Psychological problems of the first years of married life

The family as a stable social community of people has existed for many centuries. It is an indispensable element of the social structure of human society, fulfilling the extremely important task of reproducing the population. Until recently, the study of the family was conducted almost exclusively by sociology;The theoretical concepts of the family were created in terms of social functions and family ties with other social institutions. However, in recent decades there has been a great interest in the problems of family functioning on the part of various fields of knowledge - psychiatry, psychology, ethnography, pedagogy, etc. This phenomenon is explained by the fact that, according to sociological studies, the traditional family institute is now experiencing some crisis relatedwith a change in the content of marriage and family relations. The crisis is expressed in that, on the one hand, there is a search for some new forms of the family that would better correspond to the modern content of relations;for example, a famous American researcher, Burr, lists and describes about ten different forms of family relationships that existed in the United States in the 1970s.along with the "classical" monogamous family. On the other hand, the number of divorces is constantly growing both in our country and abroad;in the former USSR to the beginning of the 80's.for every three marriages there is an average of one divorce, and especially "young" marriages - almost 1/3 of all divorces fall on families with no more than three to five years' experience. In this article, we will try to highlight some issues of family interaction from the point of view of the psychologist.

Given to sociology, in a socialist society, the subjective factor in the development of family and marriage becomes more important;in particular, demographic data testify to a rather high specific gravity of psychological motives and reasons for divorce, such as dissimilarity of characters, absence or loss of feelings of love, etc. Simultaneously, it is pointed out that one of the main functions of marriage now is providing psychological comfort, socalled the therapeutic function of marriage. This fact is reflected in the results of demographic studies of marriage and divorce;However, they only fix it, without giving an analysis of this phenomenon. Deeply analyze the processes of family functioning is possible only with the help of special psychological methods of research. One of such methods - in the broadest sense of the word - can be considered family psychotherapy, aimed at changing interpersonal relations in the family and its stabilization;in the course of psychotherapy, many subtle psychological mechanisms of conjugal interaction are uncovered, not detected by other known methods. In this connection, it is necessary to note the article by V. V. Stolin, in which the author sets forth his views on the theoretical foundations of family therapy that have evolved in the course of practical work with conflict families. This article is programmatic, it directs and guides psychologists involved in family psychotherapy.

In recent years, the number of consultations on family and marriage issues has been increasing rapidly in our country. At present, this form of work with young families, such as preventive talks with applicants for divorce, is becoming increasingly popular. In many districts of Moscow, with registrars, people's courts, and public departments of the executive committees, advisory rooms have been set up to help divorce people. Admission to these offices is usually conducted by lawyers, sociologists, psychologists;the main task of such work - on the basis of a joint discussion, to enable the spouses themselves to make a final decision - whether to keep them married or divorced;help them see a few( and not one) possible ways out of the current situation. During the conversation, the consultant together with the client seeks to identify those initial mistakes in building communication with the partner, which eventually led to the decision to terminate the marriage. However, quite often those families who are unable to cope with the solution of a particular problem turn to these offices and would like to receive qualified assistance, that is, the so-called conflict families. In such cases, the main goal of the work is to help the spouses to find a common language, to teach them to solve conflicts on their own.

In this article, we would like to acquaint readers with some of the results and conclusions that we came to, working with divorcing young spouses in the "Marriage and Family" consultation in the Pervomaisky District of Moscow. In addition to the author of this article, GF Deinega and NV Malyarov took part in the collection of material;the analysis of the material was carried out by the author.

Most of the spouses who addressed us are young people between the ages of 18 and 35 who do not have children( since, as is known, families in which there are underage children, dissolve their marriage only through a court).Because of this, the main problems we have faced are problems of interpersonal relationships between spouses who have lived together for a very short time - from several months to 3-4 years.

Conversations with the divorcee were free, non-standardized;we tried to ensure that the spouses had a feeling that they can trust a psychologist who is ready and able to help them. Having accumulated some experience of working with divorcees, we made an attempt to create a questionnaire that would give orderly, standardized material. This questionnaire contains 19 questions;17 of them are aimed at collecting demographic data, and the last two are: "What led your family to a divorce?" And "What led you personally to a divorce?".The questionnaire is filled in by the divorcee before the conversation with the psychologist, and practice has shown that this very much helps in establishing contact, finding a common language. With each spouse we talked first individually, and then, if necessary, and in accordance with the wishes of the spouses, held a joint discussion of the problems.

Having received preliminary data on the spouses - about the duration of their life together, about the living conditions, about the occupation, who initiated the divorce, etc., we offered them to state their claims to the spouse, to tell what he does not satisfy inthan he deceived expectations. Each client was always asked if he had any difficulties in the sexual sphere of relationships with the spouse, since they themselves rarely decided to touch on this point, and it is known that the sexual disharmony is the source of many family troubles;in consultation there is a qualified sexologist who can provide real help in solving sexual problems;at desire the spouses were written down to it on reception.

Listening attentively to the spouses, we tried so that they themselves would like to share their problems;in most cases it was possible to achieve this. Sometimes the conversation threatened to turn into an endless monologue of the client about the negative properties, habits and sides of the partner's character;in such situations, we after a while stopped the client and asked him to remember whether his family life was a happy period and when and why he ended up;Thanks to this, we again returned to the discussion of marital interaction, to the main conflicts and ways to resolve them. The conversation ended after each spouse began to more or less fully and clearly realize his wrong actions and misinterpretations of the partner's actions.

In the course of our work about 60 couples of young childless spouses under the age of 30 passed through our office. Conversations with them showed that about half of them were married on the basis of motives lying outside the family sphere( for example, the desire to leave the parental home, take a responsible independent step, take revenge on someone, etc.).Lack of adequate motivation led to the fact that the spouses did not face the tasks of "self-determination" of the family: clarifying conjugal roles, the intra-family status of each of them, their common goals. Such married couples say: "We did not have a family".Such marriages disintegrate, as a rule, rather quickly, as soon as it is found that the creation of strong family ties requires great, serious work and a lot of time, and young spouses are completely unprepared for this and, moreover, are not interested in this activity. Therefore, the problems arising in such families are largely due to the fact that the spouses simply do not want to make any effort to create a stable relationship;they continue to live their every life as they did before marriage, not trying to find any common interests, points of contact. Conflicts arise from them because of nonessential trifles, then growing into prolonged quarrels;gradually they themselves begin to understand that they do not have a family, but they have no desire to do anything. The installation for divorce in these spouses is very strong and persistent;according to the Pervomaysky registry office, almost all of them will soon dissolve their marriages. For example, the couple Elena and Igor K. - both musicians, love their profession;while they met in companies, they had many common interests and topics for conversation, they liked each other. The decision to get married was made under the influence of friends: "You will make a wonderful couple!" However, soon after the wedding, having found themselves in a home environment, these spouses found profound differences in vital interests and complete reluctance to form a family. They lived with his wife's parents, practically "on everything ready";and they both kept all their "bachelor" habits;often quarreled over trifles, after which they often did not talk to each other for a week or more, without experiencing any particular experiences;and the husband and wife had close friends with whom they discussed their problems, shared their troubles and joys, while they had nothing to talk about. However, they continued to live together by inertia;a year and a half after the wedding, the wife met a man with whom she then decided to bind her life;Having told her husband about this, she offered him a divorce;the husband had nothing against, and they quickly dissolved their marriage.

A significant number of young couples who came to us for counseling, marry, as they say, for love;these spouses sincerely aspired to create a family, subsequently to have children, to rejoice together and mourn together. Overflowing with bright dreams of their radiant future, they nevertheless found themselves unprepared for the difficulties of real life together. Many pointed out that only the first few months( and sometimes less) they were satisfied with each other and with their lives together;gradually began to appear friction, conflict, clashes, eventually there were "insoluble" situations, of which the couple saw only one way out, a divorce. It is about such pairs that will be discussed in the future. The first year or two of joint life is the first stage of the life cycle of the family, the stage of the formation of individual communication stereotypes, the harmonization of value systems and the development of a common worldview position. In essence, at this stage there is a mutual adaptation of the spouses, a search for a type of relationship that would satisfy both. At the same time, the spouses are faced with the tasks of forming a family structure, the distribution of functions( or roles) between husband and wife and the development of common family values. Under the structure of the family is understood the way to ensure the unity of its members;the distribution of roles is manifested in what kinds of family activities each spouse takes under his responsibility and what addresses the partner;Finally, family values ​​are the attitudes of the spouses over what the family exists for, what it should bring to them.

For the successful implementation of mutual adaptation of marital partners, compatibility of their submissions on the three specified parameters is necessary;ideal would be their complete coincidence, but it is impossible in real life. Therefore, any married couple at the dawn of their life together inevitably faces, in varying degrees, the mismatch of opinions, assessments and beliefs of husband and wife on a wide variety of issues. And consequently, their ability to constructively resolve emerging conflicts plays a huge, if not decisive, role in the process of mutual adaptation of the newlyweds.

Possessing constructive ways to resolve conflicts, one can find a way out of the most seemingly hopelessly contradictory clashes, and conversely, if the conflict is not properly managed, the smallest occasion will lead to serious consequences. Now these issues are given a lot of attention in the psychological literature;the principles of the so-called creative conflict, ie, a conflict that can be fruitfully used for the development of interpersonal relations between spouses, have been worked out. First of all, each of the spouses must decide whether his grievances and feelings really require a joint discussion. Then they must tell each other their positions and intentions and choose the time and place for the conflict. In the process of the conflict, one should avoid touching those who are not related to the subject of the conversation;It is not possible to apply "blows below the belt" to the partner. The conflict can be considered successfully completed after the partners expressed each other everything they wanted, came to a common opinion on this or that issue and reconciled.

Thus, the importance of the ability to "rightly quarrel" for family life can not be overemphasized. But if we return now to the young divorcing spouses who turned to our consultation, the first thing that catches our eye is the complete inability of the majority to constructively resolve conflicts. This is indicated, firstly, by the fact that most often the conflict is of a hidden nature, that is, its true cause does not become the subject of discussion among the spouses;quite often the spouses do not even realize it. But even if there is an open conflict, then it does not dare adequately, as it is not enough to make claims, we still have to find ways to eliminate them. This can be done after a frank discussion of the reproaches expressed, during which the partners must show their ability to listen to each other, to understand the essence of the matter, as well as their readiness to change their behavior or their point of view in accordance with the demands made. If these conditions are met, it is possible to find a compromise solution.

In some couples, inability to resolve conflicts affects all aspects of the process of mutual adaptation;some only on separate sides of it;this depends on how much the ideas of the spouses coincide about this or that area of ​​family life. Virtually all couples could not adequately solve the problem of the family leader;In essence, this means the absence of a stable, stable family structure. In cases where there is a leader in the family, his partner usually does not accept this leadership - either in substance or in form. Leadership, as a rule, has an authoritarian character and is invariably accompanied by suppression of the partner. That is why in some married couples there is such a picture: one of the partners is the leader;the second takes such a position in principle, but can not reconcile with specific forms of leadership. For example, in spouses 3.( the husband is 24, his wife is 20, the duration of marriage is 1 year and 4 months, the husband is an engineer with a higher education, the wife is an employee with a secondary education), the husband takes the position of a leader in the family, he is very authoritarian, is persistent. The wife does not feel the need to be the leader herself, she needs custody, but she can not take the pressure of her husband, she demands greater democracy.

Another typical option - both spouses, both of them, tend to be a leader, and neither wants to yield to another. This can manifest itself explicitly, openly, and can take hidden forms, when on the surface of the relationship of this problem as if there is not, and in fact each of the spouses seeks to take over. For example, in the family of N.( the husband is 21, the wife is 23, the duration of marriage is about six months, the husband is a worker of high qualification, the wife is an employee with a secondary special education), there is a constant open struggle for leadership with a slight margin in the direction of his wife.

On this ground there is a sharp open conflict, which is exacerbated by the mismatch of the spouses' views on the distribution of roles in the domestic sphere. And the situation is completely different for the spouses of K.( the husband is 26 years old, he is a worker of high qualification, his wife is 24, she is an employee with secondary special education, the duration of their marriage is 2 months): an implicit struggle for leadership takes place, each suprug pullsin their own way, a hidden conflict on this ground;the situation is complicated by a serious divergence in the hierarchy of family values ​​and in the distribution of roles.

It is also possible that one of the spouses has a strong tendency to dominate, and the other is determined to establish equal relations;while the latter's behavior develops as a "struggle for independence."A very vivid example of this type is the wife of O.( her husband is 24 years old, the wife is 23, she is an employee with a secondary technical education, he is a worker of high qualification, the length of marriage is 2 years): there is no permanent leader in the family;they are striving to be a husband, and acts very harshly, in an orderly manner, often using blackmail( "if you do not quit smoking - divorce");the wife actively protests against this - "I'm an adult, I know myself what's good, what's bad";However, quarrels between them go on small, superficial occasions, i.e., the conflict is hidden here. They do not have role disagreements, but there are differences in the hierarchy of values ​​(including family ones).

Finally, another, not so frequent, but still existing option - the leader is outside the family. Usually, they are the mother-in-law or mother-in-law;in such cases, the spouse whose mother plays the role of leader accepts this position, while his partner leads a latent or explicit struggle for the independent solution of marital problems. Thus, in the family of B.( the husband and wife - for 20 years, the duration of marriage - 1 year, the husband - the worker, the wife - the nurse) there is obvious domination of the mother of the wife, who interferes in all their internal affairs;while the wife demands, "that all issues should be solved together with the mother."The husband resists this situation, there is an open struggle for leadership between him and his mother-in-law, there is an open conflict about this. This variant is most often found in families with very young spouses - 19-21 years. It is known that for the formation of one's own family, a person must psychologically separate from his parents, reach a certain level of psychological maturity. In this case, we are dealing with the psychological unpreparedness for marriage, the immaturity of the spouses, which determines their excessive( to achieve a satisfactory matrimonial adaptation) attachment to their parents( usually to the mother).

From all that has been said, we can conclude that the problem of leadership in the family is one of the most acute problems of the first years of married life. However, many conflicts also arise on the basis of different representations of spouses about family roles and family values. It should be noted that the day of the modern young family is characterized by a mismatch of ideas about conjugal roles, not only and not so much the economic and domestic sphere as in the field of interpersonal relations. Often, the claims of one or both spouses are inconsistency of the partner's desired ideal image of a husband or wife. For example, Irina T.( 21, an employee with secondary specialized education) believes that her husband, Nikolay T.( 22, a student of a technical paunch), gives her insufficient attention, does not know how to support her in time, does not appreciate her diligence and achievementsin the field of the household, that in general his manners leave much to be desired. She repeatedly tried to talk with him on this topic, but he always shied away, not understanding, in effect, what was required of him.

Discrepancies in the distribution of economic roles are also common, but they are not an independent cause of conflicts;as a rule, this is just a facade behind which there are more serious disagreements about the structure of the family, its values.

Mismatch of value hierarchies in spouses is a very important problem for a young family;for it is also important to the ability to resolve conflicts. Every day before the spouses there are problems that require immediate resolution: where to go, how to spend your free time, how and for what to spend money, whom to invite to visit, etc., - in which the value systems of spouses collide. The ability to find compromise solutions on such issues leads to the rallying of the family.

So, we see that the inability of young spouses to constructively resolve unavoidable differences leads to the fact that the process of their mutual adaptation is violated;it is impossible to form a family structure, to turn from two separate "I" into a single "we", while preserving its individual identity, its uniqueness. But there is one more danger that lies in wait for the newlyweds, this is the loss of a feeling of love, a disappointment in a partner. Many spouses raise this as the reason for the divorce;they say that after the wedding, the partner has changed for the worse, they find in him a number of shortcomings, which were allegedly absent at first( or, at least, seemed insignificant).

Apparently, young boys and girls often take for love what we might call love. The peculiarity of love consists primarily in the fact that the attitude towards a partner is not based on its real qualities and features, but on the basis of fictitious and attributed properties. A person creates an ideal image of a partner and then projects it onto the object of his affection, stubbornly ignoring the reality, not seeing in the partner a single flaw. If the partner answers the same, then we can say with confidence that their relationship is being built entirely on a false basis. Sooner or later, the real properties of a partner will necessarily manifest themselves strongly enough to "breach" a fictitious image, and they will fall upon a person like a bolt from the blue, causing deep perplexity and an absolute misunderstanding of the origins of one or another act of the partner. Gradually, the "missing before" character traits of the partner will come out more fully. And in this situation, what kind of behavior the person chooses will be of great importance: will he still cling to a non-existent image, strive to "fit" his partner for him, resenting and perplexing, or, on the contrary, begins to correct not the partner, buthis image of him, thus approaching reality, will begin to accept the partner as he is. This does not mean that he must forever be reconciled with any significant shortcomings, by no means, of course, one must try to correct the partner, but this can not be achieved by reproaches and directives. It is necessary tactfully, with full respect to the partner to let him understand by his behavior that some of his features are undesirable and it would be better if he got rid of them. However, many newlyweds believe that it is enough just to point out a partner for his lack( and this is often done in an insulting, degrading form), so that he immediately corrected. Naturally, this does not happen;a conflict that grows, spreads, captures other areas of a joint life, and as a result - the deterioration of relations, frustration in a partner, and sometimes in family life in general. But you can choose another way - the way to correct the image of the partner based on his real behavior. The consistent implementation of this path will lead the couple to deepen the sense of love, improve mutual understanding, mutual enrichment and development. This path requires significant efforts from the partners, a big, difficult work to understand and change primarily their own traits and habits, requires patience and perseverance, since all such changes are not made on the same day. But the reward to them will be a sense of satisfaction with their marriage, a sense of fullness of life, of its wealth and beauty, for the only luxury available to man is the luxury of human communication( A. de Saint-Exupery).