Many couples are in a marriage where the implicit contract is “The most important thing is that we each do exactly what we want at all times.” The corollary to this is, “We would never ask each other to do anything that the other didn’t want to do.” 

This is all well and good when couples are in their 20s, but it breaks down at two critical life stages: having kids, and the woman’s drive decreases over time. 2021 research from the American Psychological Association shows that having children can negatively impact marriage and that the number of children a couple has can be a factor in marital satisfaction.

What kind of people get into a relationship where the primary goal is to do what they want and not impinge upon the other person’s desire to do what they want? 

As may be obvious from the phrasing, avoidant people, whether they are male or female, and usually, avoidant people couple with preoccupied people.

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However, some people who are avoidant are so averse to emotional vulnerability and closeness that they choose a partner subconsciously based on their shared antipathy toward making their relationship a priority. Both people implicitly agree that their relationship should be lowest on the totem pole, after hobbies, friends, and work. 

These are the couples who spend more time with their friends than with each other. Often, they meet when partying or at work or share a friend group, which means that the large majority of their time spent together is in the company of others. 

Also, in this dynamic, there are higher rates of starting long-distance. This situation allows both partners a socially condoned way to spend the majority of their time apart, which both subconsciously prefer anyway.

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Sometimes, this dynamic occurs when there is one avoidant partner coupled with a preoccupied partner with very low self-esteem. 

The preoccupied person feels they must put up with the other’s desire to spend most of their time alone/at work/with friends if they want to maintain a relationship. They feel that they are not interested or attractive enough to get a partner who wants to spend time with them, and the best they can hope for is a partner who puts them on the back burner but agrees to be in a relationship, even if this relationship is limited. 

Research published in 2015 indicates that a "preoccupied" person in a marriage, often associated with an anxious attachment style, tends to exhibit behaviors like intense need for closeness, extreme fear of abandonment, constant reassurance seeking, hypersensitivity to partner cues, and potential controlling tendencies, which can lead to significant strain and conflict within the relationship if not managed effectively. This can manifest as jealousy, excessive worry about the partner's affections, and difficulty managing negative emotions in the relationship.

When the couple has kids, the “we do everything we want” dynamic starts to founder, as the wife no longer feels she can do anything she wants. The woman is often breastfeeding and up more at night with the baby, and even if he splits nighttime feedings, her body is the only one that was impacted by childbirth. 

This biological and hormonal shift makes her feel more vulnerable, and she wants more protection, closeness, and family time. The transition to being a mother often makes her feel more stressed, and her focus shifts from work, friends, and hobbies to her baby and then to subsequent kids.

If the man wants to keep pursuing his hobbies and stay at work for long hours after having kids, the woman’s resentment often builds, and she begins to think of him as a child who cannot understand that he needs to grow up. He feels there is a bait and switch and often offers to outsource childcare with a full-time nanny or daycare so that both partners can do whatever they want. However, she has transitioned into a phase of life where she wants to embrace family life, and this suggestion feels even more alienating.

Some couples may weather the young mother stage and continue to “do everything they want,” particularly if there is a lot of family or paid help that both partners are on board with. 

But then another stage emerges that is challenging for this couple. This begins when the woman’s drive decreases with age. Perimenopause starts in a woman’s 40s and is a bigger decrease for most women than the prior decrease from the end of the honeymoon stage. Women no longer may feel as sexual and may not experience any spontaneous desire at all, even during ovulation.

Although responsive desire would still allow her to enjoy intimacy, there is a huge philosophical problem with this, which is that her lack of drive means that she does not WANT to start kissing or even receive a massage with the goal of intimacy. As the prevailing philosophy of the marriage has always been that each partner’s “wants” are the most important thing, this marriage hits an impasse. 

He wants sex, and she wants to not have sex. If there were any unresolved empathic ruptures from the young parent stage, these also make the woman feel that she has done more of what she “doesn’t want to do,” meaning more childcare than the man, and therefore, it is her turn to do more of what she wants, which is not being intimate.

An empathic rupture in a marriage is when a couple is so misaligned that it leads to lasting distress and resentment. However, ruptures can also be opportunities for growth and deeper connections if handled with empathy, understanding, and action.

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Often, when a couple in a 'do what we want' marriage shows up in therapy, they have grown far apart. 

There is no language for self-sacrifice in the marriage, so the man is truly flummoxed as to what his next steps should be when she no longer wants intimacy or any physical affection. His wife has many good points. When she says that she shouldn’t do anything, she doesn’t want to because she has never made him do anything he doesn’t want to do. She often feels very angry that he would even dare to suggest she do something she doesn’t want to do, and considers this “coercion,” which, given the prior framework, feels true to her.

In therapy, empathic ruptures must be discussed, as well as directly addressing the overarching “we do what we want” dynamic that worked passably for many years. This couple has often glossed over emotional discussions, and there are likely many “elephants in the room” that may need to be discussed openly. 

The first step toward change usually comes when the man owns his part in expecting to do everything he wanted to do throughout the marriage without sacrificing things he preferred for things his wife preferred. Given that framing, it is truly not fair for him to expect her to sacrifice her comfort and agency for something she no longer wants, which is sexual intimacy.

The entire philosophy of the marriage needs to be broken down and built up from scratch, resolving old wounds and exploring why the couple was initially drawn to a dynamic where the couple was not prioritized and individual preferences were king. 

Only when the woman feels the man is willing to step outside of his comfort zone will she consider doing this herself, mainly if there are long-standing grievances that he has minimized that entail a lack of sacrifice on his part for the family or marriage.

Both of you collaborated in the creation of this dynamic, intentionally or not, and both need to figure out what in their own histories (hint: look at your family of origin as always) drew them to this sort of disconnected, individual-before-couple dynamic. Often, this is easier to discuss in therapy, particularly if such discussions devolve into blaming or tense silence.

Dr. Samantha Rodman Whiten, aka Dr. Psych Mom, is a clinical psychologist in private practice and the founder of DrPsychMom. She works with adults and couples in her group practice Best Life Behavioral Health.

This article was originally published at Dr. Psych Mom. Reprinted with permission from the author.