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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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The Shechtmans believe that a person's emotional texture is, in large part, shaped by the way he or she felt in childhood. Your moods or feelings, known as your familiars, can be positive or negative. It's your negative familiars that stand in the way of fully enjoying adult life with the partner you have chosen. Once you realize this truth, you are free to explore your feelings, grieve the unhappiness of your childhood and move on. But the important point is that this is your responsibility and yours alone. "In a great marriage, both partners assume full responsibility for their own inner lives," say the Shechtmans. "This means that you don't view your partner as the cause of what you are feeling. Nor do you view yourself as the cause of what he is feeling. You don't blame your partner for your own unhappiness, nor do you blame yourself for his."

  • Challenge your partner. Unconditional acceptance is for infants. The Shechtmans assert that caring for your partner means holding him accountable for living up to his best vision of himself and continuing to grow. "Challenge is a vote of confidence, a sign of respect," they say. "Conversely, accepting people exactly as they are is a form of abandonment. The message you send when you unconditionally accept a partner's self-destructive or self-defeating behavior is that you believe she can't do better. Ultimately, this defeats the marriage itself. When you don't challenge your partner, you are essentially giving up on her."
  • Don't confuse physical togetherness with intimacy.

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