THE STAGES OF MARRIAGE: FINDING THE IDEAL MATE
Each of us begins life in what might be called our homestead, which is our first family experience. Because the world is an imperfect place and none of us is blessed by being the center of the universe, we leave our first family with the wounds and insecurities that result from not being loved perfectly. When we leave the homestead, we take with us a primitive hope that we will find someone who will love and accept us enough to heal our emotional wounds and quiet our insecurities.
Unfortunately, many of our initial attempts to find that perfect connection prove to be false starts. Our own and other people's immaturities produce further hurts and disappointments. This negative drama of searching continues far too long for most of us. We begin to feel as though we are floundering. We are looking for an intimate is — land of refuge from our insecurities and for a partner with whom to share our life, but we begin to fear that we may never reach our goal.
Finally, however, we fall in love and are loved in return by someone who seems to be our dream comes true. The other person seems to fulfill our hope of being loved perfectly. Of course, our image of this other person is influenced to a great degree by our own fears and fantasies. At this stage of our development, we tend to see what we need to see and to be what we need to be in order to create harmony with another person. The alternative—continued floundering alone—is too frightening.
This is an important point: No matter how healthy a marriage ends up being, it probably started out based on mutual unrealistic hopes about who each person would be in the other's life. The bliss we experience at the beginning of a relationship results from the excitement that comes from transferring our primitive needs into the belief that we have found the perfect person to satisfy those needs. At this stage, our future spouse may appear to be the answer to our unconscious prayer to find a perfect "parent"—a person who will end our searching and loneliness by making us the center of his or her universe; a person who will love us back so well and so thoroughly that all the wounds and insecurities we have collected in life thus far will soon be erased.
Our choice of mate at this stage leaves us feeling as though we will finally live happily ever after. No small part of our excitement at this point is attached to the hope that in marrying this partner we will be able to finesse growing up. We hope to be able to skip the hard work of self-development simply by marrying someone who possesses the qualities we find lacking in ourselves. We hope to learn to be more outgoing, loving, strong, stable, fun loving, or whatever we are not, simply through affiliation with this new partner. A secondary hope is that we will make a similar difference in our spouse's development: "In me, my future mate has finally found someone who will love away all of life's wounds and all of his or her imperfections."
But then the troubles begin. Behind every mountain is a valley, and sometime after the initial glow of marriage begins to fade, we begin to notice signs of doubt. This second stage is signaled by growing concerns about why our partner's love is not perfectly soothing, as we had expected it to be.
*39\170\9*
