What Is Marriage For?

What is marriage for? The traditional answer is for procreation and the continuation of the species.  Marriage can also offer a stable supportive environment for children and helps provide a stabilizing foundation for society.  All true.   However, recent research supports another compelling reason for marriage: emotional connection (duh!).

Emotional connection is a basic human need.  The opposite of connection--emotional isolation--is in fact the most traumatic force for all human beings.  There are many levels/kinds of connection: friends, relatives, children, associates, religious faith...all of which are important in helping to meet the human need for attachment.  But based on recent neuroscience research, the most powerful level of connection--the need to be close and connected, to be known, to feel loved--can be through committed marital relationships.  Sue Johnson, author of Hold Me Tight writes that "in fact the issues that most couples struggle with are not the real issues. They are in fact only symptoms of a weakening emotional connection."

Interestingly, recent research in the field of social neuroscience has highlighted how the lack of emotional connection affects our nervous system.  In one study, measured by an MRI,  it was observed that when threatened with a mildly painful electric shock to the ankles, married women in healthy marriages had decreased brain response to the threat when holding their husband's hand versus a stranger's or no hand at all.  In other words, when they held no one's hand or the hand of a stranger, the electric shock was registered as painful, but not so, when her beloved husband held her hand.  But when the same electrical experiment was later applied to women in distressed marriages, these women reacted just as the women in the original study did when they were holding the hand of a stranger or no hand! (I assume the same would be true of men.)

In another study, women in cohabiting relationships also experienced a more painful response to the electrical shock than married women. I find that quite surprising, actually.

So compared to all others, with the presence of a mate with whom they felt more securely bonded, the women were not just able to cope differently with the pain, they registered even the threat of being shocked differently.

What couples (and therapists) often do not see is that most fights are really protests over emotional disconnection.

As Sue Johnson writes: Underneath all of the distress, partners are really asking each other: "Can I count of you?  Are you there for me? Do I matter to you? Am I valued and accepted by you?"  The anger and criticism are really cries to their lovers to draw their mates back in emotionally and establish a sense of safe connection, which is what marriage is for! Marriage will not keep us safe from the sorrows and pain of life and no marriage is without its disappointments and imperfections. But a good marriage can help provide the faith and strength we need in the face of life's challenges.  Otherwise, marriage will cease to be a warm shelter to anyone. And the shock of disconnection will continue, until sometimes, unfortunately, without help, it may become too late to restore the connection and save the marriage.