Happily Ever After Phases

Published January 15, 1981. Dr. Abraham Schmitt, marriage counselor and professor at the University of Pennsylvania, has an interesting observation about marriage. He does not believe that couples marry and “live happily ever after” in one long, endless, total, uninterrupted union commencing with the marriage vows. Rather, Dr. Schmitt believes marriages that survive pass through four different phases.

In his article, “Conflict and Ecstasy, A Model for a Maturing Marriage,” Professor Schmitt states that successful marriages go thought the phases of (1) Ecstasy I, (2) Conflict, (3) Ecstasy II, and (4) Freedom.

Ecstasy I, according to Dr. Schmitt, is the natural part of the romantic model for mate selection. “At the peak moment of closeness, two people commit themselves in marriage for life. This is a time experienced as intense union, when a couple’s total needs for intimacy are met.”

The Conflict Phase, notes Dr. Schmitt, begins soon after the marriage, as two people attempt to communicate their wants and needs to each other. They indicate they are two different human beings whose identities are not to be lost in the relationship. It is during the conflict phase that a young husband and wife begin to ascertain exactly what they will and will not derive from their marriage. And they begin to determine which realistic needs will be met and which ones were just fairy tale dreams.

The conflict phase, according to Schmitt, is nothing more than two human beings trying to be rescued from smothering each other in the relationship.” They are, at this point, begging to be helped to discover their distinctive identities. The more mature couple can pass through the second phase of conflict without being either smothered by the union or devastated by periodic separation.

The third phase, Ecstasy II, commences when a married couple discovers and realizes that both partners have unique contributions to make to the marriage. They will then utilize rather than be threatened by these differences. “They will affirm each other’s individuality” Claims Dr. Schmitt, “and open the way for a new marriage about to be born. The immediate aftereffects of a triple birth—two persons individually and a marital identity—are beautiful to witness.”

The fourth and most rewarding phase is that of Freedom. The mutual peak experience, Ecstasy II, is followed by a sense of freedom to be close and freedom to be separate as each other needs it for his or her psychological welfare.”

I don’t know how you feel about Dr. Schmitt’s four phases of marriage, but I think he has something. It suggests that the couples in phase two, Conflict, should not give up, but should realize that the next phase, Ecstasy II, is attainable. Every married couple must confront, among other issues, how much separateness and how much togetherness there will be in their marriage. And the amount of each varies from couple to couple. However, either extreme of separateness or togetherness can destroy a marriage.

A loving marriage is not two organisms feeding on each other for sustenance. It is two separate beings, developing in their own ways and at the same time touching each other’s lives profoundly.

In “The Prophet,” Kahlil Gibran wrote:

            Give your hearts, but not into each other’s keeping.

            For only the hand of Life can contain your hearts

            And stand together yet not too near together;

            For the pillars of the temple stand apart,

            And the oak tree and the cypress grow not in each other’s shadow.