Against The Odds
Many nontraditional couples end up thriving for decades. How do they move past the stigmas, ridicule and rejection to build some of the most enduring unions?
The answer lies in a kind of emotional trifecta. First, somewhere amid the prejudice, resentment and doubt they face, they find a support system that sustains them and confirms their relationship. Second, like Romeo and Juliet, they discover an us-against-them inner strength that defies all naysayers. Third, they simply stand the test of time, until both they and those who doubted them come to be believers.
The question is, why do it, especially with all the extra stress from such disapproval? Why begin a romance with so many strikes against you?
Marginalized couples come together for many of the same reasons as other couples. But the very extremity of their differences may give their relationship an extra dimension.
"The primary thing people look for in relationships is to expand themselves,"
asserts psychologist Arthur Aron.
"Those we grow close to become part of who we are, widening our social resources and our perspective. We want someone different from ourselves to increase our efficacy and range of influence.
If you're black and they're white, if you're older and they're younger, if you're one nationality and they're another, you've expanded your knowledge and opportunities."
"The key to a successful relationship is the tension between similar and opposite,"
says Aron.
"Difference increases excitement and resources, but similarity ups the chance of maintaining the relationship long-term."
Faced with such strong disapproval, even the happiest partners experience serious reservations early on, which can lead to moments of reckoning. Purdue University social psychologists Justin Lehmiller and Christopher Agnew have shown that at the start, nontraditional couples invest less of themselves in their relationships and are less committed than traditional couples, probably for this very reason.
"Despite investing less in their relationship at first, marginalized partners ultimately tend to be significantly more committed than nonmarginalized couples,"
Lehmiller notes.
Often it takes every bit of that commitment for these couples to survive the extreme pressures their families impose on them, no other stressor is typically as great.
In their research, Lehmiller and Agnew found that the key reason most marginal couples stayed together was not deep satisfaction in their relationships, but a sense of limited alternatives. In other words, they didn't think they could do better, so they settled for what they had.
"You find a lot of freedom at the margins. When you're at the center of society, you feel forced to obey the norms. Marginalized couples have a lot of disadvantages, but since they're already outcasts in a sense, they're far freer to do what they really want, to put on their own show and be purely themselves."
Psychology Today
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