MARRIAGE RULES BY THE AUTHOR Marriage Rules The Dance of Fear The Dance of Connection The Mother Dance Life Preservers The Dance of Deception The Dance of Intimacy The Dance of Anger Women in Therapy Franny B. Kranny, There’s a Bird in Your Hair! (with Susan Goldhor) What’s So Terrible About Swallowing an Apple Seed? (with Susan Goldhor) MARRIAGE RULES A Manual for the Married and the Coupled Up HARRIET LERNER, PH.D. Gotham Books GOTHAM BOOKS Published by Penguin Group (USA) Inc. 375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, U.S.A. Penguin Group (Canada), 90 Eglinton Avenue East, Suite 700, Toronto, Ontario M4P 2Y3, Canada (a division of Pearson Penguin Canada Inc.); Penguin Books Ltd, 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England; Penguin Ireland, 25 St. Stephen’s Green, Dublin 2, Ireland (a division of Penguin Books Ltd); Penguin Group (Australia), 250 Camberwell Road, Camberwell, Victoria 3124, Australia (a division of Pearson Australia Group Pty Ltd); Penguin Books India Pvt Ltd, 11 Community Centre, Panchsheel Park, New Delhi–110 017, India; Penguin Group (NZ), 67 Apollo Drive, Rosedale, Auckland 0632, New Zealand (a division of Pearson New Zealand Ltd); Penguin Books (South Africa) (Pty) Ltd, 24 Sturdee Avenue, Rosebank, Johannesburg 2196, South Africa Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England Published by Gotham Books, a member of Penguin Group (USA) Inc. First printing, January 2012 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 Copyright © 2012 by Harriet Lerner All rights reserved Gotham Books and the skyscraper logo are trademarks of Penguin Group (USA) Inc. LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA Lerner, Harriet Goldhor. Marriage rules : a manual for the married and the coupled up / Harriet Lerner. p. cm. EISBN: 9781101554210 1. Married people—Psychology. 2. Couples—Psychology. 3. Marriage—Psychological aspects. 4. Marital quality. I. Title. HQ734.L394 2012 306.872—dc23 2011032928 Printed in the United States of America Set in Adobe Garamond Pro Designed by Spring Hoteling Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise), without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book. The scanning, uploading, and distribution of this book via the Internet or via any other means without the permission of the publisher is illegal and punishable by law. Please purchase only authorized electronic editions, and do not participate in or encourage electronic piracy of copyrighted materials. Your support of the author’s rights is appreciated. While the author has made every effort to provide accurate telephone numbers and Internet addresses at the time of publication, neither the publisher nor the author assumes any responsibility for errors, or for changes that occur after publication. Further, the publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content. To Betty Carter and Monica McGoldrick, brilliant pioneers in the field of family theory and therapy CONTENTS AUTHOR’S NOTE INTRODUCTION It Shouldn’t Be That Complicated ONE Warm Things Up TWO Dial Down the Criticism THREE Overcome Your L.D.D. (Listening Deficit Disorder) FOUR Call Off the Chase: How to Connect with a Distant Partner FIVE Fight Fair! SIX Forget About Normal Sex SEVEN Kid Shock: Keep Your Bearings After Children Arrive EIGHT Know Your Bottom Line NINE Help Your Marriage Survive Stepkids TEN Your First Family: The Royal Road to a Remarkable Marriage EPILOGUE I Promise You This ACKNOWLEDGMENTS INDEX AUTHOR’S NOTE This book is inspired by Michael Pollan’s slender volume about healthful eating called Food Rules, an eater’s guide meant to bring much-needed simplicity to our daily decisions about food. “Don’t eat breakfast cereals that change the color of the milk,” Pollan advises, and “Don’t eat anything your great-grandmother wouldn’t recognize as food.” His rules are all one needs to know to eat wisely and well. Eating, Pollan demonstrates, doesn’t have to be so complicated. Neither does marriage, I thought to myself while thumbing through his book. Why not a book about marriage (defined loosely as couples in a long-term commitment) for those who want just the rules, without the theory behind them? Admittedly, coupling up is more complicated than eating, but I decided it wouldn’t be all that difficult to lay out one hundred concise rules that make a relationship work, or at least give it the best chance of succeeding. I am grateful to Michael Pollan for reminding me that keeping things simple is often the best way to teach the most complicated things. INTRODUCTION IT SHOULDN’T BE THAT COMPLICATED People spend their hard-earned money seeking the advice of relationship experts when they already know what they need to do to have a good marriage— or at least a better one. I was recently reminded of this fact when listening to the marriage vows that two young people said out loud to each other in front of their community of family and friends. They said in turn: I promise to always treat you with kindness and respect. I promise to be faithful, honest, and fair. I promise to listen carefully to what you are saying. I promise to apologize when I am wrong and to repair any harm I have done. I promise to cook and clean for you. I promise to be your partner and best friend in the best and worst of times. I promise to bring my best self into our relationship. I promise to live these promises as a daily practice. How do you think this couple came up with their shared promises? Did they plow through the countless self-help books and blogs about the “how-tos” of a successful relationship? Did they consult the work of psychologists and marriage counselors and study the latest research on marital failure and success? Of course not. They consulted their own hearts, their core values, their life experience, and the Golden Rule. By the time we’re old enough to choose a life partner, we’ve observed a number of marriages and have a pretty good idea about what makes things better and worse. We know it’s usually a good idea to treat the other person as we’d like to be treated. If this couple lives their promises as a daily practice (even with a large margin of error), their marriage will do very well, indeed. Need the experts say more? OK, IT’S NOT THAT SIMPLE With marriage having a 50 percent no-go rate, it’s obvious that people don’t follow their promises, or their best thinking, just like people don’t eat healthfully even when they know what’s good for them. Paradoxically, it’s in our most enduring and important relationships that we’re least likely to be our most