that a successful marriage is important and beneficial in adult development.
What is a successful marriage? According to Cox (1990), in a successful marriage, partners have reached agreement for adjustment on most issues of importance for the relationship. Also, they are able to work together to solve most of the problems with mutual understanding and support. Each partner expresses satisfaction and happiness in the intimate relationship. Therefore I would like to discuss the three main factors contributing to a successful marriage, which are 1) intimacy; 2) communication; and 3) marital adjustment.
Intimacy
In Erikson’s Psychosocial Theory, an individual must resolve a crisis at each of the eight different stages of development successfully to achieve a healthy personality. In Erikson’s adulthood stages (Intimacy versus isolation), he defines ‘intimacy’ as an ability to fuse your identity with someone without fear that you would be going to lose something yourself. The resolution of intimacy versus isolation is depending on the resolution of identity versus role confusion crisis. This means that it is difficult for adults whose identities are weak to develop intimacy in a relationship. They will remain in shallow relationships and experience a sense of loneliness. On the other hand, for adults with clear identity, they are more likely to have a successful fusion of identities, which we called “intimacy” (Boyd & Bee, 2013). Rotenberg, Schaut & O 'Connor (1993) stated that identity achievement is necessary for intimacy and so for marital success. There are gender differences in identity achievement. In men, identity achievement can be gained in different intrapersonal domains such as occupation and ideological belief. Besides, women are more likely to develop their identities achievement in interpersonal domains such as building up relationships. It is found that women learn intimate behavior in friendship with their female friends first and then socialize with their male friends. As a result, it is usually for girls to teach boys how to develop an intimate relationship (White, Speisman, Jackson, Bartis & Costos, 1986). Therefore, we observed that men who are successful in their career development have a higher tendency to marry and are easier to make marital adjustment to achieve successful marriage. For those women who have close same sex friends, they tend to be more successful to maintain an intimate relationship with husbands.
According to Saxton (1996), ‘intimacy’ is defined as feeling close to each other both emotionally or physically. Intimacy is closely related to the type of attachment style during childhood. Children with secure attachment style should be more mature and more comfortable to develop intimacy in adulthood. They are able to trust and depend on their partners. For children with ambivalent attachment style, they may be developed into adults who are unable to trust intimate relationships and often fear of being abandoned. They usually can only keep a short-lived intimate relationship. Besides, children with avoidant attachment style may be more likely to develop into adults who are uncomfortable with intimacy. They would feel difficult to depend on others and avoid forming a close relationship. Although our intimacy is closely related to the attachment style in childhood, our security of attachment can be changed continuously in our life span. We can develop a secure attachment with our partners when they are more caring, sensitive to our needs and willing to have marital adjustment to build up a more successful marriage.
Communication
“Satisfying communication is so crucial because it facilitates the growth of both marital satisfaction and intimacy” (Lauer, 2012, p.206). It is important to have open communication and agreement on the expression of affection to achieve marital satisfaction (Rosen-Grandon, Myers & Hattie, 2004). According to Saxton (1996), the quality of marital communication can be evaulated in terms of the following ways:
1) Do couples send or receive communication accurately?
2) Are the communication between couples pleasing and reinforcing or displeasing and punishing ?
3) Do the couples share information which can enhance or break the intimacy, understanding, respect, affection and love?
4) Does the communication helps or hinders their ability to solve the problem and meet mutual expectations and needs?
For distressed couples, they have the tendency to exhibit negative reciprocity (negative message such as complain, threats and criticism are followed by negative message from the other person). This will produce destructive escalation of conflict and affect the marital satisfaction. In contrast, happy couples would limit the escalation by not returning the negative message. They are more likely to look for the solution for the conflict that cause the problem. Moreover, negative verbal or non-verbal communication between married couples, such as crticizing and blaming or slamming the door and leaving the room, would have a destructive impact on the overall relationship. The reason for such adverse impact is that criticizing one’s partner can create resentment and frustration which will further decrease partner’s motivation to satisfy one’s needs in the future. By contrast, positive communication can motivate partners to response to the unmet needs in a more positive way so as to fullfill the intimacy needs in the future and eventually enhance the marital satisfaction (Kirby, Baucom & Peterman, 2005).
Self-disclosure is crucial in communication, which is correlated of love, trust and understanding. “Self-disclosure is related to feelings of intimacy through individuals’ feelings that their partner is being responsive to them” (Laurenceau, Barrett & Pietromonaco, 1998). People usually don’t reveal their innermost or deepest thoughts and feeling until they feel it is safe and the person that they talk with are trustworthy to them. Women are more open and self-disclosing than men. It maybe related to our culture that girls and women have been traditionally encouraged to share their feelings. On the other hands, boys or men were expected to hide their emotions in tradition. Women emphasize more on talking and emotional sharing in their relationships while men focus on shared activities and narrow their conversation on sports, politics, money and sex (Saxton ,1996). Men feel comfortable to talk about their strengths and seldom talk about their weakness. Men are less able to understand the perspective of their partner than women do (White, Speisman, Jackson, Bartis & Costos, 1986). Women are comfortable to talk about their own fears, weakness and shortcoming. Although there are gender differences in communication styles, couples in successful marriage are usually more willing to self-disclose themselves and learn to communicate their differing needs to each other. They have more constructive conversation with the ability to manage conflicts. Sometimes by overcoming those conflicts can helps them to have better understanding with each other and enhance their intimacy and marital satisfaction.
Marital adjustment
To get married is to enter a new social world. Couples have to adjust physically and psychologically when they live together after marriage. They have to adjust for the new relationships, responsibilities and living style. Marital adjustment is defined as the process in which an individual or a married couple modifies, adopts or changes their behavior pattern and interaction to gain the maximum satisfaction in their relationship (Ghoroghi, Hassan, & Baba, 2012). Individuals who are more mature in intimate marital relationship are more willing to make adjustment for the good of the relationship. According to Lauer (2012), men are more satisfied with their marriages than women and they seems get greater mental health benefits from marriage than women. In today’s society, it is true that women have to make more adjustments in marriage than men. For examples they have to suspend or quit their job for childbearing. Also in the Chinese culture, wives have more responsibilities in doing housework than men do. Women will be more willing to adjust in their marriages if their husbands show intimacy maturity. Men who have achieved higher level of maturity in their intimate relationship are more adjust in the relationship. They are more willing to scarify, have more tolerance and see more consensus in the relationship (White, Speisman, Jackson, Bartis & Costos, 1986). Adjustment is the personal change for the purpose fulfilling the needs of partners in marriage so as to build up a mutual satisfying intimate relationship. Couples who share similar relationship standards (individual’s beliefs about the qualities of an intimate relationship) can help to maximize the harmony in the relationship. They may influence each other’s beliefs about desirable characteristics for an intimate relationship, which foster more similar standard for greater marital satisfaction (Chi, Epstein, Fang, Lam & Li, 2013). This concept is similar to the homogamous marriage, in which ‘like marries like’. That means couples with common race, religion, socioeconomic and intellectual background, will feel more confortable to be together and most likely to endure the intimate relationship. It is because they are more likely to have similar level of maturity in intimacy and easier in marital adjustment (White, Speisman, Jackson, Bartis & Costos, 1986)
On the other hand, adjustment in some marriages is more difficult because they begin at a disadvantage. For examples, couples with the financial problem and lack of maturity to cope with changes after marriage. Couples from a very different family background (not homogamous), there are many adjustments need to make. The woman who is pregnant at the time of marriage, there is an additional adjustment of becoming parents. The point is that, even under the best circumstances, adjustment is required in learning to live intimately with another person. It is more difficult or more adjustments need to be made if the couple begins with disadvantages as well as challenges.
Conclusion
Marriage is the most intimate of all human interactions. It is one of the important milestones in our lifespan. It can bring both great joy and terrible pain. A successful marriage can be a valuable resource during difficult time. To maintain a successful marriage is not always easy. If you had a happy family life when you were growing up, you should feel fortunate because such experience provides an important foundation and model for developing a happy marriage of your own. It will be more easy and comfortable for you to have self-disclosure and develop an intimate relationship with your loved one. If you grew up in a troublesome family, it will be more difficult for you to build a successful marriage, but it will be possible. Countless individuals have transcended adverse family experiences and created healthy, intimate and successful marriage for themselves and their loved one. In the Chinese culture, marriage is not only two people’s business; it also includes two families of origin. Couples have to be more devoted in marital adjustment to manage the interaction and cultural conflicts between two different families.
Although there are gender differences, we can accommodate and adjust ourselves and learn the strength from each other. Through positive and constructive communication, we can share our values and intimate standard with each other so as to minimize the gender differences and maximize the harmonies in the marriage. Marriage is not just a happy moment in the wedding ceremony, maintaining a successful marriage is a life-long commitment and career. We have to embrace each other with love, care, respect and understanding. With supportive and intimate relationship, we are empowered to overcome obstacles in the long journey of marriage.
References
Boyd, D. G. & Bee, H. L. (2013). Lifespan development: Pearson new international edition(6thed.). Essex: Pearson.
Chi, P., Epstein, N. B., Fang, X., Lam, D. O. B., & Li, X. (2013). Similarity of relationship standards, couple communication patterns, and marital satisfaction among chinese couples. Journal of Family Psychology, 27(5), 806-816.
Cox, F. D. (1990). Human intimacy: Marriage, the family, and its meaning. St. Paul: West Pub. Co.
Ghoroghi, S., Hassan, S. A., & Baba, M. (2012). Function of family-of-origin experiences and marital adjustment among married iranian students of universiti putra malaysia. International Journal of Psychological Studies, 4(3), 94-103.
Kirby, J. S., Baucom, D. H., & Peterman, M. A. (2005). AN INVESTIGATION OF UNMET INTIMACY NEEDS IN MARITAL RELATIONSHIPS. Journal of Marital and Family Therapy, 31(4), 313-25.
Lauer, R. H., Lauer, J. C., & Lauer, R. H. (2012). Marriage & family: The quest for intimacy. New York, NY: McGraw-Hill.
Laurenceau, J., Barrett, L. F., & Pietromonaco, P. R. (1998). Intimacy as an interpersonal process: The importance of self-disclosure, partner disclosure, and perceived partner responsiveness in interpersonal exchanges. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 74(5), 1238-1251.
Olson, D. H. L., & DeFrain, J. D. (2006). Marriages & families: Intimacy, diversity, and strengths. Boston: McGraw-Hill.
Rosen-Grandon, J., Myers, J. E., & Hattie, J. A. (2004). The relationship between marital characteristics, marital interaction processes, and marital satisfaction. Journal of Counseling and Development : JCD, 82(1), 58-68.
Rotenberg, K. J., Schaut, G. B., & O 'Connor, B. P. (1993). The roles of identity development and psychosocial intimacy in marital success. Journal of Social and Clinical Psychology, 12(2), 198-217.
Saxton, L. (1996). The individual, marriage, and the family. Belmont: Wadsworth Pub. Co.
White, K. M., Speisman, J. C., Jackson, D., Bartis, S., & Costos, D. (1986). Intimacy maturity and its correlates in young married couples. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 50(1), 152-162.

References: Boyd, D. G. & Bee, H. L. (2013). Lifespan development: Pearson new international edition(6thed.). Essex: Pearson. Chi, P., Epstein, N. B., Fang, X., Lam, D. O. B., & Li, X. (2013). Similarity of relationship standards, couple communication patterns, and marital satisfaction among chinese couples. Journal of Family Psychology, 27(5), 806-816. Cox, F Ghoroghi, S., Hassan, S. A., & Baba, M. (2012). Function of family-of-origin experiences and marital adjustment among married iranian students of universiti putra malaysia. International Journal of Psychological Studies, 4(3), 94-103. Kirby, J. S., Baucom, D. H., & Peterman, M. A. (2005). AN INVESTIGATION OF UNMET INTIMACY NEEDS IN MARITAL RELATIONSHIPS. Journal of Marital and Family Therapy, 31(4), 313-25. Lauer, R Olson, D. H. L., & DeFrain, J. D. (2006). Marriages & families: Intimacy, diversity, and strengths. Boston: McGraw-Hill. Rosen-Grandon, J., Myers, J. E., & Hattie, J. A. (2004). The relationship between marital characteristics, marital interaction processes, and marital satisfaction. Journal of Counseling and Development : JCD, 82(1), 58-68. Rotenberg, K. J., Schaut, G. B., & O 'Connor, B. P. (1993). The roles of identity development and psychosocial intimacy in marital success. Journal of Social and Clinical Psychology, 12(2), 198-217. Saxton, L White, K. M., Speisman, J. C., Jackson, D., Bartis, S., & Costos, D. (1986). Intimacy maturity and its correlates in young married couples. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 50(1), 152-162.