Physical environment in marital disorders

Here we may think of such various influences as housing, neighborhood resources, financial arrangements, and equipment.
Cramped, uncomfortable and otherwise unsuitable housing, lacking in opportunities for desired privacy or in playing space for children, may well add greatly to the burdens of marriage, especially when there is ill health, fatigue or other reason for extra strain. Situations of this kind often have to be endured by young, newly married, often immature partners, who have had no opportunity to settle down properly together and forge a strong enough union to be able to bear these burdens; and it is all too easy for them to be brought to the point of despair as a result. This was particularly true during the post-World War II years.

Deficiencies in such neighborhood resources as shops, kindergartens, schools, churches, community centers, parks and other recreational facilities, lack of adequate transportation resources, and lack of such amenities as home help and baby sitters, may also add heavy burdens to a young couple compelled to live in such unsuitable areas because of the requirements of jobs or because of financial stringencies. Here again the situation is more difficult for people who have not had the opportunity to establish real partnership or to put down adequate roots in their community.

Some rapidly developing “new housing areas” are taking these factors into more consideration in these days, but in other cases they are showing little evidence of so doing. The cramped apartment living in many large cities, with few available recreational amenities, would appear to provide many extra strains for marriage and family life. When children have only the streets to play on, and when the streets are ruled by some form of gangsterism, the community is breeding more and more delinquency for the future, as well as making marital disorder more frequent.

There are some financial factors which make for difficulty in marriage. Financial stringency can be a very heavy burden unless there are some reasonable expectations of relief. In some cases the financial stringency is the result of foolish spending on unnecessary things, or on gambling or drinking or even drugs in some cases, but then the marital disorder is more appropriately tackled from the point of view of the personality disorder behind the overspending. In other cases there are deep conflicts about the financial arrangements of the partnership, and often these are the expression of a deep emotional conflict which fastens itself on anything that can be used as a battleground. In these cases no great relief from the marital disorder is likely until this underlying emotional conflict, or this battle for emotional domination, is honestly faced.

It is an interesting and tragic comment on human nature that many marital disorders seems to be traceable to the fact of too much money as a factor in the trouble. Here of course it is not really the excess of money that causes the trouble but the immaturity, selfishness or similar personal disorder that makes it difficult to cope with excess wealth. The good counselor will try to help the partners to the achievement of some insight about these deeper elements of the problem.

Domestic furnishings and equipment have some part to play in the general comfort and “homeliness” of the living arrangements, and this is necessarily related with the financial resources of the couple, with the steadiness and permanence of the husband’s and wife’s jobs (which allow more indulgence in “time payment”), and also with questions of priority and agreement in what the available resources are to be spent on. Here again the real problem is often an underlying personal or relational one.

When these factors concerning the physical environment come up in counseling it is therefore the counselor’s task to gain some idea of any underlying personal and relational factors that might have brought the housing, financial and other difficulties about, or might be making them persistent or destructive to the marriage. At the same time it may be possible to refer them to some available and suitable social agency which may be able to help in the crisis and to assist them to better ways of promoting their marital and family welfare.

Tags: Counseling