As a psychologist, I’ve seen time and again how certain romantic myths, no matter how dreamy or well-intentioned they seem, set couples up for disappointment. Indeed, marriage can be a beautiful thing. But this beauty is earned over years of hard work; it’s never something that’s freely promised.
Unfortunately, many couples don’t realize they’ve internalized these false promises about love until something just feels “off.” A chronic sense of resentment. Repeated miscommunications. Arguments that seem to come out of nowhere.
If you’ve ever found yourself wondering whether love is supposed to feel like this, you wouldn’t be the first to ask. In all likelihood, your idea of marriage might just be at odds with one of the two following myths.
1. Romantic Idealism
We’ve been sold a very pretty, idealistic idea of what marriage is supposed to look like. Psychological researcher C. Raymond Knee and his colleagues note a few in a 2003 study published in Personality and Social Psychology Review:
- The right relationship should just work from the start. No bumps, no growing pains.
- If two people are truly compatible, they’ll get along and understand each other without much effort at all.
- Struggles early in a relationship are a sign that partners simply aren’t the right fit for one another.
- A relationship’s success is mostly determined by how well things go in the beginning.
- If it’s meant to be, it’ll feel easy. And if it doesn’t, it’s probably not meant to be after all.
Unfortunately, these notions, known as “destiny beliefs,” are as misleading as they are romantic. They paint an incredibly unrealistic portrait of what a marriage (or any relationship, really) is supposed to look like.
Knee’s further research in 2022 confirms this: people who maintain destiny beliefs are likely to struggle with denial, disengage from their partner altogether and might even stop making effort to look after their relationship. These behaviors may become especially apparent when, inevitably, couples start facing challenges or realize they have differences.
But, realistically, love and marriage aren’t matters of “chemistry” or “destiny;” these ideas serve as an incredibly fragile foundation. If couples face even one, small bump in the road, the whole partnership might feel as though it’s doomed. This is because the moment partners place the livelihood of their relationship in the hands of fate, is the moment they stop believing that they can do something — anything — to improve their relationship.
However, if this were the case, messy divorces and breakups wouldn’t be as common as they are. “Incompatible” couples could simply end things within a few weeks once they realized that they weren’t “meant to be.”
The reality of marriage isn’t that what you see is what you get. Rather, what you put in is what you get out. If you’re not seeing the beauty in your marriage that you expected you would, trust that there will always be something you can do about it — effort to put in, conversations to be had, changes to be made.
2. Romantic Completion
Not long ago, people looked to their spouse for companionship and stability. But these days, people are starting to view their spouse as someone who should complete them: their therapist, emotional support system, cheerleader, sexual match, co-parent and spiritual guide all-in-one.
The irony, however, is that the couples who expect the most from their marriage in this way are often the ones investing the least into it. In a 2014 study published in Psychological Inquiry, psychologist Eli J. Finkel and colleagues bluntly call this the “suffocation model” of marriage in America.
The researchers explain this model by means of a metaphor: “climbing Mount Maslow without enough oxygen.” They refer here to Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, a well-known psychological theory that organizes human needs into a pyramid.
At the base of the pyramid (or, rather, the “mountain”) are our most fundamental needs, like physical safety, stability, emotional security and so on. Once those basic needs are reliably met, we then can move up toward the more complex goals — like building confidence, gaining respect or feeling accomplished.
Importantly, only once all the base layers have been reached can we ultimately reach the very top of the mountain (self-actualization) and become our best, utmost fulfilled selves.
Simply put, the researchers argue that many modern couples are trying to skip straight to the top. They want their marriage to be a space of inspiration, empowerment and profound life-meaning — but they also aren’t taking care of the emotional basics that make these divine achievements possible.
The metaphor is incredibly apt in this sense: it’s much like trying to summit a mountain without packing the oxygen and supplies you’ll need to survive the actual climb itself. Eventually, you’re guaranteed to run out of air.
In other words, when we expect our partner to meet all of our needs — to be our rock, our muse, our motivation, our mirror — without consistently investing in the relationship itself, we end up suffocating the connection we’re trying so hard to rely on.
This is the heart of the problem: no partner on earth could ever fulfill another’s needs in this way. In reality, this is something we as individuals need to worry about, not our partner. If we demand one person to be our everything, we consequently lose any and all sense of autonomy in our happiness and well-being.
Importantly, accepting that your partner cannot complete you isn’t a failure. The healthiest marriages are characterized by interdependence: two whole people supporting each other to the top of the mountain, without losing their individuality and agency along the way.
This means you can be madly in love with your spouse and still need (and enjoy) your personal space. You can be loyal and committed without needing to share every single one of your hobbies or emotions with your spouse. You can have a healthy marriage without relying on your spouse in your every waking moment.
In fact, giving each other these freedoms should be the bare minimum in a marriage. It’s not unromantic to be full, independent people. If you aren’t, then you might be staking your entire sense of self in a marriage that, no matter how strong, was never built to carry the full weight of who you are.
These are just two of many common marital myths. How many of them have you been misled to believe? Take this science-backed test to find out: Belief In Marital Myths Scale
