Ideal marriage dynamics

Love is definitely a strong and powerful motivation to hold a relationship. But, LOVE itself is not enough to sustain a relationship rather one needs to be creative with personal qualities and skills that are crucial to sustain it and make it grow.

Following are special personal qualities that are crucial for a happy relationship: Commitment, sensitivity, generosity, consideration, Loyalty, responsibility, and trustworthiness. During the progress of the relationship, one should be able to tolerate each other’s flaws, mistakes, and peculiarities. once these are cultivated, marriage would develop and mature.

Let’s see how we can achieve the state of an ideal state in a relationship and let’s understand, what are the goals of an ideal marriage?

According to Beck, there are three aims of an ideal marriage:

1. A solid foundation of values: trust, loyalty, respect, and security. Treat your spouse as a companion and friend as they are your close relative and are entitled to depend on you.

2. Cultivating the tender, loving part of your relationship: sensitivity, consideration, understanding, and showing care and affection is important for cultivating a strong relationship.

3. Strengthen the partnership: developing a sense of cooperation, consideration, and compromise when required would strengthen the relationship. To take joint decisions, sharpening the communication skills can help deal with practical issues, such as work division, family budgeting, planning leisure time activities, etc.,

Let’s see what are the problems or difficulties faced by most couples:

Misunderstandings and biased interpretations lead to a distorted picture of each other. Not taking full responsibility for improving the relationship, blaming each other. Partners may misperceive, or fail to perceive each other and the way they miscommunicate or fail to communicate can be having an impact on the relationship.

What are the cognitive (thinking) errors or distortions that lead to the failure of a relationship?

1. Mind reading

2. Misinterpretation

3. Misreading signals

4. Symbols and meaning

5. Bias

If we understand the relationships in the context of cognitive distortions or our thinking errors then cognitive therapy can be useful to relate to each other in a more reasonable, less hostile way.

1. Mind reading: it can produce inaccurate predictions which result in either an upset or a false sense of security. The conclusions that came from these errors in thinking and assumptions may be causing greater trouble. The erroneous explanations can cause or lead to wrong conclusions in relationships.

For example: Let’s take my example, the day we had a fight and I’m silent. if my behavior is misread and misinterpreted can lead to wrong conclusions that I want to give the silent treatment, I don’t care about her, etc., which leads her to lash at me and that may trigger anger and things could get worse eventually, because she operated her mind-reading rather than communicating well.

1. Misinterpretation: The various guesses we do when we are caught up with an emotional state, and the vagueness of what we observe can trip us up. When we are upset or emotionally charged we may misinterpret reality in a different way. It may lead to the invisible reality” they may have found our fears and insecurities rather than the clear evidence that can be gathered and evaluated about the other person.

2. Misreading signals: The meaning we give to our partner’s words and deeds often has significant importance. Once we attach meaning we may fail to confirm its accuracy.

3. Symbols and meaning: a set of beliefs, assumptions, rules, preconceptions, and formulas are found to be there in the coding system of a person when they keep it in words. The meaning we give and interpretation of actions are shaped by the beliefs one holds. One should understand by being aware of the symbolic meanings, and interpretations that we give to specific events that can lead to exaggerated negative reactions.

4. Bias: The biased expectations, observations, and conclusions can lead to prejudice of all kinds in a marriage. Prejudice can twist our interpretations. This leads to change at the outset of a relationship by making unjustified negative interpretations of others regard them.

Cognitive therapy can help people with their distressed marriages just like the anxiety and depression by correcting the faulty interpretations or errors in thinking and beliefs by testing them and correcting them eventually.