One positive difference your married status should bring to your relationship is the expectation that you'll work things out, rather than split up the first time the relationship takes a nasty turn. This is the basic definition of commitment. There's no way to get to the other side of tough disagreements if one or both of you is constantly worrying that his partner will drop out if and when the going gets tough. The relationship must provide a safe container within which conflicts can be resolved. As it turns out, there are different types and levels of commitment in modern marriages.

The Deeper Meaning of Commitment

In her book When Love Dies: The Process of Marital Disaffection, Karen Kayser, MSW, PhD, offers a fascinating analysis of two decades of social science research done on marital commitment. She begins by distinguishing between people who hold an “institutional commitment” to marriage — that is, to the institution of marriage as a lifelong choice — versus those with a “voluntary or personal commitment,” meaning two partners who believe in the institution but stay together only if they experience sufficient personal happiness or satisfaction within their marriage. Thus, this latter group makes a commitment to a person not an institution.

The author fashions her analysis with the starting hypothesis that those making voluntary commitments would be more satisfied because they work more consciously to keep their marriages satisfactory. However, the evidence proved otherwise. When Kayser correlates marital satisfaction with partners who fall into each category, she finds that a voluntary commitment is a strong positive indicator for marital disaffection or dissatisfaction. Conversely, those who regard their marriage as an indissolvable lifelong contract have a lower level of marital disaffection, and a greater level of satisfaction. Among the explanations offered for this difference offered in the research Kayser surveys are the possibilities that those with voluntary commitments to marriage have higher expectations of the marriage relationship and are then unwilling to accept less, and that persons of each type simply unconsciously select partners of the same persuasion (those more or less willing to trust and be faithful) thus reflecting their own belief system, and assuring a particular outcome. Kayser makes the salient observation that those married partners who make a voluntary commitment can fall into the predicament where the marriage (and the partner) must prove itself on nearly a daily basis.

The most useful aspect of this area of social research for all married partners may be the spotlight it throws on the multiple definitions of commitment and the importance of knowing exactly what you and your partner are vowing to each other when you marry. Are you committing to the institution of marriage as much or less than to the person you're marrying? What if the person changes in the course of a decade or two of marriage? How can you avoid the trap of constantly assessing the value of your marriage, and run the risk of preventing the deepening of the relationship? These are critically important questions to consider before or at the beginning of your marriage. For most people, a true marital commitment can only occur if a vow is made — barring instances of abuse — as a definite “yes,” rather than as a conditional, hypothetical “maybe.”