What keeps couples together?

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In the non-fiction book What keeps couples together? The process of living together in psycho-ecological perspective examines Jürg Willi continuation of marriages and partnerships beyond the time to stop on the partners to describe their longer-term relationships as completely "happy". He sees the value of continuing even such a "post-happy" relationship in the security provided by the common living environment and the possible co-evolution of the partners. Understanding long-term relationships presupposes an " ecological approach ".

The explanations almost completely dispense with any special therapeutic terminology and are rounded off by an extensive list of literature as well as an index of persons and subjects.

The first edition of What Keeps Couples Together? was published in 1991 by Rowohlt Verlag . The book has been reprinted several times and translated into three languages.

Initial happiness and disappointment of all love

Willi assumes a lifelong deep longing for being in good hands and security of every individual in a community. This “primal longing” for housing and not the permanent search for individual happiness or a hedonistic, “only self-serving love relationship” is for him the organizing power center of all attempts to build a lasting community. He describes his approach as a “psycho-ecological view”, which bases the happiness of the individual in their surrounding structures, in the diversity, depth and stability of relationships. "The psycho-ecological approach expands the systemic perspective to include the material-physical world that a person and their family create and to which they are interrelated."

The primal longing as a human condition provides the inspiring energies in love to get involved in the "utopia" of a common life. In the amorous rapprochement between the partners, a “metamorphosis of personalities” develops, a change in the individual construct systems , the patterns of feeling, perceiving and thinking, full of hope in the previously undeveloped own possibilities and in those of the partner.

"Love loses much of its magic when it becomes real." More realistic thoughts and inevitably disappointments arise when the prospects of the relationship expand and a continuation in the future is presented: The partners become aware that the im Being in love reaches its limits and the partners “remain a secret to each other”. Willi states a necessary disappointment of all love, a remaining stranger to oneself in the symbiosis, an inability to address the partner for his own longings and a painful loneliness: "Even happy partnerships have a certain tragedy in this regard."

For Willi, love for the partner and suffering from his and her own limits are two necessary components of any maturation process. He therefore questions “happiness” as the decisive measure of coexistence. The valuable achievement of a partnership is the development of a comprehensive inner (habits and rituals, shared values ​​and perceptions) and an outer world (furnishing an apartment, coordinating purchases, organizing shared experiences and memories) as well as a social network through which the partners connect with each other feel safe.

In a long-term relationship, the character of a love changes. Often only everyday routine, habit and comfort are associated with her and the old-age marriage and this relationship is devalued. These moments of normality in the couple relationship, on the other hand, are important framework conditions in which the partners live autonomously and yet related to one another. The changing weight of sexuality, the replacement of children and retirement, however, opened up critical free spaces that had to be filled sensibly. "The inner focus is now less on the partner relationship than on self-interests."

Although he advocates divorce as a rational solution to a bad marriage, he uses commented examples to show how couples in a life community build up a meaningful inner and outer world, its conflict and often also breakup for both partners, for their children and for their social affairs Network is a serious turning point. A focus for him here is the superimposition of biological, formal and lived kinship structures.

Co-evolution changes identity

According to Willi, stable and longer partner relationships are only entered into because in a community the “original longing”, the psychological, social and material housing of the partner, can be better satisfied and their personal development can be more successful. Willi describes this process of complex mutual formation of personalities as "co-evolution". In this community, the partners mutually influence each other by answering and structuring each other, supporting and also limiting each other's development.

An understanding between the partners presupposes a certain compatibility of the most important psychological constructs. These images of the world, the convictions and opinions, the patterns and templates do not have to be identical, but they do have to be similar enough that the partners could empathize with the other's world; Successful marriages were based on this greater consistency of the overarching constructs. This inner world arises in the narration, in the permanent exchange about the view of the world, through cascades of communication, whereby self-definition and orientation are conveyed. The main participants are the partners, but the friends and the social environment also have their share.

In contrast to duration through similarity, the alluring strangeness of the constructs is more important for the beginning of a relationship, in which a long wait meets a partner who answers the hope of the development of previously undeveloped sides. Hence: "Even those who are in a happy partnership fall in love with other people from time to time."

The hope of developing one's own resources implies that love is never selfless - the worse a relationship, the more short-term compensation for one's own emotional investments is required, the more satisfactory, the less this bookkeeping plays a role. The instrumental and emotional division of tasks that usually results in co-evolution can relieve the individual. But ultimately the partners could not evade the balance of give and take, of justice and equality, without harming their partnership.

The direction and the range of the common evolution would be determined in a permanent process of negotiation between the partners, whose personalities would change “tentatively” or “drifting”. In every phase of a life community there are typical topics that temporarily bind the partners' strengths and also release them again. By participating in different social worlds (families of origin, different professions, social movements, associations ...) they could also move away from each other. Separation will occur when one of the partners can no longer identify with the other in a holistic view of the relationship. "Matching with one another is not a condition, but an ongoing process."

reception

Jürg Willi was one of the first German-speaking empirical researchers with a focus on couple relationships. The examination of his publications therefore soon took place both in the specialist literature and in public. The reviewers and opponents were concerned with recipes for a successful love as well as dealing with Willis' anthropological and philosophical premises.

In his book review, Bernd Kuck criticizes Willis' “ecological approach” and his “co-evolution” en passant as “rather old wine in new bottles”.

In her essay, Janine Jonelat criticizes Willis’s strong focus on marital relationships instead of other forms of cohabitation, as well as the neglect of the growing sexual dissatisfaction in long relationships and its effects resulting from surveys.

Heike Stüvel gives an overview of current happiness recipes around the world , the majority of which confirm Willi's results. She calls a "good cost-benefit ratio " (with Willi "justice balance") or the "feeling of security in the partnership" (with Willi "security") or communication between the partners that is promoted through regular contract negotiations or planned challenges (With Willi the never ending exchange of partners). However, in contrast to Willi, she orients herself to the ideals of individual “happiness” and “romantic love”.

In his overview of recent empirical studies, Herbert Cserf tends to confirm Willis 'theses and results from 30 years ago, even if the more recent questions differ from Willis' and their results are therefore not always congruent.

Claudia Schmalz and Michael Unger confirm Willi's approach as an orientation for therapeutic practice.

In the Tagesanzeiger obituary for Jürg Willi, Guido Kalberer emphasizes the understandability of his works and his pragmatic, unorthodox combination of communication theory, behavioral therapy and psychoanalysis. "Even in the age of Tinder, his books will remain a guide in confusing terrain."

literature

Expenses (selection)

  • What keeps couples together? The process of living together from a psycho-ecological point of view. With the assistance of Linde Brassel-Ammann et al., Rowohlt, Reinbek 1991, ISBN 3-498-07324-9 .
  • What keeps couples together? The process of living together from a psycho-ecological point of view. 12th edition, Rowohlt Taschenbuch Verlag, Reinbek 2013, ISBN 978-3-499-60508-6 .
  • Che cosa tiene insieme le coppie. Translated into Italian by Paolo Massardo and Palma Severi. Mondadori, Milan 1992, ISBN 88-04-36275-8 .
  • Hvad holder par together? Samlivsprocessen i psyko-økologisk perspective. Translated into Danish by Hans Chr. Fink. Reitzel, Copenhagen 1993, ISBN 87-412-3360-3 .
  • Duurzame rande. Hoe groeien in a partner relationship. Translated into Dutch by Jean-Marie Govaerts and Koen Goris. Lannoo, Tielt 1996, ISBN 90-209-2827-9 .

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Jürg Willi: What keeps couples together? The process of living together from a psycho-ecological point of view . 1st edition. Rowohlt, Hamburg 1991.
  2. ↑ Willi: What keeps couples together? S. 35, 36, 64 f .
  3. ↑ Willi: What keeps couples together? S. 15 .
  4. ↑ Willi: What keeps couples together? S. 221; 101, 131, 143 f., 216, 219 ff., 267, 301 .
  5. ↑ Willi: What keeps couples together? S. 346 .
  6. ↑ Willi: What keeps couples together? S. 41 .
  7. ↑ Willi: What keeps couples together? S. 45 .
  8. ↑ Willi: What keeps couples together? S. 39 .
  9. ↑ Willi: What keeps couples together? S. 50; 58 ff .
  10. ↑ Willi: What keeps couples together? S. 61; 96, 346 .
  11. ↑ Willi: What keeps couples together? S. 64; 16 f., 125 f., 139 f., 143 f .
  12. ↑ Willi: What keeps couples together? S. 267 ff .
  13. ↑ Willi: What keeps couples together? S. 280 ff .
  14. ↑ Willi: What keeps couples together? S. 44 f., 66 ff., 268 ff .
  15. ↑ Willi: What keeps couples together? S. 100 ff., 347 .
  16. ↑ Willi: What keeps couples together? S. 100 ff .
  17. ↑ Willi: What keeps couples together? S. 106 .
  18. ↑ Willi: What keeps couples together? S. 146 ff., 256 ff., 284 f., 293 f., 310 ff., 336 ff .
  19. ↑ Willi: What keeps couples together? S. 35, 346 ff .
  20. ↑ Willi: What keeps couples together? S. 217 ff .
  21. ↑ Willi: What keeps couples together? S. 244 ff .
  22. ↑ Willi: What keeps couples together? S. 228 .
  23. ↑ Willi: What keeps couples together? S. 268 ff., 330 ff .
  24. ↑ Willi: What keeps couples together? S. 232 ff., 287 f., 308 .
  25. ↑ Willi: What keeps couples together? S. 52 .
  26. ↑ Willi: What keeps couples together? S. 236 ff., 326 f .
  27. ↑ Willi: What keeps couples together? S. 277 f .
  28. ↑ Willi: What keeps couples together? S. 299 ff .
  29. ↑ Willi: What keeps couples together? S. 286 ff .
  30. ↑ Willi: What keeps couples together? S. 304 ff .
  31. ↑ Willi: What keeps couples together? S. 344 .
  32. ↑ Bernd Kuck: Psychology of love. Retrieved September 26, 2019 .
  33. ↑ Janine Jonelat: Relationship between couples and personality development according to Jürg Willi. Retrieved September 26, 2019 .
  34. ↑ Heike Stühle: What is the secret of eternal love. Retrieved September 26, 2019 .
  35. ↑ Herbert Cserf: Love in long marriages. What separates couples or holds them together. Retrieved September 26, 2019 .
  36. ↑ Claudia Schmalz, Michael Unger: Couples conflict and personality. The two-way relationship as a collusion (according to Jürg Willi). Retrieved September 26, 2019 .
  37. ↑ Guido Kalberer: Jürg Willi knew what united couples - and divided them. Retrieved September 26, 2019 .