The Exceptional Seven Percent. Gregory K. Popcak
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owned (internalized) by an individual. A person who would prefer to be his own moral compass (that is, who would attempt to develop a personal value system and marital imperative exclusive of a particular values group) would do well to remember that even the best compass needs a magnetic north against which to check itself. Faith communities and other values groups provide such a magnetic north.
All this aside, however you and your mate come to develop and practice your marital imperative, it will be your serious commitment to this shared mission statement that allows you to stop playing at both marital chicken and emotional or domestic scorekeeping, to no longer be loving only when your mate “deserves” such generosity, but also to be loving simply because that is the kind of person you wish to become when you grow up. This is often the single most difficult step for the Conventional couple to appreciate, but it is absolutely essential for Exceptional couplehood.
2. Come out of your own world. Even though Conventional marriages are founded on love, sometimes they can be a bit shallow with regard to intimacy especially considering the husband and wife’s tendency to carve out their own worlds and then live in them exclusively. Storybook husbands may know little if anything about the running of their Storybook home. Storybook wives may not wish to be bored with the details of their husband’s work. Star husbands and wives tend to be too wrapped up in their own work to take time to share their mate’s world. In short, Conventional married couples are often too busy to relate to each other as much as they need to. This must stop if a Conventional couple intends to move into an Exceptional marriage. Couples must find ways to become both interested and active in each other’s worlds. One well-known counselor asserts that a couple must spend at least fifteen hours per week working and talking together for their marriage to function well. How close do you come to this in your marriage?
3. Refine your communication skills. Even though Conventional couples are basically good at communicating their needs and emotions, there is always room for improvement. Conventional couples regularly experience communication breakdowns related to certain subtle but important stylistic differences. The chapters on Exceptional Rapport and Exceptional Negotiation will be especially helpful.
Having reviewed the most common marriages, let us move onto the two types of Exceptional marriages. As you read the following pages, you may be amazed by what a marital imperative empowers couples to become.
Exceptional Marriages
There are two major categories of Exceptional marriages. Each represents a different level of mastery of its marital imperative. The first type, accounting for the lion’s share of exceptional couples, is the Partnership marriage, which is primarily concerned with pursuing and increasing personal competence. The first thing a marital imperative does for a person is make him or her aware of the areas of personal deficiency—whether due to a lack of interest or a lack of talent—and work to become more competent in those areas. The second type of Exceptional marriage is the Spiritual Peer marriage (a.k.a. the Romantic Peer marriage). Once the couple has achieved a higher level of competency they can begin to focus on pursuing both intimacy and actualization as a way of life. Let’s briefly examine each of these.
Partnership Marriages
MARITAL THEME: The pursuit of competence and intimacy; the first fruits of a marital imperative.
After a couple clarifies their marital imperative, the first thing each spouse begins to do is ask, “What do I need to do in my marriage to be a better example of the positive characteristics and moral virtues (love, wisdom, integrity, creativity, etc.) that I hold dear?” The result of this first level of questioning is usually the person’s decision to pursue competence in areas he or she was previously uninterested or un-talented in. A husband may no longer wait to be asked by his wife to “help” around the house; instead he intentionally works to become more aware of the things that need to be done and does them. A wife may begin to ask herself what jobs or responsibilities she pushes off onto her husband simply because she doesn’t enjoy them, and then works to develop greater competence in these areas. (See chapter 6.)
In true Partnership marriages, no job is off-limits for either husband or wife. Both work to be equally aware of all the domestic, romantic, and financial responsibilities of marriage. Both expect. themselves to do a job if they happen to trip over it first or are more available to do it, even if it is not traditionally their area of expertise.
This pursuit of competence allows the Partnership couple to achieve three things: the victory of egalitarianism over mere equality, the removal of self-protective barriers to intimacy, and Exceptional Rapport and Negotiation.
1. Egalitarianism over equality. In her book, Peer Marriage, Dr. Pepper Schwartz noted that one factor which separated Exceptional (or as she called them “peer couples”) from Conventional couples was the preference of egalitarianism over mere equality. Basically, this is the difference between marriage as a “50/50 proposition” and marriage as a “100/100 partnership.” Conventional couples make a huge issue out of dividing up chores or spheres of influence into nice equal piles to safeguard both “fairness” and the “balance of power.” By contrast, Partnership couples don’t have the same need to divide everything up into equal piles to prove they are equal. Partnership husbands and wives know that they are equal without the aid of such games. They expect themselves and their partners to give 100 percent at all times, or at least as much as is humanly possible. No particular responsibility is beneath either one of them. This leads to what I call a dance of competence—the gracefully efficient and often selfless manner in which Partners accomplish the tasks of daily living.
The essence of marital egalitarianism is an equality of being, not just an equality of chores. This is an essential ingredient in the deepest form of intimacy, which Partners are on their way to attaining.
2. True intimacy. Being safe in the knowledge that no matter how much you give to a marriage you will not be taken for granted is a very freeing experience. This freedom allows couples to start letting down the barriers and stop playing games with each other. Now the two merely semipermeable worlds of the Conventional couple begin to come together as never before. Husband and wife are both beginning to become more interested and more competent in each other’s domains. As a result, everything they share, every chore of married life, presents one more opportunity to draw closer together, to become more intimate.
Likewise, having made a commitment to their marital imperative, the Partnership husband and wife are beginning to see each other as their best hope for becoming the people they want to be by the end of their lives. I will explain this process in greater detail in the chapter on designing your own marital imperative. For now, suffice it to say that as the Partnership couple moves through this stage, they become more and more convinced that the most important work of marriage is helping each other grow in identity strength and move toward the actualization of their shared spiritual values, moral ideals, and emotional goals. To this end, the Partnership couple, indeed all the Exceptional couples, consider themselves uniquely qualified to help each other fulfill their life’s mission and value system. This attitude lends itself to the extraordinary intimacy, gratitude, satisfaction, and longevity Exceptional couples enjoy. A husband and wife may meet more attractive, wealthier, or better socially positioned people along the way, but they are convinced that no one is better equipped than their mate to help them achieve actualization.
3. Exceptional rapport and negotiation. Chapters 7 and 8 will examine these qualities in detail. The intense interest in and sharing of each other’s worlds tends to remove the last major barriers to communication. The discussions that result from working side by side in almost every area of life lead to a deep level of rapport and understanding. Besides this, Exceptional couples are able to exhibit a high degree of respect for one another even when they disagree, and arguments, for the most part, are experienced as “deep muscle massages,” which may feel uncomfortable at the time but will afterward leave the marriage more relaxed and flexible.
Partnership marriages come in two varieties: Traditional and Modern. Traditional partners build their marriage around more conservative or religious values. The husband is usually the breadwinner, but he is expected—and expects himself—to be every bit as competent a parent and homemaker as his wife. He is attentive and intimately involved