Seven years into their marriage, the flame died. Susan and Jeff were still polite to each other, but their relationship seemed cold and distant. Susan remembered with nostalgia the passion of their courtship, when they could talk to each other about anything, warts and all. Looking back now, she could see how that communication had worn thin over the years. Early on in their relationship, no subject was off-limits between them, but now so many topics seemed to push their buttons. To discuss money, in-laws, or raising their kids became almost a guarantee of either tense silence, or a full-scale battle. “Why bother bringing it up?” each spouse thought to themselves. So, they avoided more issues and put off more key decisions, as the light grew increasingly dim in their relationship.

THE THRILL IS GONE…
Then Susan woke up one morning, looked over at her husband, and realized the flame had died. They were not physically separated, but it seemed as though they were already living an “emotional divorce.”

Seeking advice from her marriage coach, Susan was irritated when her coach kept asking about her grandparents. “What does that have to do with anything?! Three of my grandparents died before I was born, and my only Grandma died when I was little, so I barely knew her. It’s too late to change my relationship with them, but my marriage is in trouble NOW!”

GRANDMA TO THE RESCUE!
As Susan found out in the following weeks of coaching, it’s not about your relationship with your grandparents. It’s about your KNOWLEDGE of your grandparents.

An important concept in Bowen Family Systems Theory is Distancing, which can be physical or emotional in nature. I believe distancing is the human equivalent of the “flight” response in our animal instinct of fight-or-flight. When faced with potential conflict, we either argue with, or avoid that person.

But here’s the paradox: we tend to remember when we’ve argued with someone, but we’re not very conscious of all the subtle moves we make to distance ourselves from someone. We may speak to that person less often, we might talk about the weather rather than our thoughts and feelings, and we avoid controversial topics so as not to cause any upset.

The physical distance between you and your family members is easy to measure. The emotional distance is harder to see. For example, you may live thousands of miles from Mom, but you confide in each other like best friends during your weekly phone talks (i.e., you’re “far apart, but close”). Or, you may live near your parents, but your conversations are usually about other people, or what you bought at the store that day (i.e., you’re “close, but far apart”).

SO WHAT? WHAT DOES IT MATTER IF WE’RE EMOTIONALLY DISTANT FROM OUR FAMILIES?
I would suggest that it matters a great deal. If your mom and dad are such a pain in the neck that you distance from them to save yourself a hassle, you’ve probably created a much bigger hassle for yourself in your marriage.

Like it or not, we human beings are creatures of habit. We don’t realize how many habits we pick up from our parents (who in turn picked up similar habits from their parents, and so on…) in a pattern Bowen calls the multi-generational transmission process. To put it another way, there are many ways one can cope with tension in relationships. Odds are good that if you cope with your parents by distancing from them, they also may have coped with their parents by distancing. The more distant your parents were from your grandparents, the more likely your are to be distant from your parents.

THE BUCK STOPS HERE
And here’s the punchline: the habit of distancing that your parents passed on to you will not only impact your marriage, but also you will (unknowingly) pass that habit on to your children as well. The multi-generational transmission process continues automatically until we become aware of the process and we declare, “The buck stops here.” So the stakes for your marriage and your children’s marriages are higher than you might have thought.

So, if distancing is an instinctive and unconscious habit, how can we know if it’s playing havoc with our marriage? My hypothesis is that the more you know about your grandparents, the longer and stronger your marriage will be. Why? If your parents were emotionally distant from their mom and dad, they probably didn’t talk about their parents much to you. Not only will you know very little about your grandparents, but you’ve also inherited their habit of distancing as a way of coping with conflict in relationships. If distancing is a habit in your family of origin, it means you have less frequent contact with your parents, siblings, aunts, uncles and cousins. Therefore, you will have heard fewer stories about your grandparents, because the topic doesn’t come up much.

PREDICTING YOUR MARRIAGE SUCCESS
Here’s how you can reduce the impact of distancing in your relationships. I am creating a survey to research this Silent Killer of marriages. Please take five minutes, go to your computer and take my confidential survey at: http://www.surveymonkey.com/s.asp?u=352581748801

We wouldn’t hesitate to undergo tests that pre-screen our bodies for a possible illness, right? Likewise, let’s play it safe and take a few minutes to pre-screen our marriages. Awareness is the best preventive medicine against distancing that could lead to divorce. What you don’t know won’t kill you, but it might kill your marriage.

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