BC Council for Families

by Mary Russell

Today's marriages are pioneering new ways of relating

Couples today, to an unparalleled degree, report confusion about expectations in being women and men, wives and husbands. Social changes over the past three decades have created a situation in which, perhaps for the first time, adult men and women have a choice between being independent or making a commitment to an intimate relationship.

Social and economic forces that previously propelled individuals into marriage and prescribed sex roles, have diminished. Women's and men's worlds are merging, their status is becoming more equal, and marriage is expected to meet emotional, rather than economic, needs. Previous models of spousal relatedness fall short of meeting these expectations, so it is no surprise that women and men report confusion, frustration and anger while they pioneer new ways of relating.

Changes in Women's Roles

Women's lives have been most obviously altered as their educational and work force participation have equaled that of men and as their increased life span and decreased child rearing have freed them for greater community and societal involvement. Women's well-being and self-esteem have increased as a result, but not without associated costs. Women face conflicting expectations daily, expected to be assertive and authoritative in the work place, while being compliant and nurturing in the home. Relating to a partner becomes problematic as women waver between these conflicting expectations.

Men in families have benefited economically from women's employment, but have also experienced an erosion of traditional notions of male authority. Men have increasingly sensed their emotional dependence on women at a time when women have increased their economic independence from men, creating a sense of imbalance in relationships.

Marriages are increasingly contracted to meet emotional needs of intimacy and connectedness. These marriages require both partners to communicate and negotiate openly and to regard the other as an equal. Each partner needs to have a sense of equity and fair exchange in the relationship or it is likely to falter.

Communicating Establishes Intimacy

Communications are key to such relationships as assignment of daily tasks requires constant negotiation and flexibility. Division of labour, which once was a given, now requires considerable time and energy to determine who does what, where and when. These task-oriented communications can strengthen a couples' sense of intimacy, particularly if each partner feels free to self-disclose, to let their partner really know them, to allow their partner to love them wholly. Each partner needs to be sensitive to their own emotional state as well as feeling free and being able to disclose this to their partner. Husbands frequently have difficulty with such emotional self-disclosures, but successful disclosures of this nature by men result in increased marital satisfaction reported by both partners.

Openness in marriage requires trust, perception of the other as equal, and a sense of fair exchange in the relationship. Equal sharing of household tasks has been shown to be associated with high levels of marriage satisfaction by both partners, as has the provision of social support. A more difficult aspect of equity is acceptance of behaviours that are contrary to stereotypical expectations and are socially denigrated. Women may have difficulty accepting their partner's crying or dependent behaviour because this has been described as weak or wimpy. Men may have difficulty in accepting women's assertiveness or competitiveness because this has been described as strident of pushy. Equality in marriage requires a broadening of notions of acceptable behaviour by men and women, flexibility in taking on new behaviours, and acceptance and valuing of partner's behaviours when they fall beyond the narrow confines of traditional norms.

Marriage Preparation

Marriage preparation need to focus on issues of gender, not in a prescriptive sense of assigning tasks or nature of relationships, but in encouraging flexibility, openness and developing communicating and negotiating skills. Marriage preparation can inform couples that they need to pioneer new ways of relating, that previous models are likely to be inadequate, and that gender issues extend beyond task relegation and include emotional expressiveness and openness.

Marriage preparation can articulate the common expectation that emotional gratification and the development of intimacy underlies commitment in marriage. By providing communication and negotiation skills that encourage partners to come together openly and equally, marriage preparation can assist couples to forge new and satisfying ways of relating.

Mary Russell, MSW, PhD is a professor of social work at the University of British Columbia and a clinical social worker with a private practice specializing in marriage preparation and counseling women.

This article originally appeared in Family Connections (Spring 1991), published by the BC Council for Families.