THE DESEXUALIZATION OF THE AMERICAN MARRIAGE/A SEXUAL-SYSTEM EXAM: “ADAPTED” TO SEX – ONE OF THE MOST IMPORTANT QUESTIONS THAT CAN BE ASKED OF A MARRIAGE
One of the most important questions that can be asked of a marriage is “Can you name the worst crisis your marriage has experienced and tell me how your marriage dealt with it?” Adaptive marriages clearly are stronger for their pain, and maladaptive marriages report a weakening and a worsening of long-standing problems with each transitional life problem.
You will learn in a later chapter about strategies to help marriages, not individuals, cope with problems of daily living and the fact that none of us really has a “sex” life but rather a full life in relationship to everything and everyone. Strong marital systems grow within their life system.
Too much adaptability and marriages can become only problem-solving units at the expense of joy and the pleasure of daily living. Again, a flow, a wide “stretchability,” a marital elasticity makes for the healthiest, most enduring intimacy system.
The example husband added, “When my Uncle Ned died, I cried until I was dry. I cried in the corner of the basement by the workbench. I don’t think anybody ever really saw me cry.”
The wife reported, “When I [notice not "we"] had to put my mother in that nursing home, it was one of the worst things I have ever had to do. I cried for hours in the tub at night. All I heard was ‘Are you going to be in there all night?’ I felt so alone.”
The couple I am using continues to show one major characteristic: a lack of any system for mutual growth, learning, and change. Any system, and particularly marital systems, that fails to learn and change will develop dis-ease and eventually die.
*37\97\8*
