What Does It Take

What is marriage?

For the sake of discussion, the traditional definition of marriage is usually expressed in traditional wedding vows:  Will you take this (man, woman) to be your (husband, wife) to live together in the covenant of marriage?  Will you love (him, her), comfort (him, her), honor and keep (him, her), in joy and in sorrow, in plenty and in want, in sickness and in health, and forsaking all others, be faithful to her so long as you both shall live?

These vows define traditional marriage as permanent (as long as you both shall live), sexually exclusive (forsaking all others), a relationship of extraordinary care (love, comfort, honor, and keep in joy and in sorrow, in plenty and in want, in sickness and in health), and between a man (to be your husband) and a woman (to be your wife).

But this definition of marriage has changed so much that the only part that most people would agree with today is:  Marriage is a relationship of mutual extraordinary care.  Granted, that is not all there is to the traditional definition, nor is it the legal definition of marriage.  But it is the definition of marriage that most people hope it will be at the time that they agree to be married.

I have found that this part of the traditional marriage vow, if fulfilled, actually covers the first two parts of the vow as well:  Permanence and sexual exclusivity.  Marriages that demonstrate mutual extraordinary care are also permanent and sexually exclusive.  If both spouses provide extraordinary care to each other, divorce and infidelity simply don't occur.

What is extraordinary care?

The traditional vows that I mentioned (love, comfort, honor, in joy and in sorrow, in plenty and in want, in sickness and in health) definitely describe extraordinary care.  But having studied married couples during most of my professional career, I define it a bit more clearly, and for some, more challenging.

Extraordinary care in marriage is expressed three ways:  emotional care, protective care, and partnership care.

• Emotional care involves being each other's greatest source of happiness by meeting each other's most important emotional needs.
• Protective care involves avoiding being each other's source of unhappiness by eliminating what I call Love Busters.
• Partnership care involves making joint decisions that benefit both spouses, instead of only one.

In other words, extraordinary care is providing for each other what you would want for yourselves.  That's extraordinary.

What is a successful marriage?

I've found that when spouses care for each other in an extraordinary way, they report having a successful marriage.  I've demonstrated that to be true in the thousands of couples I've counseled.  But they have something else to show for their effort:  Romantic love.  They find each other irresistible.

So, whenever I want to know if my counseling has been successful, I measure the couple's romantic love for each other.  It's a simple, 21-item test I developed that has proven to be very accurate.  It's called the Love Bank Inventory (LBI).  Of course, I could also use much longer tests that measure success in marriage.  But since I've found LBI outcomes to be highly correlated with those other test outcomes it makes sense to use it.  And it's free of charge.

Some people have argued that I set the bar too high when I encourage couples to provide mutual extraordinary care for each other.  But we now live in a very different world than the one that existed 100 years ago.  In the world of pre-1960, a couple would stay together even if their marriage was downright terrible.  That's not the case today.  Today, couples are at a high risk of divorce when they are no longer in love.

Years ago, I felt that falling out of love was not an adequate reason to divorce. In fact, I considered it very unethical.  It violated both the rule and the spirit of the marriage vow.  But, since I was witnessing divorce taking place at an unprecedented rate in the 1970s, I changed my perspective on marriage.  Instead of judging those who divorced, I decided to save their marriages.

I didn't counsel very many couples in love, and those I did counsel would not have even thought of divorcing each other.  The thought of divorce only occurred when one or both spouses were out of love with each other.

Since I never witnessed a couples in love who divorced, I came to the conclusion that if I was to save marriage, I would have to teach couples to fall in love and stay in love.

So, I've come to the conclusion that a successful marriage is a marriage of mutual extraordinary care which creates and sustains romantic love.

I've written three books to help you achieve each of these three objectives.  His Needs, Her Needs will help you identify and learn how to meet her most important emotional needs.  Love Busters will show you how to turn hurtful habits into helpful habits.  He Wins, She Wins will teach you how to make all of your decisions with mutual enthusiastic agreement.

If you are not sure what's missing in your marriage, complete the Emotional Needs Questionnaire and the Love Busters Questionnaire.  You can download them free of charge from the questionnaires section of the Marriage Builders® website.  Your answers to those questions will give you the roadmap to each other's heart.