Preface

      The sum which two married people owe to one another defies calculation. It is an infinite debt, which can only be discharged throughout all eternity.

      —GOETHE

      I AM PLEASED to be able to say that my wife and I have always had a better than average relationship. But about three years into our marriage, we both came to a point where we wanted more. We wanted to grow more as persons and deepen the intimacy we experienced in our daily lives together. When we would mention this in passing to other couples they would just laugh at us. Weren’t we being unrealistic? We already had a good marriage. What more could we possibly want?

      As I understand the problem now, I see that even though my wife and I were doing many of the things the marriage gurus of the time said must be done in order to have a good marriage, having a great relationship takes more than an armload of techniques. It requires a husband and wife striving to become the most complete people they can be in their own right, and it requires the couple to acknowledge the actualizing power of their marriage.

      The word “actualization” may be unfamiliar to some readers. Basically, it refers to every human being’s drive to become the most fulfilled and competent person possible. According to psychologist Abraham Maslow, who studied “self-actualizing people,” these individuals exhibit such qualities as acceptance of themselves and others, spontaneity, creativity, compassion, inner peace, a healthy sense of humor, and the capacity for extraordinarily deep intimacy. Likewise, self-actualizers are often considered to be living, breathing examples of their own unique value system. In short, they are the people we all want to be when we “grow up.”

      What, you might ask, made my wife and I think that marriage had such a thing as actualizing potential? Moreover, what made us think we could use our relationship to help us become such people? It is a commonly held belief among couples therapists that marriage has powerful transformative properties. Psychotherapist and author Harville Hendrix has asserted that marriage has an awesome potential to heal old emotional scars, and this sentiment is echoed by the preeminent family therapist, author, and lecturer Cloé Madanes, who has said that “marriage is the most powerful form of group therapy we know.” My wife and I reasoned that if marriage had the power to heal emotional scars, wasn’t it possible that marriage also had the power to raise two basically healthy people to a greater level of competence, consciousness, spiritual awareness, and psychological fulfillment?

      Sadly, these questions coincided with the conception and subsequent miscarriage of our first child. The sorrow we felt after this experience led to a great deal of soul searching. My wife and I needed to draw support from each other in ways we never anticipated and that few could guide us through. If we were going to make it through this difficult time, we had to apply, in earnest, all the things we were learning to help each other and our marriage grow stronger in light of what was, for us, a terrible tragedy.

      In the years since that loss, my wife and I have come to see that our first child—short though his life was—gave us a great gift. Ultimately, it was the gift of his life and death that forced us to lay aside conventional expectations of marriage and family life and demand more of ourselves and each other. Looking back, though we have weathered many storms since, were it not for that particular experience, my wife and I would not be the partners and parents we are today. To honor this fact, we named the child who gave his life for our transformation Isaiah, after the Old Testament prophet who Christians believe spoke of the great blessings the future held for those who persisted faithfully through trial.

      In my journey as both a husband and a psychotherapist, I have found that having an exceptional marriage requires challenging one’s selfishness on a daily basis. This is the source of unending struggle for me, because at my core I am a pretty selfish person. And so, like a recovering alcoholic who maintains his sobriety by refusing to take the first drink, I attempt to abstain from selfishness by consciously avoiding opportunities to be lazy in my love. I am certainly no better than anyone else, in fact I am probably worse, but perhaps I try harder because every day in my office I see how easy it is to fall off the wagon (as it were) and what the consequences are. On those days when I feel I am too tired or too irritated to love, I force myself to think of the person I would become if I didn’t make the choice to love. And then I imagine the person I could become simply by getting off the sofa and serving my wife or my children, by being the first person to say “I’m sorry,” by seeking out ways to show my family how valuable they are to me, by looking for things to do around the house that will make their lives easier or more pleasant. When I put those two images side by side, it is not difficult to choose which path to take, even though my emotions are sometimes loathe to admit it.

      But it is not all work. My wife and I have reaped many rewards for our efforts in the form of greater competency as human beings and deeper intimacy as a couple. And we are still traveling. More than anything else, this book is an invitation to join us in the walk down a road that never ends, but leads to new joys, challenges, and celebrations around every bend.

      The Exceptional Seven Percent is about the rules, attitudes, and behaviors practiced in exceptional marriages, all of which have been suggested by research, validated by my own professional and personal observations, and, ultimately, tested in my own marriage with fabulous results. Each chapter of this book will examine one of the nine basic traits of exceptional couples in detail. More important each chapter will explain the steps you must take to enable those traits to flourish in your own marriage.

      The stories and case examples you will read are true.