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The Case Against Marriage A Book in Progress by Glenn Campbell “Read it or weep!” Chapter 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 Next Chapter>> Production Notes | College Lecture | Glenn's Home Page   NOTE: This work has been ABANDONED as too long-winded and repetitive, but you are welcome to get whatever you can from it. The essential ideas are best summarized in a single page. Most of my new philosophical musings on relationships, etc. are now found in Kilroy Cafe. —GC, 5/09

Advisors and Sycophants

The Case Against Marriage - Chapter 24 - 8/2/07

Couples like to think of marriage as uniting their strengths. He has certain special talents, and she has hers, so together they must have twice the abilities, right? Unfortunately, they aren't seeing the other half of the equation: Marriage can unite and reinforce their weaknesses. If they each have different vulnerabilities, they could end up twice as vulnerable.

Change and adaptation becomes more difficult in a "team", because now they have to agree on everything. One person can't just see an opportunity and instantly jump on it. There are forms to fill out and negotiations to conduct, and the opportunity could be long past before permission is granted.

And then there is the question of conceptual change. Is the personal growth of each individual helped or hindered by a team arrangement?

Each person has their own delusions—self-serving beliefs about life that are supported more by emotion than fact. For example, almost any hobby can be seen as delusional. If you like to go fishing, someone else who isn't afflicted with this disease can innocently ask, "Why?" What are you accomplishing by it apart from killing time and torturing fish? If you are already invested in fishing, then you are not going to listen to these naysayers. You will go fishing for as long and as much as you have resources to do so.

In real life, a happy marriage involves an implicit understanding that you are not going to challenge each other's delusions. Even if you disagree with something your partner does, as long as it doesn't intrude into your own space, you are likely to keep quiet about it. You know what you need to do to keep the peace. If you criticized your partner's fishing every time they went out, the marriage wouldn't last long.

A tee-shirt in a fishing shop reads: "My wife told me if I go fishing one more time she's going to leave me. I'm sure going to miss her!"

Instead of courting conflict, you come to an accommodation: You don't challenge your partner's delusions and they won't challenge yours. The relationship rearranges itself to accommodate his golf addiction and her quilting addiction. In turn, these addictions are reinforced by the structure of the relationship and are probably less likely to change over time than they would if these people were single.

The more you are trapped together, the more you are likely to "accommodate" rather than "challenge." Honest and independent intellectual exchange is compromised by the need to keep the peace.

After a hard day at the office, a husband comes home to his wife and recounts all the problems of the day. Whatever he says, he expects his wife to agree with him. He naturally desires only soothing words not more opposition. He doesn't expect her to hurl the same criticisms at him that he already received at the office.

The wife, in turn, wants to believe in her husband, because she has already invested so much in him. If there is a conflict between her husband and forces in the outside world, the outside forces must be at fault. "Of course you are right, dear," she says.

The only data the wife has received about the conflicts at work comes from her husband himself. This is like a lawyer coming into court and recounting his side of a conflict without the opposing side having any opportunity to speak. Given what her husband has told her, naturally she is going to agree with him.

There might be hell to pay if the wife disagreed with her husband. Then the conflicts of the office would be carried into the bedroom, and there would be no rest for either party. Instead, the wife is more likely to agree wholeheartedly and might even come up with a few new reasons why he must be right. The next day, the husband goes back to work, reinforced in the righteousness of his position, and makes a total jerk of himself.

Personal delusional beliefs are supported by ego and prior personal investment. People may be drawn to go fishing in part because they have always gone fishing and abandoning the hobby today would be saying that all those past investments were worthless. This kind of stable pattern of behavior is unlikely to change on its own. Words alone won't change the delusion, at least without some power behind them. If you criticize my firmly entrenched beliefs, you are more likely to anger me than change me, and I will probably pull away from you.

The only thing likely to modify entrenched delusions are the pressures of the real world. You will stop fishing—or bowling or collecting butterflies—only when you run out of the resources to do so or when the delusion leads you to bad results. A relationship is destructive when it protects one partner from this kind of feedback; then their delusions never have to change.

Ideally, what you want in a relationship is a truly independent advisor, not a sycophant. A sycophant is someone who is hired to tell the boss what he wants to hear. "Of course you are right," they tell their employer in every instance. This may sound nice and feel comforting, but it isn't preparing the boss for the eventual intrusion of reality.

To best be prepared for reality, you need an advisor who will tell you when you are full of shit but who can also recognize when you are doing things right. This kind of talent is much more difficult to recruit and maintain than a sycophant. They must care about you and know you well enough to speak your language but not be so invested in you that they can't see your weaknesses. It is a difficult balance to maintain.

Certainly, your advisor will lose their independence if you are trapped together in a cell with no hope of escape. To be truly effective as a critic, an advisor needs to be able drop a bombshell then pull back. If the criticism is truly valid, then the person being criticized is likely to be angry or confused. They need time to sort things out without the advisor lurking over them all the time.

Conceptual change takes time. If you have an argument with your partner, and you score some good points, the best thing you can do is withdraw and let those points be absorbed. If you remain under foot, then the immediate quality of interaction is probably going to degenerate.

If you go away, then your partner has a chance to think things through on their own. The pacing should now be up to them. If the criticism is valid, they need time to processes it and come up with a new plan. It the criticism is invalid, they need time to assemble a defense. They will come back to you when they have generated a new synthesis and are ready for your feedback again.

If your partner has been working on a project for a long time, they are going to be emotionally invested in it. A dutiful, sycophantic spouse is going to say, "It's wonderful, dear!" regardless of whether it is, but that's not really the kind of feedback you need. You need someone who will give you an accurate prediction of reality without being tainted by your own needs and feelings.

Truly useful and independent criticism is something you have to carefully cultivate. Your partner needs to trust you enough to say what they really think without fear of you biting their head off. If you respond badly to criticism only once or twice, it could shut down the feedback machine and rob you of useful data in the future. If you reinforce and reward good criticism, it is more likely to happen again.

When the two of you are in conflict, whatever you are fighting about will soon be forgotten. What is important in the long term is how you fight—i.e. your rules of engagement. This in itself should be a matter of debate between you, and it should be practiced on minor issues before the major ones come along. If I want Italian food and you want Chinese, by what methodology should we resolve this conflict?

In the long run, this is what makes or breaks relationships: not what we have in common but how we manage our differences.

Continued in Chapter 25