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Home › Articles › For and About You › The Truth About Growing Apart

The Truth About Growing Apart

6 Surprising Ways to Strengthen Your Marriage

By Morrie Shechtman and Arleah Shechtman

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As the Shechtmans emphasize throughout their book, good marriages are those in which partners have identical values. One of the most critical shared values is a commitment to growth. If you view yourself as a work in progress and want to take risks and explore opportunities until you draw your last breath, yet your partner wants to work the same job for 40 years and vegetate on the sofa every night, the marriage is probably doomed. Harsh, perhaps, but true. Commit to personal growth yourself, and challenge your partner to do the same.

  • Dedicate yourself to your life's purpose. Give it your all-out effort, making full use of your talents and values. "Marriage is not your mission in life," say the Shechtmans. "Neither is raising children. In a great marriage, each partner is deeply committed and actively involved in some endeavor outside the marriage. When one partner is dedicated to an outside purpose while the other is dedicated only to supporting his spouse, then the supporting spouse ends up living through his partner in the same way unfulfilled parents live through their children. The one who is fully engaged with the outside world soon grows bored with her devoted supporter."
  • Realize that selfless devotion is boring. Be interesting. In Love in the Present Tense: How to Have a High Intimacy, Low Maintenance Marriage, the authors tell a story about Bernard, a physician, and Stacy, his devoted, physically fit wife who kept the house immaculate, cooked gourmet meals and pushed her children to achieve. One day, Bernard left Stacy for an unkempt and outspoken photojournalist two years his senior. Why? Because the photojournalist was interesting.

    The Shechtmans point out that Stacy is victim, not of Bernard, but of the myth that selfless devotion keeps marriages alive. "As we see it, Stacy had deserted Bernard long before he announced that he was deserting her," say the authors. "In living through Bernard instead of cultivating a life of her own, she had failed to become a full person and thereby deprived him of a full partner."

  • Assume personal responsibility for your own inner life.

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