Schnarch, David. Passionate Marriage: Love, Sex, and Intimacy in Emotionally Committed Relationships. New York: Owl Books, 1998 (reprint). 432 pp. ISBN 0805058265. $16.00.
Schnarch has written one of several recent books (well, recent meaning since the late 80s) on renewing and nurturing relationships among couples. As in his earlier book for therapists, Passionate Marriage argues that monogamous sexual relationships naturally create social friction within a couple that each person can use to become more mature. This focus on the sexual crucible, as Schnarch terms it, requires that individuals use the conflict to confront their own behavior and attitudes. If people can act to preserve or develop their own core integrity as well as their partners', Schnarch argues, they can create and maintain mature, fulfilling relationships.
According to Schnarch, the common danger of monogamous relationships is when people define their own worth through their partners. Sometimes, people seek validation in their partners' views of themselves, depending on reaffirmations of competence, love, and so forth. But people can also seek validation through conflict with their partners. In either case, Schnarch argues, one is engaging in an absolutely normal but dysfunctional dynamic. To him, we function better as individuals who can stand on their own emotionally as well as practically. Whenever we act based on our own sense of integrity (and respecting the integrity of our partner), we can connect with a partner in a mature, deeper way.
Schnarch's contribution to the marital-therapy literature is in his psychodynamic model: A couple in a rut -- with a mutually frustrating or deadlocked set of behaviors -- is generally not in need of greater communication and generally is not suffering from a lack of importance. In Schnarch's model, long-term relationships push people to communicate very effectively, whether in foreplay or in arguments. Couples who push each others' buttons are communicating very efficiently! And when one partner is withholding affection, that is not necessarily because the partner has become less important but rather more—so important that the withholding partner is anxious about intimacy.
Schnarch's therapeutic approach is the flip side of this model. When one partner acts based on her or his sense of integrity instead of depending on the other partner for validation, the other partner is cut off from the rut that the couple had been stuck in. One partner is no longer playing her or his typical role, no longer reinforcing the long-term definition. According to Schnarch, normal marital conflict creates dilemmas that can be useful for personal growth, if at least one partner faces that dilemma as an issue of personal integrity rather than an interpersonal struggle. Schnarch provides several in-depth cases of couples who used his approach to solve major marital problems or develop more fulfilling relationships (as well as the occasional case where the couple split up). Schnarch appears to have interesting, substantive research to support his larger psychodynamic claims. Several of his observations have common-sense appeal when explained: marital problems are normal, there will generally be one partner with greater and lesser desire for sex at any point, foreplay is negotiation, fights are as sure a form of dependence as mutual admiration societies, and so forth. Several of the exercises he recommends — long hugging and eyes-open intimacy (whether kissing or making love) — are consistent with his hypotheses about relationships.
Readers of Schnarch may be curious why I have not used the terms he coined: differentiation, reflected sense of self, self-validation, and other-validation, among others. In part, I think this jargon is unnecessary. Schnarch's argument about integrity and the dynamics of long-term couples stands on its own. I hope I have done justice to his argument, without needing the terms. (And, if so, I think I have made a decent case to toss away the terms.)
In part, I have avoided Schnarch's terms to highlight my primary concern with the book, which is Schnarch's writing about improved long-term relationships while undermining the concept of commitment. In the first chapter, he talks about one man's using his own sense of integrity to act differently and improve his marriage. The word "integrity" then disappears from the book until after p. 300. Schnarch explicitly warns readers against believing in the value of commitments. He meant this in a restricted sense: If your marriage is on the rocks, asking your partner for a commitment is asking for an illusory promise, worth nothing in the long run. But in a book whose subtitle includes the word "committed," the omission of a broader discussion is significant.
The larger trouble with Schnarch's argument is the assumption that only mature individuals can have deep relationships and fulfill commitments. Young couples cannot truly have the experience or wisdom to know each other. That is what marriage is for, to develop each other, at least in Schnarch's view. But Passionate Marriage thus has a static, two-dimensional view of young people in new relationships and one that assumes they are ignorant of life's troubles. Some couples marry in naivete, true. But many are like good students entering a field: They may not know everything at the beginning, but they know they'll have to study hard and work hard on the way. And, guessing something about the future, they are willing to make a commitment for the long term.
Schnarch's view is likely to be a barrier to reaching younger couples because there is an implicit disrespect for the capacity of younger couples. For those 35 and older, Schnarch's sometimes-caustic humor about "normal marital sadism" will strike a real chord. His discussion of rejuvenated sex among those 40, 50, 60 and older will be encouraging. But to the extent that Schnarch is correct, wouldn't he want to educate younger adults about the dynamics of long-term relationships? His approach is novel enough, and resonates enough with my experience, to make me wish he had been more respectful of younger adults.
There are other quibbles I have with the book, from Schnarch's misunderstanding of evolution and quantum dynamics in the first part to his talking about spirituality at the end of the book without mentioning ethics. But the gist is above: Schnarch has captured an essential element of monogamous dynamics and described some plausible therapeutic approaches that will work with many, but has used unnecessary jargon and may put younger readers off with assumptions that they are unlikely to have risen far enough to put his ideas to good use.
