Marriage Tapes

In the last two postings, I shared some general comments on behavioral tapes and specific comments on tapes related to your relationship with money. Now let's explore marriage tapes. Marriage tapes are feelings and beliefs that somehow were encoded into your psyche and are now influencing your relationship with your spouse (or significant other in the case of an unmarried couple). In order to illustrate how marriage tapes can influence your relationship with your partner, let's talk about a young married couple with a child. Here's some information on the couple:

• Mary and David are both twenty-nine years old and have been married for three years.
• Their son Steven is two years old.
• When Mary was growing up, holidays and birthdays were festive events.
• When David was growing up holidays and birthdays were non-events.
• Mary's extended family...aunts, uncles, cousins and others frequently gathered together for family events. If something happened to one of them, it was as if it happened to all of them.
• David did not get along with most of the members of his family. He didn't particularly care to spend time with them.
• Members of Mary's family openly discussed their problems and asked each other for help with them.
• In David's family it was best to keep problems to yourself and work them out on your own. 
• Mary grew up in a comfortable home. Her parents were not overly concerned with neatness.
• David grew up in a formal home. Clutter of any kind was not tolerated.
• Mary's parents loved to go on family vacations.
• David's father did not take vacations.   
• When Mary was young, her dad came home every day around 5:30 pm and spent the next hour playing and talking with her. She has fond memories of childhood experiences related to her dad coming home from work.
• When David was young, his father almost never came home until after 8:00 pm. Upon arriving, David's father usually fixed himself a drink, went into his home office and worked, read the newspaper or watched TV. David learned from experience that it was not a good idea to bother his father when he was in his office.

Okay...that's enough. I think you get the picture. Do you think there is any potential for conflict and stress in this marriage? And I didn't even discuss religion, politics, money or sex. What do you think Mary's tapes tell her about how a marriage works? What do David's tapes tell him about how a marriage works? Can you predict some of the likely fights between Mary and David? For example, what happens on holidays and birthdays? And what is a father supposed to do when he gets home from work?

These are just some examples of how tapes can create chaos between two people in a relationship. Mary and David may be great people, they just don't see eye-to-eye on many issues that can make or break a marriage. Unfortunately these differences in tapes often get personalized and destroy marriages. If you plan to develop and maintain a healthy and enjoyable relationship with any other person (friend, co-worker, boss, subordinate, etc.), it is a good idea to spend some time learning about their tapes. If you plan to enjoy a fulfilling and lasting marriage...it's a great idea to learn as much as possible about your spouse's tapes.       

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Chris Crouch, president of DME Training and Consulting, has spent years researching and studying both the mental and physical aspects of being productive.