Marital Expectations - Who Decides? By Competition Or Collaboration

By Author: Steven Allen Smith
Total Articles: 2
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The 20th century brought an expectation of gender equality. Many women and some men expect to have an equal voice in choosing what we do together. Truly joint decisions get made in a collaborative process, but few have collaborative skills– connecting, empathy and joint decision making. Without training in these skills, we have the decision making process our parents modeled for us– usually a competitive one.

Traditional marriages have men “wearing the pants” and believing “their home is their castle.” They feel safe, appreciated and respected. Women give this as the custom required “to satisfy the male ego”. This leaves women at the man’s table, asking for what they get and taking what they can get away with. The tradition creates competitive decision making.

Most start partnerships assuming naively that partners make decisions together. Some assume that they will have a benevolent dictatorship, with advice and consent. They believe that ultimately one person must make the final decision, or they believe that the male head of household is the Biblical design. These assumptions usually ...
... lead to competitive decision making.

When both think they ultimately decide and they don’t have a clear decision-making process, it is actually competitive. Whoever dominates directly or indirectly decides, and the competition is on-going and both in your face and hidden in undermining and sabotaging. Competition decision-making creates abuses, anger, resentment and frustration that lead to divorce.

Individually we make decisions by translating the moment’s need into a strategy for fulfilling the need. Then, we put the plan into action. When we marry, we do the same thing, but the plan begins by persuading our partner to go along. Persuasion becomes consultation disguised, when friendly, as collaboration, and when not, as begging or bullying, with negotiated exchanges, turns taking and withdrawal.

Marriages can instead be mergers. To merge with another is to consider the two partners one entity, a relationship of two beings without division. The partners collaborate by each listening deeply, empathetically to the other to help recognize their own and the other’s needs. Once either partner’s needs can be recognized, both partners take them on as shared needs. Together they look at all the possible strategies that would fulfill all needs, and from that abundance of choices, they select the best one. Their options compete, they don’t.

The partnership’s purpose becomes fulfilling their shared needs and every strategy the partners undertake individually or together aims at fulfilling those shared needs. This collaborative process is the beating heart of fulfilling relationships. It creates a mutually supportive marriage that fulfills both partners’ needs. It is the most powerful way to nurture children, because it holds values and gives to children both partners’ insight into what loves and nurtures their life.

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