Bill and Melinda Gates have parted ways. America is still having difficulty with the Gates inability to make their relationship work causing many to reevaluate their marital relationship.
Here is my understanding of what is going on that has had such a profound effect on our culture. What sociologists have pointed out is that expectations have changed. I subscribe to the realization that we tolerate what we understand and a good bit of anger is based in a failure of one person to meet the expectations of another.
In the decades leading up to the gender revolution in the 60(s) most married couples stayed together as long as functionalism was working in the relationship. Marriages were based in clear expectations of what a husband and wife should be and do. The male was expected to bring home the “bacon” and work, and the female was relegated for the most part to be a homemaker defined as a mom who would stay home with the kids.
Divorce was seen as something that was lacking in this functional world. If there was a divorce, it was based in a lack of being a good provider or good mother. I remember my mother saying to me when I was a young person, “Oh, you know such and such. She’s divorced as though the person should be relegated to one of the levels of Dante’s inferno. There was a stigma attached to both the man and the woman. However, women received more of the badge of failure.
Things changed in the 60(S) with the revolution in gender awareness. People got a divorce from this time on based on affection. When you listened to the reasons why people got divorced, you heard more statements such as “we have grown apart”, “we have changed and I want more from the relationship than he/she can provide.” Function wasn’t a big player.
We became people who have aspirations that reached beyond the function in a relationship and more to the emotional content. At one point one out of four of all marriages in California ended in divorce. Divorce increased when the children left the home and mom and dad realized that “they stayed together for the children.” Many feared being empty nesters.
People wanted more. No problem with that, but more what? A noted marriage counselor, William Lederer wrote a book called the Mirages of Marriage. He made the point that people who were unhappy alone found out that they were just as unhappy in their marriage. Marriage was not the big problem solver that it was cracked up to be.
On top of this people wanted more emotion in their marriages which is a great goal, but more compared to what? People bought into the Hollywood brand of marriage which meant that their marriage should be an extension of the honeymoon period. The problem for many is that emotions are like things. The more you have, the more you want!
The Gates certainly were successful with the functional part of their relationship. That would be an understatement. They will continue on with their collaborative work on their foundation which has helped many across the world, but their emotional quality for each other seems missing. I can’t count the number of captains of industry or high-powered professionals who I have counseled who were not very smart about what it took to make a relationship work. People around them assumed that because they were so good at function, they must be good at everything including social and emotional intelligence. That isn’t true and is a heavy burden for someone, male or female, to carry.
I use the functional/emotional dichotomy when I am starting out counseling a couple to assess if function overrides emotion or vice versa. Is that paradigm out of balance?
I don’t think that Bill and Melinda Gates were aware of how their breakup would get into the psyche and soul of American couples. It has become a cautionary tale. “If it could happen to them, maybe we are next.” The hopeful thought would be that married people should start talking with each other more and not focus as much on “who is bringing home the bacon.” These are tough times, however, as our economy gets back so we can’t completely forget about the “bacon” as we are working on our emotional world. A balance is the goal!
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