Marriage
Marriage is a system of relationships that binds two people of the opposite sex together as husband and wife, and it involves uniting one's self with the self of another. In studies on maintaining a happy and healthy marital relationship, the concepts of marital harmony and marital satisfaction have been mostly investigated. Marital adjustment is the most frequently studied variable in this regard. Marital harmony, which is also described as the success of married individuals in their marital life and their functionality in marriage; It is considered as a general concept that includes the concepts of marital satisfaction and marital happiness. Spanier (1976) defined marital harmony as the adaptation of married couples to daily life and changing conditions in life, and their change in accordance with each other over a certain period of time.
Marital Harmony
Marital harmony is related to the couples' sharing of each other's interests, values, goals, perspectives on life, and the level of satisfaction they receive from the marital relationship. Harmonious marriages appear to be marriages in which spouses can communicate with each other easily, disagreements are resolved to the satisfaction of both parties, and there are no intense disagreements, especially in important parts of the marriage. Marriage life affects many situations, from business life to life satisfaction, from the mental health of individuals to the psychological health of families and societies. In order for a healthy and stable married life to continue, the bond between spouses must become stronger over time and the spouses must maintain marital harmony. Considering that a happy marriage has a protective effect on the psychological health of spouses and children, marital harmony and life form the basis of healthy families and a healthy society.
Human relations occur in four stages: initiation, development, maintenance and termination. According to Nelson-Jones (1986), the maintenance phase requires high harmony in marriage. In marriages that end in separation, positive emotions, especially satisfaction and commitment, decrease over time, resulting in decreased positive emotions. k love is disappearing. Couples end their relationships not because of love, but because of dissatisfaction and unhappiness in their relationships.
Achieving good harmony in married life
Combining the thoughts and behaviors of spouses on issues such as sharing responsibilities in the family, making use of free time, expressing emotions, the way of expressing emotions, communication, relations with relatives, problems related to children, income management, decision-making, problem solving, values, expectations and goals; It increases their harmony in marriage and reduces the possibility of conflict and divorce. Hz. This issue is expressed as follows in some couplets in Mevlana's Mesnevi.
“Spouses must resemble each other; Take a look at the pairs of shoes and socks!
If one of the shoes is a little too tight for the foot, both of them are useless.
Can one door leaf be small and the other large?
Have you ever seen a lion and a wolf in the forest?
If one eye is empty and the other is full, the bag cannot stand properly on the mount.”
Harmony in marriages is seen to be related to the unity and equality of emotions and behavior of the spouses. Another issue to ensure effective harmony between spouses is that couples develop adaptive problem-solving skills. While adaptive problem-solving skills can make spouses more resilient to life events, maladaptive problem-solving skills can make spouses more obsessed with the problem. For example, a couple with adaptability skills discuss their problems in a non-defensive manner, learn each other's opinions in a neutral tone of voice, and add humor to their conversations. Again, when one of the spouses has a problem, they solve the problem together and develop a defense plan against the problem together. When problem-solving skills are inadequate, spouses become angry by blaming each other for the problems they have experienced, and they can hurt each other by using a high tone of voice. However, they also avoid developing plans. As a result, marital harmony weakens and marital satisfaction decreases.
One of the most important issues that increase couple harmony in married life is the relationship between spouses. It is a healthy interaction between men. "Communication problem" is among the problems most frequently expressed by couples applying for marriage therapy. If spouses are not good at expressing their feelings and thoughts, the opportunity for healthy communication decreases. For this, couples need to feel safe. Couples who can know each other well, understand and express each other's feelings and thoughts well can establish a safer relationship.
Marital Harmony and Family Therapy
In family therapy, which is based on the understanding that the family is a system, the family is a system and there are subsystems in this system. Such as sibling subsystem, parent subsystem and spouse subsystem. It is important for couples to invest in the spousal subsystem to ensure dyadic harmony and marital satisfaction. Investing in the spousal subsystem is about couples learning the virtue of caring for each other. Learning how spouses take care of each other will help them overcome many problems in marriage.
Family and marriage therapy contributes to marital harmony as a process in which spouses can learn and experience how to take care of each other. At a time when spouses cannot overcome their problems and are at an impasse, they look for support to solve this problem in their relationship. Instead of going to a marriage and family counselor and getting psychological support, they first seek this support from their closest people. This may sometimes be a friend, a close relative, or a neighbor. The important thing is to professionally handle the problems experienced by couples, evaluate their marital harmony, and ensure that the features mentioned above that will improve marital harmony and therefore marital satisfaction are established in marital life.
The skills of healthy communication and establishing a safe relationship in marriage cannot be gained only by reading. A person learns not only from what he hears, but also from what he does. For this reason, family and marriage therapy improves the marital harmony of couples as a guide that ensures the establishment of many experienced values.
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