The Stages of Marriage

Michael Gurian
August 3, 2005

These extracts from "What Could He Be Thinking?" by Dr Michael Gurian are taken from his chapter on "Men and the Biology of Marriage". They describe the 12 stages of marriage, and are posted here with the author's permission.
Robert Griffith, Editor.

Men and the Biology of Marriage

Marriage can often be enjoyed through humor. At a recent seminar the following interchange took place - one that began very humorously but led our discussion into the heart of marriage.

"What does a man have to do to make a marriage last?" a young college-age man asked me. I said, "Well, that's easy: Marry a reasonable woman, and then do everything she says!"

There was laughter, but the young man, a very serious fellow, looked at me quizzically. Could this middle-aged Michael Gurian really mean that? I didn't have to say anything else right away because, as if on cue, a man in his late forties called out, "Where the heck are you gonna find a reasonable woman?" This brought another wave of laughter.

A woman of about fifty stood up and said, "Don't laugh away the idea of men following a woman's lead in marriage. If men don't, especially nowadays, I think the marriage will be in trouble." In fact, as she pointed out, the research of John Gottman at the University of Washington, carried out over a twenty-five-year period, has shown that if men don't let women take the lead in a number of marital areas, the marriage is more likely to end in divorce.

As our discussion closed, the word "trust" kept emerging, spoken by both men and women. One woman said, "I don't think men and women trust each other anymore." Each of us knew that love cannot last unless two committed people transform the bond of romantic love into the mature bond of marital trust. We all knew that men and women both want a reasonable marriage. We knew that today our understanding of a reasonable marriage is even more vital than in the past, for in the past couples had to remain married whether they emotionally trusted the spouse or not; an enforced social trust took care of that. But now marriages can't last without our deepest trust in the other, and divorce is all too common when the trust does not exist.

The Biology of Marriage

Let us now explore the actual biology of marriage. In it are keys to the reasonable marriage. The neurobiological transitions from romance to commitment to marriage are perhaps the most difficult transitions an adult faces, yet, unlike adolescence, it is a hidden transition for most of us. The fact that we don't understand this transition is a root cause of our present reliance on divorce to solve marital distress. The male brain, we will find, has as much to teach us as does the female brain about the biology of marriage and the natural stages of love we go through together.

The Season of Enchantment

A relationship is based on being biochemically enchanted with the possibilities of the partner or friend, including the possibility of altering that person to fit our projections of who we want and need as a lover or friend. Our base hormones - testosterone and estrogen/progesterone - as well as our brain chemicals - oxytocin, dopamine, vasopressin - are in a constant state of flow and flux during this time.

Stage 1: Romance. The beautiful bond is formed, and we live in its bliss for many months, generally six months to two years. When we fall in love - or even just in lust - four centers of the brain light up simultaneously, including the key love center, the cingulate gyrus in the limbic system. Increased blood flow and glucose metabolism in the brain moves in and out of these centers, and they communicate constantly, giving us the feeling of romantic love. The candlelight dinner comes to illuminate, not just an evening's passion, but a life-time's possibility.

Stage 2: Disillusionment. In all relationships, first one partner then the other pulls away - a partner does something disappointing or experiences disappointment. The perfection we have projected on our partners inevitably dissolves into painful reality. This stage lasts six months to a year.

Many of our unresolved issues with our mothers and fathers engage our psyches during this stage. Our romantic brain chemistry is now affected by cortisol, the stress hormone. We become brains under stress. Areas of the limbic system, like the cingulate gyrus, that were somewhat more disconnected from judgment centers in the frontal lobes during stage 1 now reconnect with the top of the brain. We become very judgmental.

Stage 3: Power Struggle. While this is a normal stage of marital development, one that many couples move through - lasting two or more years - it is also the most likely stage for divorce. Nearly every divorced couple has become locked for many years in this stage of relationship until stress-hormone levels for each person become so severe that one or both initiate divorce.

In this stage, partners attempt to deal with disillusionment and disenchantment as well as the stresses of general human life - work, raising children - by trying to change the core personality of the partner or the self. During this time, the brain exists in a confusing trauma of hormones, brain chemicals, and brain centers. Hormones and brain chemicals that build romance and lust no longer dominate, though we try to rely on them. Judgment dominates, but we want the dominance of the bliss-producing brain chemicals again.

The Season of Awakening

The first season of our marriage is a wild ride of enchantments, disillusionments, and psychological battles. In stage 2, we try to get off the roller coaster. While many relationships end in a power struggle, for just as many people there is a time of psychological awakening in which we realize our marriage can't last if we keep arguing over turf or trying to change the other person. In this season there is a concentration in the brain on combining limbic functions with frontal lobes. We seek a new rhythm for our relationship.

Stage 4: Awakening. In moments of epiphany and insight, we feel an immense relief to realize that we can become adults who care deeply for each other rather than child-adults who constantly project romantic idealizations and illusions on our partners. We gain a kind of bliss during this stage - an increase in endorphins, a pleasant bonding echo from oxytocin increases - but it is not the supercharged bliss of stage I; it is the bliss of insight, of seeing reality for what it is. Over a period of months, usually with a lot of communication about the awakening itself, we set ourselves to the hard task of really learning how to love one another. We say things like, "Relationships don't have to be a war," and, "Wow, I think I finally understand what's going on!"

We gain insight and awakening just in time because suffering greater than our own marital power struggle is coming our way.

Stage 5: The Second Crisis. In all relationships, crises arise. A partner loses a job, a child is badly hurt, parents become gravely ill. Crisis and trauma are natural to the life journey, and struggling with them as a couple is also a natural part of the marital journey. While no one knows exactly when a crisis will hit, the kind of external or larger family crises we're discussing here seem to intersect with marriages after about five years. We can't say that human nature seeks out crisis, for we don't really know if that is what the brain is doing. We do know, however, that every marriage faces a series of crises over a lifetime. This map for marriage has four major crisis stages in it.

During any time of crisis, the brain goes into trauma reaction and stress hormone increases. If a couple has constructed a strong base of love by this point, including awakening, the individual selves can rely on each other's strength, compassion, and guidance during the crisis, and stress hormones more easily dissipate. If major crises occur in a marriage before the couple has even moved out of the crisis of disillusionment and power struggle, it is very difficult for the marriage to survive.

Stage 6: Refined Intimacy. Surviving power struggle and then surviving life's hardships together can bring a couple into a common marital rhythm. Perhaps seven to ten years of marriage have passed now. If the relationship has not broken down by this time, it has probably become stronger. If it's a relationship each person looks forward to at the end of the day, the couple will now enter a time of great refinement, especially in communication and conflict management. The skills of love become polished and refined. Much of the trauma that has emotionally affected the limbic system of the brain has become resolved. The amygdala, for instance, at the base of the limbic system (where aggression responses are often housed) is less activated now when the partners come in contact. The temporal lobe at the top of the brain, where spiritual functioning occurs, is more active. The issue of "reasonable expectations" becomes a matter of important conversation. The partners value each other's opinions and ideas.

In this stage the brain is often moving into greater sync with the other's brain. Partners learn to read each other's biological signals and act accordingly. When one partner has the flu, for instance, the other partner knows what he or she needs. When one partner says a key code phrase in daily conversation, like, "I don't feel valued," the other partner responds not with immediate reactivity ("Haven't I done enough for you," "What are you talking about?" or, "Well I don't feel valued either!") but instead with the phrase or gesture the saddened partner needs. Partners work hard to be honest, not manipulative.

The Season of Partnership

By the time we achieve the rich partnership we dreamed of in our youth, we are generally in middle age. Men may have reached midlife - that time in their lives when it is a doctor, not a policeman, who tells them they should slow down. Women will probably have given birth to all of their children by now, and those children will be in various stages of growing up. Couples will have worked out a rhythm for most key elements of partnership - sex life, parenting, work life, home life.

Perhaps the key to understanding this landmark on the map of marriage is to notice couples who have been married well over ten years. They seem, for the most part, to have worked out who they are and what they need from the other. They have probably learned that they can't get the majority of their personal needs met by the other, but they need friends, careers, and communities in which to develop a midlife self. They have learned that their love relationship is unique - there is no "correct" way to be partnered.

For those people who arrive at the third season of marriage, biology becomes, as always, a clear marker. Especially as the partner enters midlife biological transitions - perimenopause then menopause for females, and male menopause for men - couples must draw deeply on their secure base of partnership to weather a number of biological storms. Even as we struggle to weather these, we may notice that our marital partnership has become not only life sustaining for us and our children, but also deeply useful to our community.

Stage 7: Creative Partnership. After a decade or more of marriage, couples often find themselves content (at least for a time) with career, child raising, volunteering, and other creative' endeavors; they realize that they can gracefully be creative because of their marriage. Marriage is the secure base with which to accomplish their goals. Certain goals will have to be sacrificed and human limitations accepted, but a couple knows it is in stage 7 when there is a base of contentment even when creative goals arc relinquished in order to keep the marriage and family strong.

These are years in which couples might achieve some financial and personal success, and will feel good not only about their relationship but about how it gives them the ability to do what they each feel spiritually called to do during this decade. In a neural sense, two individuals have by now so completely learned to enjoy each other's neural rhythms that they are able to finish each other's sentences and even think each other's thoughts.

Stage 8: The Third Crisis. Inevitably, this season of life is challenged by crisis and tragedy. As in stage 5, crisis challenges the couple to sustain their marriage through hard work, good communication, and reasonable expectations. If a child dies or one of the partners has an affair, the marriage might break up at this point. Or the relationship might continue beyond these difficulties, its fragility and the pain of life bringing the partners close again. Many of the hormones that ruled early love and romance are less active partners of relationship at this stage. Male testosterone levels are in decline. A man's social ambition and sex drive may decrease. Female hormones enter menopause, a time in which everyday affection and stability is made difficult in the face of profound mood alterations.

The ability of a couple to survive crisis during this stage - both external tragedy and internal hormonal shifts - will often be equal to the completion of former stages of biological development. The human brain, especially in ongoing love of another, develops rhythms in stages of completion. If a couple faces the death of a child before they have reached stage 7, it may be harder for them to stay together through that tragedy, for they may not have laid a strong enough foundation. If, during hormonal shifts, one of the partners has an affair, the couple might still elect to stay together; they may be more ready and capable of this gesture if the first two seasons of marriage have successfully completed. If, however, the couple has been involved in a low-grade power struggle for the last decade, making some advancements into later stages of life but their marriage remaining very fragile, the hormonal shifts of stage 8 (which can last around ten years) or the external tragedies can more easily break them apart.

Stage 9: Radiant Love. Couples who, as they survive tragedy, crisis, and normal hormonal development, find their love constantly reignited become the couples that others come to admire greatly. Their love seems to radiate from them. In this stage, the couple and their marriage become role models.

The Season of Nonattachment

Many decades have passed by now. Couples advance into their elder years, entering a time of memory and detachment (some couples may be in second or third marriages). They love their grandkids, but they also enjoy returning them to the parents at the end of the day. They are entering a time in life when they tire more easily but sleep less. Circadian rhythms are changing. The hypothalamus is less active, more detached, lacking the compulsion to process waves of hormones. Men become more tender. The body is engaged in the slowing down that comes with age. Brain cells tire less quickly. Some people will fear this time in life, hoping to regain youth. These people, by the way, often have higher testosterone flow than average for their age. Most people who have moved through nine stages of a relationship are generally focused, by this time, on accepting who they are. Power struggles that were submerged in the relationship might reignite now, and some people in their third or fourth decade of marriage do divorce, but most marriages, having made it through the previous stages of biosocial development, remain intact.

Stage 10: Acceptance of Solitude. As the brain's circuitry begins to slow down, certain centers of the brain nearly shut off. Most centers of the brain lose gray- and white-matter at faster rates than earlier. Depending on the person's genetics and life choices (e.g., smoking, drinking), decay of the brain occurs at different rates of acceleration.

During this time, as the brain destimulates, relationships come to include a great deal of solitude. Daily projects are still enjoyed. Sex lives can be active. Life can be quite full. But the sense of a deep drive to create, invent, conquer is being replaced by a need to listen and hear. In the aging brain, blood flow away from the parietal lobe where spatial orientation occurs, can make a person feel less connected to the everyday activities of the world. If both partners are still alive, they have probably been married three or more decades by now.

Stage 11: The Fourth Crisis. All seasons of life are marked by traumas, tragedies, and crises. In this case, generally the most obvious crisis is the sickness and death of our spouse. Caring for a spouse whose brain and body are in decay affects our own brain chemistry - cortisol levels, blood flow between the limbic system and the frontal lobes, effects on our own memory centers, are all profoundly felt.

In this stage of life, we and our spouse and friends may talk a lot about our ailments, sicknesses, the ailments of others. We have faced many crises in our lives - deaths of others, losses of work, lost relationships, mental or physical illness, fights with our children, economic ups and downs in our nation, assassinations of our leaders and heroes, the sacrifice of our children to war - and now these crises are part of what gives our neural web the strength to survive the loss of our spouse and the diminution of ourselves toward death.

Stage 12: The End of Life. The last stage of any relationship is the death of the relationship. Our spouse dies and then we die. The neural web shuts down. All the tugs and pulls of brain stem, limbic system, neocortex disappear. As we're dying, perhaps we say, "I have lived a full life; I'm ready." Perhaps we say, "One of my greatest accomplishments has been this: that I have learned how to love." Or perhaps we simply move on, the brain, the self, the soul closing down, awaiting the next stage, which our sciences have not yet been able to chart.

We shall post further extracts from Dr Gurian's book in the coming weeks. You can buy his book on-line at Amazon; just click here.

Source

• Michael Gurian. What Could He Be Thinking? : How a Man's Mind Really Works. 1st edition, September 2003. St Martin's Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y., 10010

Related Links
Michael Gurian Home Page
Introduction: What Could He Be Thinking?
I Think I Love You - Men and Commitment
It never ends: Aging and Sexuality - Part I

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