Mental Health - Two types of Marriages affects the MEantal health

TWO TYPES OF MARRIAGES

As individuals, different people live by different standards. Couples do, too. And in understanding successful and unsuccessful marriage, it's important to understand that what connotes success to one couple may mean failure to another. For example, some couples take pride and obtain considerable gratification in participating in community cultural life. For them, this constitutes an extension of their good marriage. To other couples, with different tastes, that same involvement may seem to be a means of escape from an inadequate marriage. When a couple believes their marriage is happy, it may well be happy to them even if outsiders question the fact. But sociologists have recognized that if some objective criteria could be found, they might help to give married people fresh insights into their relationships.

After studying 437 men and women, Dr. John Cuber, professor of sociology at Ohio State University, has concluded that marriages can be divided into two basic types. One, called utilitarian, serves primarily as a means to such familiar ends as establishing a home, having children, furthering a career, or enjoyment of wealth and prestige. The other, called intrinsic, makes such considerations second in importance to the intimate relationship of the partners. All marriages do not fall neatly into one or the other category or remain constant. One category is not necessarily better than the other; each type of marriage reflects a different philosophy and serves different needs.

But the categories and their patterns provide a basis for psychologists to determine how well a marriage is functioning and may help people, as Dr. Cuber notes, to "discard the idea of a perfect marriage and be spared the frustration of measuring their lives by impossible standards." While a utilitarian couple may look upon marriage as a means to comfort and security, and while they may have only minor sexual feel- ings for one another, they do get along. And while the intrinsic couple find great pleasure in each other, enjoying differences as well as same- nesses, revealing their secret thoughts and feelings to each other without embarrassment, yielding to the limits of intimacy and fulfilling their sexual natures, this type of bond, ideal as it may seem, sometimes leaves no room for the outside world to enter. And when external pressures invade, as they invariably do, the marriage can be in jeopardy.

The utilitarian marriage, which thrives on outside interests, may have a greater chance for longevity. As a follow-up to the Cuber theory and in an effort to see what early signs might provide a preview of what will happen to couples, investigators at the National Institute of Mental Health worked with volunteer couples who had been married just three months and were of comparable age and social background. After extensive interviews and detailed questionnaires, the couples were given a color matching test to take together to determine how they handled conflict. Some couples virtually went into combat; others argued much like lawyers; some refused to argue and gave in almost immediately.

There were also some who listened carefully to each other's point of view and eventually agreed to disagree. The latter couples maintained their faith in themselves and their relationship, and it is these couples who develop intrinsic marriages. Those who seemed to concede too quickly may find themselves in a utilitarian marriage or even in a devitalized marriage in which the partners start out with high hopes and settle into a life of apathy and disappointment. Becoming familiar with marriage patterns may enable couples to understand the real nature of their relationship and may help them move toward the relationship they want.