Town & Gown:
How Identity Affects Relationships
Reprinted here in its entirety.

04-04-2007 Dr. Tom Phillips, assistant professor in Jacksonville State University’s Department of Family and Consumer Sciences, is an expert in the area of family science. In a recent conversation, Dr. Phillips provided the following insights in the area of relationships. Q: What role do expectations play in marriage and other intimate relationships? Dr. Phillips: The expectations we have for our partners and our relationship play an important part in the level of satisfaction we experience in our relationships, as well as the success or failure of our relationships. If we set our expectations too high, the result can be disappointment, dissatisfaction, and even the dissolution of the relationship as our partners and relationships fail to live up to our excessively high and unrealistic expectations. Much has been written in the literature about how people’s expectations for marriage today are much higher than they were in the past. Many people today expect so much from their marriages and their spouses that there’s simply no way a real person or a real relationship can ever meet their naive and inflated expectations. This is actually a major, but little-discussed, factor in our nation’s high divorce rate. It’s actually quite common for people to expect their spouses to be their soul-mates … it’s not sufficient to be a mere husband or wife … you also need to be a soul mate who fulfills your spouse’s every emotional need and who knows what your spouse is thinking without him or her needing to say a word, and that’s asking a heck of a lot from a real person. The concept of a soul mate makes for good romantic fiction, but I think that most family scientists would agree that, in real life, it’s not realistic or fair to expect our spouses to be our soul mates. The message I want to impart here is not to have low expectations for one’s romantic partners and relationships, but rather to have realistic expectations. Q: What can you tell us about the myth of the right partner? Dr. Phillips: Sometimes, when people find themselves dissatisfied in relationships, they assume that the problem is with their partners, and they think that all of their relationship problems would magically disappear if they were just with the right person. That’s the myth of the right partner. We need to keep in mind, however, that the other person isn’t always the problem. Sometimes the problem is with the couple’s relationship skills — or lack of skills. Sometimes we’re the problem, even though we may be reluctant to admit that to ourselves. The problem with subscribing to the myth of the right partner is that it can lead people to bounce from one relationship to another, always in search of that evasive right partner who we imagine will complete us, help us to have and enjoy the perfect, conflict-free relationship, and so on. Q: How do our families of origin influence our adult romantic relationships? Dr. Phillips: The family-of-origin is the family into which you were born and grew up, and people who report having grown up in families that functioned well generally report being more satisfied in their adult romantic relationships than people who report having grown up in families that didn’t function as well. This has been validated by research that I myself have conducted, as well as research conducted by previous researchers. It’s within the family of origin that we learn most of what we know about relating to others. Not only do we learn (or fail to learn) the actual behaviors related to relationship success in our families-of-origin, what occurs in our families while growing up affects our thoughts, beliefs, attitudes, and expectations regarding relationships. These thoughts, beliefs, attitudes, and expectations, in turn, affect the nature and quality of our romantic relationships. Basically, family-of-origin experiences shape the way we think about interpersonal relationships and form the template or foundation for all subsequent extra-familial relationships. I hasten to point out, however, that just because you grew up in an unhealthy or perhaps dysfunctional family absolutely does not mean that you are bound for a life of bad relationships. If you can be honest with yourself and recognize and accept that your family’s interactional patterns perhaps weren’t normal or healthy, then armed with that self-knowledge, you can take the steps necessary to change the way you think about others and relationships and ensure that you don’t end up recreating unhealthy dynamics learned in your family of origin in your own romantic relationships. If you have addition questions about this topic, you can reach Dr. Phillips at tphillips@jsu.edu or at 782-5184. About William A. Meehan Dr. William A. Meehan is president of Jacksonville State University. 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