Why did I write the book? A very good question. Most people – and more often women than men, I find – assume, when they see the cover and read the title and subtitle, that it was written out of bitterness after a financially painful divorce, but that’s not the case at all.
The book came out of my painful efforts to understand the degree of my unhappiness in marriage, and in doing so I worked out why most marriages are unhappy, whether or not they end in divorce. I certainly had no plan to write a book that some people (broadly, traditionally-minded and especially religious people) might object to. The story of the book’s strange genesis is related in the book’s Introduction.
In my midforties I married for the second time, to a kind and loving woman of a similar age. Her happy first marriage – of over 25 years' duration – had ended with her husband's death. The length of her first marriage helped me believe I might make more of a success of my second marriage than my first. How wrong I was. How deluded.
In 2007 the marriage failed, after only three years, for reasons wholly connected with me and not with my wife, and I resolved to understand the problems I had with the institution. For some time it was only a personal quest and I could not then have imagined that I would eventually write a book about marriage.
In my customary introverted manner I turned to books (written by 'relationship experts' this time) to deliver the insights I was seeking. But a problem soon emerged. While I couldn't readily fault what I was reading, much of the material didn't seem very relevant to me or my unhappiness. A frequent piece of advice – particularly from female writers – was to communicate more about emotions with a partner. That didn't help. I had been unhappy in my marriages but I didn't know why. I had nothing to communicate.
After reading a number of these books, I started to realise that the majority of the writers were unlike me in at least two important regards: they were female and extraverted – they clearly derived great pleasure from intimate relationships. And they were often religious, too, which I'm not. The general thrust of their arguments appeared to be that they themselves had enjoyed lengthy and happy marriages, and they attributed this to certain things they did (or didn't do) in their marriages, such as the ways in which they resolved conflict. And the 'ways' would be outlined in the book. The inference seemed to be that if you followed the writers' advice, happiness would surely follow.
My sceptical mind simply had to challenge that inference, by testing its logic in another context. Let's imagine that a world record-holding Olympic athlete wrote a book relating in detail how he'd trained on the way to getting a world record. In the book he led the reader to infer that all he or she had to do to achieve their own world record was to adopt the same training regime. The reader would surely regard the inference as absurd, knowing that he or she almost certainly didn't have the physical 'right stuff' to start with.
But what's less obvious is that we might not have the personality type, the temperament, nor the mental and emotional 'right stuff' to improve our relationships through reading books written by 'relationship experts'. And this might explain why those books sell in such high numbers, and the divorce rate keeps on rising anyway. Maybe the same phenomenon accounts for the growth in diet book sales in parallel with the growth of waistlines across the developed world.
I wasn't getting very far trying to understand my unhappiness in my marriages. Then I had a stroke of luck. A business associate was driving past my home town, and had a little time to kill before a meeting. We met for lunch. I outlined the struggle I was experiencing in trying to understand my unhappiness with marriage, whereupon he had a good idea. He said:
"You've been improving major organisations' annual profits by millions of pounds every year, for over 25 years. You do it by analysing and then solving some of their most challenging problems. Here's an idea. Why not apply sound analytical approaches to help you understand the source or sources of your unhappiness? You might then also discover a range of reasons behind why other people are unhappy in their marriages. Imagine that the government, knowing the negative impacts of marital unhappiness and the high and rising divorce rate, is determined to reduce marital unhappiness and thereby reverse the divorce rate trend. It has charged a number of organisations with making recommendations, and one of them has commissioned you to conduct a two-year-long study. Take your usual professional and disciplined approach and deliver a book at the end, along with recommendations. Oh, and the organisation demands that you tell them the facts as they appear to you. The people there don't want their feelings spared, and they're not easily shocked. They'll be perfectly happy for you to report something which differs from 'received wisdom' on the subject."
His advice made sense, and I felt that I'd soon know whether or not this was a worthwhile project. In the event it took only a day or two before I had persuaded myself that the project did merit serious attention. My work over the course of two years led me to a thesis which I believe to have structural integrity.
I’m always delighted – but often surprised – when ladies enjoy my books, particularly my politically-incorrect travelogue Two Men in a Car (A Businessman, a Chauffeur, and Their Holidays in France). Details of all four of my books are on www.themarriagedelusion.com.
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Comments
Mike is a great bloke. 'The Marriage Delusion' is a great title - one that portrays a lot of unsaid truth.
The sad fact is that around 46% of marriages end in divorce. Many many more are unhappy, as Mike found out. A top US relationship coach who has worked with thousands of couples reckons that only 2% of relationships live up to expectations - the rest live with varying degrees of disappointment, or far worse.
Whilst Mike raises some great points and gives a much needed fresh perspective, I cannot agree with some of the assumptions central to his book.
Mike is correct in his observation that most so called "relationship experts" write about what has worked for them. Many more write about popular relationship theories and myths, which they don't really understand. Such authors try to apply a blanket approach of advice to everyone without taking into account that we are all very different in terms of our emotionality, learning style, personality style and stage of development.
Mike's solution - to apply sound analytical approaches, I'm afraid does not work to well either. Relationships are complex, dynamic, emotional and often irrational things.
Mike is completely valid in pointing out that personality can dramatically affect relationship success. He is also right on the mark when discussing the impact of the huge differences between men's and women's brains.
Where I disagree with Mike is the extent to which Introverts are not suited to marriage. In fact, I am far from convinced that Introverts exist at all as a personality style or trait. I believe it is more a 'state' than a 'trait'. Certainly the self-assessment 'test' for introversion (page 85) that Mike offers in his book, seems much more about a test for people's fears, beliefs about themselves and what I call their 'emotional calibration'. You might also link it to 'emotional intelligence' a buzzword in HR and management/leadership development in the past few years.
To me, the observable traits of introversion are more to do with fears and inferiority complexes about relationships and what other people think of you. We teach this on our 'Feel The Fear And Do It Anyway®' workshops, and attain amazing results from people who you might want to label as introverted.
Mike seems to be a typically logical male (as I am) who struggles to understand and relate to emotions, and who also has beliefs about his ability to form relationships, underpinned by past experiences.
The key to great relationships, as I have written elsewhere in a blog post is: moving from self-awareness to self-acceptance (a big step for most people) on to self-actualisation (being the best you can be, not holding back).
Most people are not very self-aware or truly (deep down) accepting of self or others. When marrying, most of us (including me) have no expectation or unrealistically high expectations (based on complete fantasy and infatuation), or unreasonably low (often fearful/fear-based) expectations.
To achieve success in relationships, you need to understand and master: love, fear, authenticity, your personality style, their personality style, both of your energetic and emotional calibration ranges, happiness, each others values and human needs. Perhaps 5% of us manage this innately. Probably only 2% of couples share this naturally. My belief is the rest of us (98%) have to go back to school and learn it.
You would not expect to drive a car without lessons, or become a brain surgeon. With relationships being this complex, why should they be any different? My belief is that such schooling should be undertaken as 'marriage insurance'.
My partner Di and I offer such schooling. We have trained with and studied top relationship experts. We are very different personalities ourselves - and we specialise in understanding personality and human behaviour. We have both been married previously. We have had to put the theory into practise and modify it to get it to work for ourselves and our clients. We are non-prescriptive. We share what has worked for us AND we look at relationships from the perspective of different combinations of personality.
We'll be speaking and exhibiting at The Starting Over Show in London.
Andy & Di x
www.executive-relationship-coaching.co.uk
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