Marriage Lie #5: Your Spouse Should Make You Happy
It was your big day. Everyone gathered to send the happy couple into the world. Happy together, ready to tackle the world. Making each other happy.
What a lie!
Oh, I sure do hope you were happy on your wedding day. And yes, your family and friends did gather to wish you well, sending you out to take on the world. Together.
But making each other happy? Lie.
Okay, to be fair, the lie part is the expectation that your spouse should make you happy. You can be happy together. You can even find joy in your relationship. But your spouse cannot make you happy.
I don’t mean any disrespect toward your spouse (or any spouse). It is not me doubting someone’s abilities or even someone’s desire to make their spouse happy.
It’s just that it isn’t possible. You can’t make your spouse happy. Your spouse can’t make you happy.
And yet, many people keep on believing this marriage. Leaving them disappointed when, in fact, their spouse fails at making them happy.
You might think me the cynical old man who lost his faith in marriage.
You would be wrong. I have spent much of my career working with people to save and improve their marriage…so that they have a happy marriage that both people treasure. I actually have a deep and abiding belief in the power of marriage.
No. It isn’t cynicism. It is the fact that no person is capable of making another person happy. And it certainly isn’t another person’s responsibility to make another person happy.
Yet that is exactly what many people expect from their spouse. They believe a common lie of marriage. And in the process, they set themselves up for misery and frustration. They are expecting the impossible from a spouse. And no surprise, they are disillusioned when it fails. And it will.
“But WHY Can’t My Spouse Make Me Happy?”
It would be lovely, wouldn’t it? If someone else could bring you happiness? That the search many people make for being happy…for finding happiness…was completed when they found their spouse?
Happiness is big right now. If you haven’t been in a bookstore lately, you may have missed the shelves burgeoning with books on how to be happy. We are looking for that key to happiness, that secret that will help us arrive at happy.
It is certainly understandable. I think most people want to be happy. We just tend to look for it in the wrong places. Like, say, a spouse. Or, for that matter, any other person.
This lie is posited on the bigger lie: that happiness comes from something external. Something “happens” that makes us “happy.” After all, they do share that root word, hap. That root word is about luck, chance, or fortune. Something happens by chance or fortune, that makes you happy. It makes finding happiness an external, almost stumbled-upon, event.
If I win the lottery, I am going to be happy. If I find the perfect house/job/car/toy, I am going to be happy. We buy into this belief every day. You see that gizmo or gadget on the internet and there is some part of you that believes, “THAT would make me happy!” So you hit the Buy button. It arrives. And for a few moments of distraction, you are entertained — which you may even confuse with happiness. You even get a hit of dopamine in your brain. And then, you return to your prior state.
Since that didn’t make you happy, the quest continues…the search for what will make you happy.
And that is the lie we drag into marriage and apply to our spouse. We decide the right spouse will make us happy. The quest concludes with “the right one.” The person that will make you happy.
But they don’t.
And they can’t.
The reality is, happiness is not at all external. It is up to each person, on their own, internally.
In the meantime, that belief adds pressure to the relationship and to your spouse. And it is guaranteed to fail.
The Problem With Expecting A Spouse To Make You Happy
What if you insist that your spouse should make you happy? That this is the heart of a marriage…part of what you signed up for? What might happen?
I think there are at least three main crises that grow from that expectation.
1) A spouse is pressured and burdened. Even if it were possible for someone to make another person happy (it isn’t), that places the burden on that person. So if you are unhappy, that person has to figure out what to do to make you happy. It is a heavy weight to bear, to be responsible for the emotional state of someone else. That burden begins to have a negative consequence on the emotional state of the one feeling responsible. And yet, they have no power to manage the other person’s emotional state. All of the responsibility and none of the power. That leads to feeling stuck, frustrated, incompetent, and impotent.
2) It disempowers you. If someone is looking out there for happiness that can only come from in here, that person gives up the power to find happiness. It’s a matter of looking in entirely the wrong place. Wanting to be happy is not the problem. But looking for happiness in impossible places means you can’t find it. The lesson that is often learned is not that we look in the wrong places, but that you can’t be happy, and you think is your source for happiness has failed. In this case, you think your spouse failed at their mission. Your happiness.
3) It lowers your resilience. Your capacity to deal with problems and struggles is your resilience level. The more capacity we have to deal with challenges, the higher our resilience. When we lose capacity, we lower our resilience. If you are looking for something to make you happy, you miss finding your own happiness, from within yourself. You miss the real source for happiness. you miss your own capacity. And so, you lower your own resilience. When this happens, we don’t learn to self-soothe and self-care. We are waiting for it to come to us.
Happy Spouse versus Happy Marriage
But if your spouse can’t make you happy, how do you have a happy marriage?
Depending upon your spouse for your own happiness (and vice versa) creates an impossible expectation. That actually lowers the possibility of having a happy marriage. Your spouse will certainly fail (since it isn’t possible), leading to dissatisfaction with a spouse and the marriage.
Instead, the goal of creating a mutually happy marriage is a great one! It has both people working for the best for the marriage. Happiness does not come from a spouse, but is put into the relationship.
This comes from an understanding of interdependence. Many spouses struggle with the dichotomy of dependence and independence. Dependence is relying on the other for something. You are dependent upon them for whatever that might be. Independence is refusing to rely on another for anything. Both are destructive to a marriage relationship.
The marital relationship is one of interdependence. There, the spouses are mutually part of a process of meeting needs for the relationship. With lives woven together, both bring what they have to the relationship to build a WE. Together, they create a mutual relationship.
When thinking about happiness, you might say that this distinction is the difference between seeking happiness from a spouse and seeking to bring happiness to the relationship. The difference of getting and giving.
But We CAN Make Each Other Miserable!
No, we can’t ultimately make a spouse happy. Nor can a spouse make us happy. Realizing that happiness does not come from a spouse, and a spouse’s happiness does not come from you, does not mean you just give up on the emotional state of your spouse or your marriage.
It is, after all, possible to spread misery. Over the course of this series on marriage lies, we have noted ways these very lies can spread misery into our relationships. These lies raise false expectations, while obscuring the true path to a strong marriage.
To be clear, marriage is a relationship that does (or can) meet a number of needs. Humans do need deep and intimate connection. We need to be known. And we need to be near. Marriage offers a stable place for that deep connection. It offers a partner through the struggles (and successes) of life.
But that same deep need for connection, when not met, leads to the pain of a hurting marriage. And that is the moment when a spouse can feel misery in the relationship. The relationship that is supposed to provide connection and warmth causes one to be even more aware of the lack of connection and warmth. So while you can’t make each other happy, it is certainly possible to make each other miserable.
The Switch
No, you won’t succeed in making a spouse happy. And your spouse won’t succeed at making you happy. It isn’t either of your responsibilities to make the other happy. And it isn’t possible.
But that does not mean you give up on a happy marriage. In fact, giving up leads to a miserable and painful marriage. Pulling back because your spouse does not make you happy creates a painful marriage.
The shift is to ask about how to bring happiness into the marriage. How to bring connection and love into the marriage. How to be about bringing your best self into the relationship. Which starts by building your own life of meaning and purpose, with finding your own sense of joy and satisfaction.
The Path To A Happy Marriage
Just to be clear, the fact that a spouse can’t make you happy (and vice versa) does not eliminate the possibility of having a happy marriage.
Here are some steps to head toward a happy marriage:
1) Take full responsibility for your own happiness. Your spouse can’t do it, but you can. And you can bring that state into your marriage.
2) Accept that conflict is a natural part of any close relationship. The goal is to learn to use conflict to better the relationship and further your path in life.
3) Be ALL IN on your marriage. Marriage is not about “if you do, I do.” It is not about equals. It is about both people being all-in.
4) Don’t expect a spouse to meet all your needs. The expectation will be met with frustration when your spouse doesn’t. But your spouse can’t. At the same time, do seek to meet the needs of a spouse, where you can.
5) Work toward WE. Marriage works when you build a team, a sense of being in it together. You are going for the win, together. Not besting a spouse, not seeing the spouse as the opposition. Life is hard enough. Join together, as a team, to make it through. Go for the win, together, as a WE.
If you missed the first lie about marriage, CHECK IT OUT RIGHT HERE. And if you missed the second lie, CHECK IT OUT RIGHT HERE. And if you missed the third lie, CHECK IT OUT RIGHT HERE. And if you missed the fourth lie, CHECK IT OUT RIGHT HERE.