A Healthy Marriage Mindset = Enjoyment + Growth

(Marriage Part 1)

By Dr. Andrew Smith, Clinical Psychologist, Professor, and Pat Tillman Scholar. To build your skills to improve your marriage, download our free guide and checkout the REWIRE app

Among all the relationships we experience, marriage is truly unique. At times, it can be a source of deep pain, loneliness, and disappointment. At other times, marriage offers profound connection, security, and beauty. To add complexity, it can be both disappointing and beautiful at the same time.

Beyond these emotional experiences, healthy marriages are rooted in a unique type of commitment, distinguishing them from other relationships. Marriage, at least in most of the Western world, is a voluntary, chosen commitment. This choice brings the potential for both unparalleled depth and vulnerability.

Today, I’m starting a four part series on marriage, writing through the lens of REWIRE. REWIRE is a philosophy and treatment approach that I developed to empower people to strengthen their most central relationships. REWIRE is built on the foundation of cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT), and has been tested, published in peer-reviewed literature, and supported by evidence. It offers an alternative to pathology-focused approaches that center around mental health diagnoses, illness, and disorders. Instead, REWIRE views relationships as a universal mechanism of health that we all need help with improving, to some extent. In the REWIRE approach, we are all co-travelers—struggling through life together—with the shared goal of building deeper health and resilience by improving our relationships.

My hope is that this message is helpful to people in a variety of situations: those struggling in marriage, those in healthy marriages striving to maintain or grow, those preparing for deeper commitments, mentors or counselors of married couples, and those suffering in the aftermath of a failed marriage.

The Vision for a Healthy Marriage: Standing Shoulder-to-Shoulder with a Shared Vision

My wife’s 24/7 access to me was overwhelming at first, and sometimes still is. In marriage, it’s impossible to hide or show only the bright, shiny parts of yourself. Your spouse sees it all—the good, the bad, and the ugly. They have an intimate knowledge of both your potential to be a positive, healing force in the world and your potential for destruction. No one else gets a fuller picture of who you truly are.

Your spouse has the potential to be someone who deeply understands your flaws and accepts you, which gives you the security and courage to change, grow, and try really hard things in the world. The superpower of marriage is having a partner who can guide you, critique you, walk alongside you, and encourage you. And, in return, you have the opportunity to do the same for them—serving and enriching your own life with meaning that comes only from committing to and supporting someone else.

In my own marriage, and in my work with individuals and couples over the years, a vision of a healthy marriage has emerged: two people standing side by side, looking outward together towards a shared joy, purpose, mission, and future. Occasionally, they turn back to each other to smile and enjoy the fruits of their commitment. This vision is sustained through a combination of trust, commitment, and a mutual willingness to invest deeply in each other’s growth. It thrives on healthy conflict, the resolution of inevitable friction, and shared enjoyment and presence.

This investment looks like accepting, sharpening, guiding, critiquing, encouraging, cautioning, and motivating each other in an ongoing, lifelong conversation. A full commitment to marriage, in this sense, can be described as:

• Enjoyment + Service
• Joy + Growth
• Truth + Love

The Ditches Along the Road: Self-Fulfillment vs. Duty

This shoulder-to-shoulder vision stands in stark contrast to two common pitfalls I see when marriages struggle. Imagine a road with ditches on either side. In Ditch 1, people view marriage as a self-fulfillment factory. For them, inconvenience, struggle, and pain in marriage become intolerable because they obstruct personal happiness or fulfillment. In Ditch 2, marriage is reduced to a logistical partnership, driven by duty and obligation, where basic enjoyment and pleasure are neglected and wither away amidst the daily tasks of life.

Ditch 1: Marriage as a Happiness and Self-Fulfillment Machine

This state is both common and dangerous. The vision of marriage in Ditch 1 resembles two people standing toe-to-toe, looking for ways to extract self-fulfillment from each other. Because the need for happiness is so intense, they often turn away from each other to seek that fulfillment elsewhere.

In marriages like this, the careful ‘lifelong conversation’ meant to sharpen, guide, and encourage each other tips over into criticism and rejection. It becomes easy to find faults in your spouse and identify ways they detract from your personal happiness. Over time, this can lead to bitterness and a fixation on each other’s flaws, especially if the goal is to extract happiness from the marriage.

If the goal of this intense focus on each other doesn’t lead to turning back to stand shoulder-to-shoulder, the relationship can crumble under the weight of unrealistic expectations. While it’s necessary at times to focus inward for rest and healing, remaining insular can prevent the connection and healing we need from friendships, hobbies, work, caring for our neighbors, and community. It’s important to remember that marriage, while deeply fulfilling, will fail if we look to our spouse as our sole source of happiness, connection, and fulfillment. Marriage and nuclear family cannot live up to this expectation.

Ditch 2: Marriage as Pure Duty and Obligation

In contrast, Ditch 2 involves an unbalanced focus on duty and obligation. In this scenario, marriage becomes a mechanical partnership, where the focus is solely on serving logistics without the joy and presence that make marriage meaningful. Without balancing duty with enjoyment, couples grow distant, losing the deep connection they once shared.

Both ditches lead to weak foundations for marriage. In Ditch 1, marriage as a self-fulfillment machine is tragic because it sets up an unrealistic goal of happiness extraction, which can ultimately destroy the relationship. In Ditch 2, marriage as pure duty is equally tragic because it strips away the enjoyment and presence that make life worth living.

The REWIRE Approach: Rebalancing and Rebuilding

REWIRE addresses these common marriage challenges by focusing on rebalancing. We hold onto the vision of beauty and joy—standing shoulder-to-shoulder while also turning towards each other to share the fruits of our relationship. This vision takes precedence over fears and risks, such as the ditches I’ve described. REWIRE sees these challenges as normal, not as diseases, because marriage requires intentional effort to remain healthy and balanced.

We are wired for survival and detection of threats that could compromise survival, which can manifest in different ways. In Ditch 1, we may obsess over the problems in our marriage, believing that our spouse (something or someone external) is the source of our suffering and needs to change. In Ditch 2, anxiety and fear may drive us to focus solely on logistics and logic, leaving little room for joy.

In life, and in marriage, the full commitment involves working hard to notice and experience joy and beauty. In REWIRE, we help people reorient themselves to this full commitment that involves disciplined work together towards a shared vision and turning back towards each other to enjoy the ride.