So I just finished reading Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi. Simplified, Flow is the state in which people are so involved in an activity that nothing else seems to matter. Flow experiences lead to true enjoyment, not mere pleasure (like watching TV); flow activities often "have rules that require the learning of skills, they set up goals, they provide feedback, they make control possible". They are the point in which challenges and skills match up perfectly. Most importantly, these experiences lead to the growth of the self. Csikszentmihalyi states that both the most positive and most negative experiences in our lives usually involve other people and our relationships with them. Here are some of his statements on relationships and marriage (TL;DR at the bottom):
- Every relationship requires a reorienting of attention, a repositioning of goals.
- Getting married requires a radical and permanent reorientation of attentional habits.
- If a person in unwilling to adjust personal goals when starting a relationship, then a lot of what subsequently happens in that relationship will produce disorder in the person's consciousness, because novel patterns of interaction will conflict with old patterns of expectation.
- Until a few decades ago, families tended to stay together because parents and children were forced to continue the relationship for extrinsic reasons... it wasn't because husbands and wives loved each other more in the old times, but because husbands needed someone to cook and keep house, wives needed someone to bring home the bacon, and children needed both parents... The current 'disintegration' of the family is a result of the slow disappearance of external reasons for staying married. The increase in the divorce rate is probably more affected by changes in the labor market that have increased women's employment opportunities, and by the diffusion of labor-saving home appliances, than it is by a lessening of love or of moral fiber.
- Extrinsic reasons are not the only ones for staying married and for living together in families. There are great opportunities for joy and for growth that can only be experiences in family life, and these intrinsic rewards are no less present now than they were in the past; in fact, they are probably much more readily available today than they have been at any previous time. If the trend of traditional families keeping together mainly as a convenience is on the wane, the number of families that endure because their members enjoy each other may be increasing.
- Cicero once wrote that to be completely free one must become a slave to a set of laws. In other words, accepting limitations is liberating. For example, by making up one's mind to invest psychic energy exclusively in a monogamous marriage, regardless of any problems, obstacles, or more attractive options that may come along later, one is freed of the constant pressure of trying to maximize emotional returns. Having made the commitment that on old-fashioned marriage demands, and having made it willingly instead of being compelled by tradition, a person no longer needs to worry whether she has made the right choice, or whether the grass might be greener somewhere else. As a result a great deal of energy gets freed up for living, instead of being spend on wondering about how to live.
- Unless the partners invest psychic energy in the relationship, conflicts are inevitable, simply because each individual has goals that are to a certain extent divergent from those of all other members of the family. Without good lines of communication the distortions will become amplified, until the relationship falls apart.
- With time one gets to know the other person well, and the obvious challenges have been exhausted... At the point, the relationship is in danger of becoming a boring routine... The only way to restore flow to the relationship is by finding new challenges in it. This might involve steps as simple as varying the routines of eating, sleeping, or shopping. They might involve making an effort to talk together about new topics of conversation, visiting new places, making new friends. More than anything else they involve paying attention to the partner's own complexity, getting to know her at deeper levels than were necessary in the earlier days of the relationship, supporting him with sympathy and compassion during the inevitable changes that the years bring... Of course, these things cannot happen without extensive inputs of energy and time; but the payoff in terms of the quality of experience is usually more than worth it.
TL;DR: Marriage today lives or dies based on intrinsic rewards, not extrinsic ones like in the past. By making a voluntary commitment to a single partner in marriage, and closing off all the alternatives, it's possible to focus all that previous "what-if" energy into living the best life possible within your marriage; taking away options is actually freeing. The merging of personal goals and joint goals in marriage/families is critical, and good communication is key to keeping conflict from destroying the relationship. A willingness to adjust personal goals is an absolute requirement to a successful marriage. To keep it fresh and enjoyable, new challenges must be added to the marriage from time to time.
This is actually a pretty close approximation of how I felt about marriage before my wife and I got married. I'm atheist, so I didn't have a religious reason to want to get married, but I felt intuitively that by getting married our commitment to each other would be more final, allowing us to be even more open with each other and free to do as we wish, without having to worry about the other person bailing. Of course, doing as we wish is balanced with the needs/wants of the other person, and that's okay; closing off some options makes it easier to choose from the good ones. It seems silly that some exchanged words and a piece of paper have that kind of power, but they have it because we give it to them. Our relationship has only gotten better since we got married, and we make it a point to add new challenges to our lives from time to time. I believe marriage will always be relevant, even as the religious reasons for marriage slowing fade away, because spousal/family relationships are inherently different than friendships, and they provide a unique opportunity for enjoyment in life.