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In reorganizing a marriage so that it can operate with maximum workability, establishing a quid pro quo is essential. To achieve a quid pro quo it is necessary to understand two fundamentals:
First, the spouses must learn what their total communication facilities are. As we know, a marriage is an interlocking, self-contained system. The behavior and the attitudes of one partner always stimulate some sort of reaction from the other. Because these attitudes, and the resulting actions and reactions, usually originate at the unconscious level, both spouses may be unaware of them. In bringing the quid pro quo procedure to maximum functionality, each partner must learn to recognize his own behavior and attitudes and the reactions which they stimulate in the other. He must become fully conscious of the many aspects of communication with the other, and also of how the other one will respond to each communication, be it by a word, a lifted eyebrow, a silence, or a punch in the nose. One way to get started on this is for the spouses to read the communications chapter aloud to each other, alternating on paragraphs.
Second, it must be realized that with the exception of such rare couples as the Heavenly Twins, spouses have many differences in behavior-in attitudes, in tastes, in methods of performance, and in levels of performance. Therefore, if each behaves naturally and spontaneously, scores of conflicts between the spouses are inevitable. If the wife, for example, wishes to watch a variety show on the single television set at the same time that the husband wants to tune in the boxing matches, one of the spouses will have to yield. This is a simple example, but differences of this sort may be found with respect to food, to moods, to sex; they may permeate the entire range of behavior, tastes, and attitudes of a man and wife. Marriage may be a source of many advantages and many comforts, but it does eliminate some of the spontaneous behavioral repertoire. Perhaps that is why a spouse is often referred to as “the better half.” This may well be a folk method of expressing the fact that in marriage one reduces by half the free and spontaneous ways of behaving which were available before marriage. If both spouses are rigid and insist that all of their desires be granted, the marriage cannot continue as a functional relationship. Day after day and night after night each of them will seek to exert power over the other, to gain his own way. Some of the maneuvers and ways of behaving which are instruments of this power struggle are unconscious; therefore, if the marriage is to be improved, they must be identified, as we indicated in the preceding paragraph.
In establishing a quid pro quo the spouses acknowledge that they have differences-at many levels, both conscious and unconscious-and that in order to maintain the marriage, in order to achieve the benefits of collaboration, each is willing to sacrifice a percentage of his natural and spontaneous behavior. The process of establishing a workable quid pro quo could well be called a “marital bargaining session” or “negotiations for the betterment of the marriage.” Both spouses are saying “I can’t have everything I want and you can’t have everything you want, but let’s arrange our behavior in such a manner that we each get the maximum; let’s negotiate so that each has those things which are most important to him and at the same time tries to nourish the well-being of the other to the maximum extent.” The establishment of a quid pro quo means the making of behavioral rules which are of the greatest mutual benefit. Only rules equitable to both work in marriage. It is a union in which both parties win or both lose.
Naturally, the more hate-filled the spouses, the more discordant the marriage, the more difficult it will be to start afresh with a new quid pro quo.
Getting the marital process back in balance often can be a long and arduous task. Even with professional help it may require a year or more. In some cases, however, spouses working on their own may be successful in only six to eight weeks, or perhaps a few months, provided both have a keen desire to solve their mutual problem. They may experience certain zeal, a certain zest for mutual victory, which might be lacking if they were leaning on a professional counselor.
The danger in self-therapy is that the spouses may expect a balanced marriage, a good functional quid pro quo, to appear almost instantly. It will not. They should assume that at least six or eight weekly sessions of an hour apiece will be necessary before any degree of success is apparent. If after a reasonable trial the spouses are convinced that they cannot bargain, their alternatives, as has been mentioned, are to seek outside help, to separate, or to permit one spouse to dominate entirely.
The sessions should be looked upon as an important ritual, a ritual almost as important as the marriage ceremony itself, for in many cases if these sessions are not successful, the marriage will terminate. It is helpful if the spouses pick for the first session a date coming roughly a week after they have completed this book, and mark the appointment on the calendar. The circumstances of the meeting should be as convenient as possible for both. For example, it may be necessary to spend a night in a hotel to avoid interruption by the children. Even if the meeting is conducted at home, it should be approached as something very special. One couple we knew took the attitude that they were now attempting to make a beginning in their “real and lasting marriage,” and that their earlier wedding ceremony amounted to just a legal piece of paper which didn’t count in human terms. Though they had been married for seven years and had three children (and many problems), they prepared for their quid pro quo meetings as if for a festivity, at which each wished to be at his very best. They bathed, dressed up, and in every way tried to appear as attractive as possible. At first they held their meetings at home after the children had gone to sleep. Later, they learned that they made more progress if they hired a baby-sitter, had dinner out, and conducted their discussion in a hotel room. The use of the hotel room is frequently advantageous because it is a neutral area without any personal associations; both spouses are certain there will be no distractions, and in many cases it brings back memories of courtship days. This couple also used a tape recorder so they could later listen to the sessions separately.
Married couples, in short, can do something for themselves, and if they exhibit patience and stick to certain ground rules they will not damage their marriage, but rather improve it. If quid pro quo formation is to be attempted, the procedures described below must be explicitly and conscientiously followed.
First, as has been stated, the spouses should pick a date and make a formal appointment with each other for the first meeting. They should choose a day when both can be relaxed and unhurried. If, for some reason a possibility develops that interruptions may occur, the meeting should be postponed to the following week. If there are several postponements, one or the other spouse should force agreement on a date, since one or both of them may be attempting to avoid this kind of confrontation.
The first session should be devoted to understanding the material, described at the end of the preceding chapter, on establishing communication. Readers who have previously performed these exercises will find some review sessions useful. This is a good way to start for several reasons. First, throughout the sessions to come, the highest degree of communication must be exercised. Second, learning to communicate fairly well can be done almost mechanically by following the instructions. If the exercises are performed with care, success is usually easy. We deliberately start these discussions with procedures which we are confident both spouses can accomplish. If they cannot, the reason is more apt to be unwillingness or sabotage than inability. If this is the case, the services of a therapist will probably be necessary.
Most people find the communication exercises to be fun, and are able to carry them on with considerable success, especially if they limit the use of the exercises to twice a week.
During the period required to complete these exercises, each spouse should observe the various methods of nonverbal communication employed by the other. Each should make notes specifying what behavior, attitudes, motions, grimaces, silences, and so forth are interpreted as messages and what these messages mean to the receiver. Here are some examples.
‘When Mary sleeps in pajamas instead of her silk nightgown, I know she’s annoyed. I wonder if she realizes this is how I know not to approach her sexually on certain nights.”
‘When John simply slides his eyes around at me without moving any part of his body, and says nothing, I know he disagrees with what I have said.”
‘When Mary fixes her hair in a bun on the top of her head early in the morning, I know she’s happy.”
‘When John leaves the house without shining his shoes in the morning, I know he’s in a bad mood.”
“When John has little wrinkles by the side of his eyes and tugs on the end of his ear, I know he’s about to playa practical joke.” ‘When Mary sits up very straight in the chair and stares straight at me when I’m telling her something important, I know she has something else on her mind and isn’t even listening.”
During the first week or two the spouses put down as many of these observations as possible, each listing at least six nonverbal communications, of which two or more give a happy, or positive, message. Spouses have an inclination to search out the nastier types of message, and competition as to who can obtain the most negative material should be avoided. At first, getting six nonverbal communications may appear difficult. But it is one of the most effective methods of increasing the number of objective communication channels.
When the verbal communication exercises (described earlier) have been completed, the spouses move on to the attempt to make each other aware of their nonverbal methods of communication. They flip a coin to see who goes first. Then, taking turns, they playa kind of charades. One spouse acts out a way of behaving which serves the other as a nonverbal communication and the other tries to guess what the acted-out behavior indicates. If the guessing is unsuccessful, the actor explains how he interprets this particular action, grimace, or whatever. Then the roles are reversed.
When this exercise has been completed, they move on to the next. One partner looks at his list of observations and calls out the message which he receives from one of his spouse’s ways of behaving. For example, John says, “Mary, I’m telling you something very important, but you really don’t want to hear it so you’re pretending you’re listening and you’re really not.”
The spouse responds, if he can, by acting out his nonverbal behavior for transmitting this message. In this instance, Mary sits up straight in the chair and stares at John. John then may say, good-naturedly, “Mary, that’s pretty good. But usually you sit up a little bit straighter and you thrust your head forward just a little and you don’t have that twinkle when you’re staring at me. It’s a sort of glazed look, as if you’re starting right at the end of my nose.” Then Mary tries acting her own behavior out again. H it turns out that Mary is not aware of what nonverbal method she uses to transmit some particular message, John describes it to her, and she then attempts to act it out.
Next, Mary may say, “John, it’s Monday morning. You’re in a bad mood, and the eggs which I fixed for your breakfast weren’t quite right. Will you please act out your usual behavior in this situation?”
John pretends he’s eating at a table. He frowns, looks at his wristwatch, and mutters, “There’ll be a lot of traffic this morning. I’d better leave fifteen minutes early. I don’t have time to eat everything.” He stands up and walks to the end of the room, pretends he’s opening a closet, looks down as if searching for the shoe-shining equipment, shakes his head, frowns, pretends he’s tossing on his coat and hat, and mimics himself walking out the front door without saying anything.
Mary may clap her hands and say, “You did that very well, John, but you left out one thing. You usually mutter as you open up the closet, ‘Nobody ever puts the goddamn shoe-shine gear back in the right place.’ ”
John now goes through the whole thing again, overemphasizing his scowling, perhaps caricaturing his swearing, and stamping out of the house.
This exercise can be an enormous amount of fun, and it is an easy and practical way for both spouses to become aware of their nonverbal methods of communication. The most difficult part of the exercise is the beginning-the observation and listing of the forms of nonverbal communication which are employed. At first they will be formed only after a good deal of looking, but once the spouses are caught by the spirit of this exercise, their recognition will become easier and easier.
A large movable mirror, in which each spouse can see himself as he reenacts his own nonverbal behavior, is desirable. Watching oneself in the mirror not only makes the exercise more enjoyable for almost everyone is a ham actor-but also provides an opportunity for the other spouse to coach the one who is acting. Mary may say to John, “You’re doing that very well, but, really, the comers of your mouth go down a little more when you’re annoyed at me at breakfast.” Here John will try to push the comers of his mouth down a little bit more and Mary will applaud him and say, “That’s right.” Now John is likely to respond with a burst of merriment, and he may caricature himself. Interplay of this sort helps individuals slowly to visualize their own nonverbal behavior and to begin to understand how this behavior sends powerful messages to the other spouse, and why sometimes the message received is not the one the sender believed he was transmitting.
When the spouses have completed the communication exercises they are ready for the actual quid pro quo practice sessions. The first of these should be started at the next meeting.
It is recommended that the first quid pro quo session be divided into three segments of fifteen minutes each. The spouse who speaks first is elected by Hip of a coin, after which they alternate. During the first segment, each of the spouses has his turn to state as factually as possible what characteristics he would ideally like to see in the other, to make the marriage more workable. The spouse who does not have the floor remains completely silent, making every attempt to listen to what is being said.
The second segment begins when the spouse who last was silent summarizes what he has heard from the other and inquires if his summary is approximately correct. Then he adds supplementary comments, but only about himself (for example, “It seems to me that if I were in your position I would want me to be more prompt than I have a tendency to be”). Note that the spouse who is summarizing is not allowed to introduce defensive or attacking material. When he is through, then the other spouse does the same thing. At first, the habit of introducing such harmful material will be hard to break, but if both spouses are conscious of the problem, success will come.
The summary which opens the second segment should be easy to complete quickly. During the third segment (after again Hipping a coin to see who starts) one spouse is required to spend exactly fifteen minutes (timed by the listening spouse) describing how he himself contributes destructively to the marriage and how he could change so as to improve the marital situation. If the individual cannot think of any ways in which he contributes destructively or is failing in the relationship, this fifteen-minute period must be spent in silence. It is surprisingly difficult to remain silent this long, but it is even more difficult to be so perfect in a marital relationship that one cannot think of a single fault in oneself. The fifteen minutes seldom pass silently.
If the spouses have reached this point in the practice sessions without destructiveness or mutual antagonism, they can feel they have made considerable progress and are urged not to hold any discussions of their marital problems until the next exercise which is at least one week away. If either one brings up the topic of their marriage during this recess, the other is to remind him that the book says, “Thou shalt not.”
