Published Articles
By Dr. William R. Morrow

“New Year, New Marriage?”

I remember last year I saw a woman who was so disenchanted with her husband's New Year's resolutions that she was ready, by Valentine's Day, to leave. When I saw her, she was already leaning in that direction, crouching for departure from my office even before she'd finished her lament. I noticed that she had on her running shoes, as if this were going to be a fast escape. I didn't know if from the office or from the marriage. I presume she was unclear herself. At least she was still for the moment, and talking. Maybe a good sign, I thought.

She was pretty cynical about "people" changing. Of course, she specifically meant her husband. I didn't have to defend him, but I couldn't resist telling her about emotional growth. Although I didn't say so at the time, I meant her growth as well as his.

"O.K.", I said, as if I had to move quickly, "So maybe people don't exactly change. But I believe they do grow." I think they move down the pike toward becoming more of their real and lovable selves. I happen to believe there is a vast area of undiscovered truth in our personal histories, like a rich and thriving wilderness someplace in backcountry Alaska. With a little motivation and courage for inner search, great new discoveries lie just ahead. I'll grant you it takes time, but the alternative notion of quick-fix change trivializes the power of psychotherapy to benefit people's lives and relationships. With this woman, I had a plan. I got her to calm her impulses, think twice about the exits, and start considering what was worth working on.

One thing that won't change this year, however, is that there will be a surge of divorces filed after the holidays. People want to wait in order to feel a little less guilty, and maybe get a tax advantage. There is a seasonal inclination to start the New Year off "right", divested of those old problems that were dragging them down last year. So why not a new relationship as a way of starting over? "Brilliant", I say, "but you could just start over with the same person. And, this time get it right!" Psychic mastery of old dysfunctional relationship patterns is achieved just as well by repetition with the old partner as it is with any new partner. And it will cost you less money and heartbreak. Besides, the courtship bliss of a new relationship is frightfully deceptive. What appears new in a fresh relationship is frequently the same-old; we just don't see it until it's too late. It is scary that second marriages fail more often than first marriages. Failed attempts at a new relationship are only a mystery if one is blind to his/her own inner clockworks.

If this sounds like a pessimistic way to start off the year, it's because I don't like the statistics. My worthy colleagues and I are working to stem the tide. I personally am optimistic about what couples can do to renew the relationship they are now in. My suggestion is that disappointed mates can work at their relationships, and that divorce is not usually the answer to marital conflict.

We mortals, who stumble and fumble as we seek to relate significantly to one other of our species, greatly undervalue our ability to grow ourselves up. In a great disservice to our personal capacity to change and grow emotionally, we act as if our inner resources were depleted, and that we finished learning about ourselves at age 18.

Author Peter Kramer, in a book, now in Penguin Paperback, entitled Should You Leave?,says the real question about leaving the old relationship and starting over should be put differently. When people come to him to work out their dilemma about an impending-divorce impulse, he (like a good psychotherapist) asks them a question of his own: "Can you make the adjustment to not being with this present mate?" Now, the dissatisfied mate, on their crusade for better things, has to ask,"Can I myself change?" And this is the real question, because leaving a long-standing relationship is not so easy as it might look. (Even abusive relationships are hard to leave). It means change and growth will be necessary whether one leaves or stays.

If the woman in the running shoes is still hanging in there, I feel certain she will have a Happy New 2003.

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