Marriage and Your Self-Esteem

Published August 12, 1982. How do you feel about yourself? Do you like yourself? According to the Gallup Opinion Poll Organization, about 37 percent of Americans have high self-esteem, 33 percent are average and 30 percent have low self-esteem. And low self-esteem, interestingly enough, can affect a marriage.

A person who has positive feelings of self-esteem is characterized by integrity, responsibility, and the ability to express affection and love. Acting from a firm base of appreciating his or her own worth, such a person is able to appreciate the worth of others.

A person characterized by positive feelings of self-esteem also attacks problems realistically, thus maximizing the possibility for resolving them. This leads to a relatively great number of successful experiences, so that the person with high self-esteem is characteristically optimistic and cheerful and usually expects things to go well.

In her book “Peoplemaking,” Dr. Virginia Satir points out that enhancing self-esteem is one of the keys to achieving success in marriage. This is because high self-esteem is closely related to achieving effective marital communication.

Communication that is disruptive, belittling, or argumentative tends to lower the self-esteem of the other person, whereas communication that is open, honest, clear,  and nondefensive tends to enhance the self-esteem of the other person involved.

Dr. Satir also presents “A Declaration of Self-Esteem.” I thought you might enjoy reading it. It goes as follows:

I am me.

In all the world, there is no one else exactly like me. There are persons who have some parts like me, but no one adds up exactly like me. Therefore, everything that comes out of me is authentically mine because I alone chose it.

I own everything about me – my body, including everything it does; my mind, including all its thoughts and ideas; my eyes, including the images of all they behold; my feelings, whatever they may be – anger, joy, frustration love, disappointment, excitement; my mouth, and all the words that come out of it, polite, sweet or rough, correct, or incorrect; my voice, loud or soft; and all my actions, whether they be to others or to myself.

I own my fantasies, my dreams, my hopes, my fears.

I own all my triumphs and successes, all my failures and mistakes.

Because I own all of me, I can become intimately acquainted with me. By so doing I can love me and be friendly with me in all my parts. I can then make it possible for all of me to work in my best interest.

I know there are aspects about myself that puzzle me, and other aspects that I do not know. But as long as I am friendly and loving to myself, I can courageously and hopefully look for the solutions to the puzzles and for ways to find out more about me.

However I look and sound, whatever I say and do, and whatever I think and feel at a given moment in time is me. This is authentic and represents where I am at that moment in time.

When I review later how I looked and sounded, what I said and did, and how I thought and felt, some parts may turn out to be unfitting. I can discard that which is unfitting and keep that which proved fitting, and invent something new for that which I discarded.

I can see, hear, feel, think, say, and do. I have the tools to survive, to be close to others, to be productive, and to make sense and order out of the world of people and things outside of me.

I own me, and therefore I can engineer me.

I am me and I am okay.