You Are the One You've Been Waiting For: Applying Internal Family Systems to Intimate Relationships

by Richard C. Schwartz

As the cultural anthropologist Margaret Mead said, “The American marriage . . . is one of the most difficult marriage forms that the human race has ever attempted.”1 Couples were once surrounded by communities of relatives and friends, by people who shared their values and helped them out. Today, couples are frequently isolated, mobile units that are expected to survive on their own. Not only is the couple isolated from its community but each partner is often cut off from the other by the outrageous requirements of work or by the excessive demands of raising children far from the help of kin networks. Indeed, children can be one of the biggest obstacles to intimacy that couples face. Virtually every study of marital satisfaction has shown that it drops precipitously with the birth of the first child and doesn’t recover until the last one leaves. Finally, partners are cut off from their Selves by being raised in a society that is so concerned with external appearances that authentic inner desires are ignored and feared. Into this nearly impossible arrangement is poured the expectation that your partner should make you happy and that if they don’t, something is very wrong.