Q&A

Love stinks

by Laura A. Siegel

HE'S FIGURED IT OUT: the key to a good marriage, Hamburg says, is to marry the right person.

Until now, self-help junkies have had to settle for the fluffy relationship books that line bookstore shelves -- books that promise to explain why our lovers are like aliens, or help us translate their cryptic languages, or assure us that we're all okay. Now along comes marital counselor Sam R. Hamburg, with yet another book on the topic. Hamburg's shtick? Communication and commitment are not the keys to a successful relationship. Surprisingly, what he says in his new book, Will Our Love Last? (Scribner), actually makes sense. The Phoenix recently spoke with Hamburg.

Q: You say that hard work, communication skills, and even commitment aren't the keys to happy marriages. Then what is?

A: Let me state the conventional wisdom about marriage: marriage is good, so if your marriage is bad, there is something wrong with you. All you have to do is fix what's wrong with you and your marriage can be saved. But the problem in marriage is not a failure of communication. It's a failure of understanding, despite communication. It happens because the people are too different from each other to understand how the other could possibly think and feel the way they do. I would meet these desperately unhappy couples, and there wasn't anything wrong with them. It's just that they picked the wrong person.

Q: Where does love come in?

A: Love is based on mutual approval, or "affirmation." In romantic love, what's being affirmed first of all is each other's physical, sexual self. But its fuel supply is limited. A couple then faces the central question: what, really, do we have to affirm about one another? When the mutual affirmation goes down -- because the people are not similar enough to affirm each other in enough ways -- they stop feeling so warmly toward each other.

Q: You assert that there is, in fact, sex after marriage. Can you back that up?

A: Happily married people maintain good sex lives for years and years and years. You have to be planful and intentional about your sexual relationship. People say, "But sex is supposed to be spontaneous!" When people are dating, sex is not spontaneous. Everyone knows what's going to happen at the end of the evening.

Q: Of the many things couples disagree about, what causes the most conflict?

A: Money is the number-one fight topic. But money cuts across lots of things. Spending priorities have to do with your values. And when people are not compatible on the practical dimension having to do with everyday decisions, day-to-day life is harder.

Q: Why is being "on the same wavelength" so important?

A: When people don't make a lot of contact on the wavelength dimension, they start to feel lonely in their relationship. They feel cut off from the part of themselves that they feel is their realest and truest self.

Q: If a couple comes up different on most of your measures, is there any hope?

A: When I have couples that are not married and they strike me as being really incompatible, I tell them, "Look, as far as I'm concerned, you guys are incompatible. You have to think carefully about whether you really want to go through with this." There's therapy to help couples learn to tolerate their incompatibilities so they can have at least a tolerable marriage. But they don't promise a happy marriage.

Q: One of your professional credentials is the success of your own 29-year marriage. Isn't that a lot of pressure?

A: Through some combination of perspicacity and dumb luck, I married someone where we're really well suited to each other. Every couple fights. But if you're well suited to each other, you are each other's best friend and lover, and you get past it.