What is chemistry? It’s hard to define, but we humans seem to instinctively know if chemistry is there or not. I think it’s some kind of primal, instinctive force, but my goal here is not simply to define it. Today I have two gifts I want you to have: One is to understand how the initial chemistry you felt with your spouse goes on to impact your relationship every day for the rest of your lives. Secondly, I want to wash away any guilt and shame you may have because you think your marriage “doesn’t measure up” to what it should be.

So, first let me bring to your attention one of many factors that contribute to two people feeling romantic chemistry. That factor is level of chronic anxiety (also known as one’s maturity, or ability to self-regulate). The concept of one’s level of chronic anxiety is very important, but we’re going to address this in detail another day. Right now, for our purposes, let’s just call it our tendency to blame (make note of this term, because it will come up a lot). You see, we unconsciously choose a mate who has our same degree of blaming. To give a rough example: on a scale of 1 to 100, a person who is 65 on the blaming scale will only be attracted to another 65. People who are 40 on the blaming scale will unwittingly find themselves shacked up with another 40.

“How can that be?” you ask. “That doesn’t seem true at all. I know plenty of couples where one spouse is critical and blaming of the other, who doesn’t seem to fight back.” Exactly. You see, it’s not as simple as how loudly or angrily one spouse blames another. There’s also self-blame. So in some couples, one spouse will be outspoken and critical in blaming the other, and the other spouse will be introverted and self-critical, agreeing that his or her spouse must be right. There is a kind of yin-and-yang balance here, but it’s not the pretty black-and-white swirls we see in that circular symbol: it’s a balance of blame—either of self, or of the other.

Generally speaking, there are two types of couples: 1) The “blamer and self-blamer” couple, and 2) The blamer-conflictual couple. We started to describe the blamer-and-self-blamer couple above. Of course, each of us lies somewhere on a continuum: some of us blame others a little or a lot, and some of us blame ourselves a little or a lot. Each couple also varies in intensity. For example, imagine a couple where the husband is very dominating, outspoken and critical, while the wife is more passive, quiet, and bumbling. He is the blamer of other, and she is the self-blamer. Over the years, this pattern may intensify. He may run the household with an iron fist, while she becomes more dysfunctional, perhaps to the point of developing depression or a psychosomatic illness.

Of course I’m describing an extreme example, but can you think of any couples you know who might fit this model? Perhaps they aren’t as extreme on the continuum, but can you see the pattern in how they relate to each other? This couple rarely argues, although they may be uncomfortable to be around because the blamer speaks so critically and harshly to the self-blamer. Here’s an example:

Chris and his wife went to a cocktail party. Chris’s wife was under-dressed — it turned out that this was more of a formal occasion than they had expected. The two of them felt awkward and embarrassed all evening until they left. Now, the wife thought to herself, “Oh, if only I had thought ahead! I could have found out — I could’ve made sure that I had the right dress code, and…” you know, just kind of beating herself up. And Chris’s thinking, “Look at this mess my wife has made! How could she be so careless! All it took was a phone call to get clear!”

Now, not a word has been spoken in this scenario, but a pattern has been reinforced. You see, the real cause of why they ended up under-dressed at this party was probably a combination of the internal and external factors. It probably wasn’t just as simple as “me good — she bad” and in theory, a mature person could objectively evaluate both factors and be responsible for the part that he played in that circumstance. “Gosh Honey, I know the host, I could have called,” or something like that. But the more intense Chris’s blaming of his wife is, the more intense her blaming of herself for “her” mistake is.

Now, notice: Notice how you’re feeling and what you were thinking as I was describing this scenario: some people might think, “Oh, poor Chris’s wife! That old Chris sure isn’t mean, isn’t he? He’s criticizing his wife! That’s not nice!” Fair enough. But you see that’s the way the human mind works, we love our drama! We want to have a good guy and a bad guy — the villain and the damsel in distress — and of course, good triumphs, right? Walt Disney’s made billions on it! But you see, we have fallen into a trap there. We have fallen into a trap, because you and I are passing judgment on that circumstance — we are criticizing, we are blaming: “the problem in that marriage is Chris. The problem is not Chris’s wife.” I’m not so sure about that. I can see how they are both responsible for the roles they fell into. In order for Chris to be a “mean perpetrator,” his wife has to condone being a “poor victim of mean Chris.” Should we minimize her so much as to suggest that she has no power or intelligence to stand up to her husband? Or that she was a dummy to pick such a mean spouse in the first place?

The second general type of couple is the conflictual couple. Both spouses tend to blame others rather than themselves. Therefore their intimate partner is their favorite target of blame, and they go at each other like cats and dogs. I remember our fights in those first years in New York City. It would start over a trifle, and accelerate from zero-to-sixty in 1.4 seconds. I would stomp out of the house, walk the streets of the Upper West Side at night, and upon my return we’d play a lively game of Silent Treatment, sometimes for days. Not fun.

Since this type of couple argues frequently and passionately, one might think that their marriage is headed for divorce. Not so fast: this couple “makes up” afterward just as passionately as they fought, and although we may feel uncomfortable listening to them, in fact their marriage is often durable because they engage each other directly and openly. You see, traditional psychology has misled us. Many studies now suggest that the real silent killer of marriage is “distancing,” which is caused by the “flight” portion of the fight-or-flight instinct that we humans share with our animal cousins. Tomorrow we’ll talk about distancing, and how it may be The Silent Killer in your marriage.

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