Is there such a thing as a bad marriage?

When people come to me in the aftermath of the discovery of an affair there is such a pull to see the entire marriage as a failure. One event can throw years of marital capital in the bin. So I ask myself does this really mean this was a bad marriage?

I look at many couples and see good marriages, even those who are high on task management and lower on relational atunement. I see relationships where I think, “this is a good couple.” I will often see the couple the day after and I will say, ”this is not a bad marriage, this actually is a good marriage because it meets this need, that need.” They have built homes together, they have taken care of children together, they have taken care of ailing parents together, they have gotten each other through unemployment phases together, all for the sake of those major expectations in marriage: companionship, economic support, family life, social respectability.

Maybe they haven’t added to this the fact that they want their partner to be their best friend and trusted companion and passionate lover, all in one. But that doesn’t mean they are in a bad relationship. I think that people often, in the couples I see, find it enormously reassuring that they don’t have to think the entire thing was a sham. Even though the shattering of the reality may make you feel that the whole marriage was a lie, not the whole thing was a lie. Maybe some aspects of it were a lie. You still need ground to stand on, some things to hold on to. One of the sentences that I often add to that reassurance is, “In the west today most people are going to have two or three marriages, two or three committed relationships in their adult life. It’s just that some of us are going to do it with the same person. Maybe your first marriage is over.” There is something very hopeful about that. I’ve never thought there is much to the sentence. I originally said it as a joke about my own marriage. I said I’ve had three but they’re with the same man. And then I began to think about this, that there was something very structuring about that. 25 years of being married isn’t just dumped out because of this one affair.