An interesting piece in the Journal of Marital and Family Therapy was covered by the BBC regarding tough times in marraige. Essentially, due to romantic myths and cultural beliefs about perfect love, many people have an unrealistic view of how marriage should work.

People believe that hard times are not normal, which can actually increase the level of distress that couples have. However, the authors note that all of these cultural images are fantasy and that real human relationship requires learning and navigation through extremely difficult times of suffering.

It’s interesting to get a cross-section of how romance and marriage is portrayed in the West. There are either idealized-perfect or bitterly-mismatched couples. Rarely do we see securely attached people that can work through difficult things without letting chaos take over.

The authors believe that building on relationship strengths, enjoying when times are good, and being engaged in the present are great additional ways to make marriage more satisfying and solid, and I completely agree.

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Aceptar los malos momentos es bueno para el matrimonio (6/20/2007)

    Last reviewed: By John M. Grohol, Psy.D. on 5 Jun 2007
    Published on PsychCentral.com. All rights reserved.