How to Have a Miserable Marriage – 10 Steps to Guarantee Your “Happily Never After” by Dr. Habib Sadeghi.
(As originally featured in the Summer 2024 Issue of Tracy Anderson Magazine – enjoy the following article by Dr. Habib Sadeghi)
Illustration by Francesco Ciccolella
It’s Never Been Easier to Maximize Your Misery
This un-self-help “what not to do” article was inspired by an original piece titled, How to Have an Awful Marriage by family and marriage psychotherapist, Jay Haley.
Everywhere you look these days the world is awash with books and talk show gurus (who also have books) telling us how to improve our marriages with more intimacy, better sex, communication, blah, blah, blah. Of course, there are couples out there genuinely seeking to improve their marriages, but what about the hundreds of millions of people actively engaged in ruining their relationships? It’s obvious they’re working very hard to take their marriages from tedious to terrible, but they just don’t know how.
Finally, help has arrived. How to Have a Miserable Marriage is an easy-to-understand guide on the most effective ways you can guarantee yourself a relationship free of even the smallest amount of happiness. As you master each one of these skills, you’ll find it’s never been easier to maximize your misery by taking passive aggression and power struggles to a whole new level. No touchy feely psycho-babble here, just real tools you can use to increase the dread and drama you’re already addicted to.
These timeless principles have proven their effectiveness to ruin marriages for generations. If you intend to turn your marriage into a joyless slog across four decades where you’ll regret your wasted youth at the end of them, then the old ways are the best ways. You’ll be sure to suck the life right out of your marriage and end up feeling like bickering roommates if you’re lucky enough to make one of two crucial mistakes from the beginning.
False Starts: Marry for the Wrong Reasons
The best-worst reason to get married is to do it to avoid something else. That way you’ll choose your partner impulsively and see them as nothing more than a means to an end in order to escape a bad situation. The possibilities are endless. You could marry to avoid poverty, having to work, family pressure, loneliness, or your biological clock running out. Other great baseless reasons include your ex is engaged, you’re pregnant, all your friends are getting married, the invitations have already been sent out, it’s the next “logical” step or, of course, lust. As long as you’re getting what you need and have thoroughly convinced yourself you’ll learn to love this person eventually, you’ll experience a marriage meltdown almost immediately after the honeymoon. Bravo! You’ve now made it utterly impossible to enjoy your spouse’s company because you didn’t choose him or her for that reason.
False Starts 2: Marry the Wrong Person
Poor reasoning is only the beginning. You can maximize your misery by making sure you and your spouse are constantly out of sync even before you say I Do. It’s easy. The fastest way to put yourselves on opposite wavelengths is to choose someone of the wrong religion, culture, or social class compared to your present situation. You could also up the ante by making sure there’s a wide age difference between you and your partner, preferably by one or more generations.
To butt heads properly like two billy goats, choose a partner that has faults that are the opposite of yours, then commit all your energy to changing them. Consider these time-tested, classically disastrous combinations for your miserable marriage: conservative career woman with “free-spirited” bad boy, domineering woman with wimpy man, neat freak with the slob, or tender heart with emotionally unavailable mannequin.
Awkward Assumptions: Expect your Spouse to “Complete” You
If you weren’t lucky enough to marry the wrong person or for the wrong reason then have no fear. You can still sabotage domestic bliss by expecting your partner to be all things to you—your lover, teacher, entertainer, protector, healer, cheerleader, self-esteem builder, psychotherapist, and parent. Be sure to make your happiness their personal responsibility, and don’t forget to convince yourself that you weren’t “complete” until your spouse came into your life. That way, you’re absolutely sure to have knee-jerk reactions of clinginess, neediness, and suspicion each time your spouse wants to spend an evening out with friends to remind him or herself that they still have a life outside your suffocating clutches. Insist that your spouse spend all their time outside of work (and the bathroom) with you. Remember, your happiness always comes from someone or something outside yourself. Be sure to reinforce this delusion by watching as many movies based on Nicholas Sparks’ books as possible.
To ramp up the resentment, convince yourself that the difference between the sexes is just a “social construct.” Forget all that junk science about biology, chromosomes, hormones, neural networks and why your opposite sex spouse thinks and behaves differently than you. No, they’re doing it just to get on your nerves! Instead, your job is to insist with the relentless consistency of Chinese water torture that your man be more vulnerable, express his feelings, want to cuddle, love to go shopping, and enjoy hours of talking. On the flipside, expect your wife to want sex five nights a week, turn off immediately after your orgasm, stop talking so much, love camping, and not be so emotional. Ignore all that Mars and Venus nonsense and you’ll have marital misery worthy of the gods.
Cross-Talk: Make No Real Effort to Actually Communicate
Miscommunication is the cornerstone of a miserable marriage. Your job is to ensure that your spouse has no idea what you’re trying to say. This is your soulmate, right? They’re supposed to read your mind anyway, so why express your needs at all? When it’s painfully obvious that your spouse isn’t psychic, you can attack them like a neglected child. Insist that because he or she couldn’t interpret your heavy sighs, eye rolls, disinterested tone, and pouty silence that they couldn’t possibly understand or love you. Do your best to let as much time as possible go by while waiting for your oblivious spouse to catch on to your clueless display of emotional distress. When sufficient time has passed, your resentment will be under such pressure that it will explode all over your spouse in a nuclear display of needy self-righteousness.
The point is to never, ever say what you really mean. Be suggestive, brooding, forlorn or silent; just be anything but literal and your marriage will be permanently lost in translation.
Evading Accountability: Never Admit it’s Your Fault
There’s nothing more excruciatingly miserable than being married to a victim, so go for it! To continually reinforce their victim identity, every self-proclaimed victim needs a bad guy, and who better to accuse as your personal perpetrator and oppressor but your spouse? When you master the blame game, you’ll see how easy it is to keep your partner’s head spinning between undeserved criticism and false guilt for things they never said or did. Victimhood 101 is the quickest way to create your alternate reality, totally free of personal responsibility. It’s also your bulletproof protection against any form of compromise and ensures that none of your problems ever really get solved. Don’t believe a word of that nonsense about how we subconsciously project our faults onto other people. Repeat after me: it’s always someone else’s fault. Always.
Creating Conflict: Fight Often, and Fight to Win
Forget about picking your battles. No issue is too small that it can’t be blown up into a door-slamming display of drama, and you should take every opportunity to do so.
The best way to set yourself up for years of conflict is to create opportunities for your in-laws to intrude into your lives. Allow them to loan you money for the down payment on a house or employ your spouse at your father’s company. Agree to pay some of your in-laws’ bills or rent a house just down the street from them so your mother-in-law can regularly drop in (unannounced, of course) and guide you in the “proper” ways to do things, including taking care of her son. At the same time, your father-in-law will be able to subtly remind you over and over again that your family only survives because of his generosity and not the lack of your husband’s employability. If you’re a man, just make mom the primary woman in your life. Drop everything when she calls and see how quickly your wife resents playing second fiddle to Mommy Dearest.
The goal in any argument is to make sure nothing changes so you can argue about it again and again. You can do that by either withdrawing into sulking self-pity or escalating the issue to operatic proportions of drama. Be sure to confuse love with emotion because we all know that lots of drama and emotions flying around are what make a marriage feel “alive”. Always keep it personal with lots of insults and name calling. Go off on tangents and drudge up past issues that have nothing to do with the matter at hand. A kitchen sink approach to arguing is the perfect way to bury your spouse in belligerence and create a diversion when your point of view is simply indefensible.
Remember these quick tips. Never allow your spouse to finish a sentence. Cross-talk is kryptonite to real listening. If you must stop yelling for longer than it takes to draw a breath, only pretend to listen while using that time to secretly plan in your head what you’re going to say next. The louder you say something, the more you’ll be understood. Commit to memory even the smallest failings of your spouse because it’s all potential ammunition, and never back down because winning is everything.
Eliminating Intimacy: Use Sex as a Reason to Punish or Avoid Your Spouse
If you can make your sex life truly awful, then nature will do the rest in magnifying your marital misery exponentially. The easiest way to go from flirtation to friction is to screw up the sexual timing between you and your spouse.
Always initiate sex when your spouse isn’t interested or occupied with something else. Insist on having sex in the kitchen 30 minutes before the refrigerator repairman is scheduled to arrive. After the wife complains about her husband’s lack of planning, he gets to accuse her of turning into a frigid, sexless, haus frau. Screwing up the location, timing and frequency of sex adds a lot of rushed tension and stress to the moment, obliterating any possibility of intimacy to occur during your doomed interaction.
Hopefully, part of marrying the wrong person will include someone who has a sex drive that’s the opposite of yours. Of course, you always have the option of giving your spouse the cold shoulder, arousing their interest then inexplicably turning off in the heat of the moment. An excellent way to emasculate your husband is to never tell him what works for you sexually then blame him for not being able to please you. For maximum frustration, this works best after years of faking orgasms. Never miss an opportunity to use sex as a weapon and withhold it from your partner. This has a particularly insidious effect on a marriage and if things work out right, may lead to a completely sexless partnership or an affair.
To eliminate sex and intimacy altogether and make it look like a natural progression, begin going to bed at a different time than your spouse. This sexual avoidance will help you end up as one of the 15% of all married couples who have a sexless marriage. Statistics show that very soon, you’ll lose all physical attraction to your spouse and ultimately behave like disaffected roommates.¹ Way to go, misery maker!
Money Mayhem: Have a Different Financial Philosophy Than Your Partner
Research shows we tend to be drawn to potential partners who are similar to us except when it comes to money. So if you’re a penny pincher, that means you’re more than likely to end up with a frivolous spender. That’s excellent news for your miserable marriage, especially since most couples don’t talk about financial habits and plans before marriage, and neither should you! Because money is the leading cause of conflict in 39% of marriages and the secondary cause in 59%,² you can’t afford to not take advantage of allowing money to ruin your marriage, too.
If you’re the frivolous spender in your marriage, be sure to overspend particularly on things you don’t need. This is especially important if you’re a non-working or the lesser earning spouse so it will breed resentment from your hardworking partner. Be creative and find ways to hide purchases from your spouse. The impact will be much bigger when they get the credit card bill and it hits them all at once. Financial infidelity is a great way to erode trust in your marriage and as long as what you’re buying makes you happy, then it’s so worth it! Of course, hoarding your money and using none of it to actually enjoy your marriage goes a long way toward moving your relationship into the gray zone, and never underestimate the power of accumulating debt like student loans, second mortgages, car payments, credit cards, etc.
Child’s Play: Use Children to Maintain or Save Your Marriage
So you’re in a miserable marriage and you fear you might be headed for separation or divorce. What to do? Not to worry. The easiest way to sentence yourself to at least 18 more years of marital misery is to stay together for the kids. Guilt is a great motivator, and you should use it liberally on yourself. Think about the disadvantages your son will experience growing up without his verbally abusive, unemployable father as a role model. Can you imagine the permanent damage done to a daughter who isn’t blessed with the opportunity to make cherished memories with her alcoholic, passive-aggressive mother?
If you don’t have children and fear a divorce is imminent then it’s imperative that you have a child to save your miserable marriage. Not only will the baby not solve your problems, it will compound them, so this is highly recommended, especially for young couples.
If you’re a woman expecting a baby, focus all your attention on the child inside you to the complete exclusion of your husband. After the baby is born, it’s important to make your marriage all about the children. Remember, you’re a bad parent if you even think about doing anything with your spouse away from the kids. Even when you talk to each other, it should always be about the children. Repeat after me: my spouse and I no longer serve any purpose outside our roles as parents.
Resentful Rendezvous: Have an Affair
After the kids have grown up, moved out, and created their own relationship drama (you’ve been great role models), consider having an affair. You’ve got options in how much angst you want to create and how much effort you want to put into it.
The Bitter Affair. This takes misery to the max because it’s an affair with someone your spouse knows. The more intimate the relationship they have with this person, the better. Did someone say best friend? You could also go for a stranger, but to bump up the bitterness be sure to choose someone who looks very similar to your spouse (only 20 years younger). Always remember to ask yourself, “Who can I choose that would infuriate my spouse enough not to divorce, but only to get even?”
The Baffling Affair. Keep your spouse’s head spinning by choosing someone so inappropriate that it’s a complete mystery. If you’re a man with a fashionable, sophisticated wife, then go for a fat, tacky, uneducated lover. This keeps your spouse’s mind reeling as to what’s “wrong” with him or her that you would choose such a loser over them.
The Budget Affair. If you don’t want to spend the money or time wining and dining a hot stud or fat slob, just implying that you’re having an affair can fill your spouse’s mind with endless paranoia. Become overly flirty with co-workers of the opposite sex. This is sure to prompt personal phone calls, texts, and emails at home. Get very friendly with some of your spouse’s friends, wait staff in restaurants you both frequent, or even total strangers in online chat rooms. Just be sure your spouse witnesses these interactions. A sudden change in hairstyle, dress, makeup or cologne goes a long way toward creating rampant insecurity in your spouse.
Internet Escape: Abandon Your Spouse Through Technology
Adding quiet desperation and alienation in your marriage has never been easier than in the Information Age. Now, you can completely abandon your spouse without leaving the comfort of your own home through overuse of social media, texting, video games, and even online porn.
Text or email your spouse as much as possible because you’re too busy to actually speak to them. This isolates you from hearing your spouse’s voice, responding to their energy, and even seeing their face. Over time, electronic distancing does wonders to deteriorate relationships of all kinds, but especially marriages. Oxford University researchers found that increasing communication between spouses using technology led to decreasing marital satisfaction.³
A text is the Post-It note of 21st century communication and should be used frequently to treat your spouse as an afterthought. Why risk being touched by the sound of your spouse’s contagious laughter when you can “LOL” and emoticon your way to texting WTF happened 2 my mrrge? Never forget: technology transfers information, not emotion.
Never miss a chance to hit your partner with nasty text messages then refuse to answer their reply or turn your phone off for hours. It’s deliciously dismissive and a constant reminder to your spouse that he or she is instantly disposable.
Make it a regular practice to constantly “check in” with your smartphone at the dinner table, restaurants, and elsewhere to prevent any connection happening between the two of you. If you’re stuck at home together, you should waste as much time as possible on Facebook, YouTube, internet porn or even video games, ignoring each other until you can declare Game Over on your relationship.
The Bitter End
While I would never actually give this advice to any of the couples I mentor through my Couples Transformational Intensive Workshop, I marvel at Haley’s un-self-help approach designed to help marriages succeed by showing couples the most common ways they fail, albeit in a humorous voice. Many times knowing what not to do goes much further toward finding solutions than trying to change a thousand things at once. Life is often simpler than we think. So, if learning how to have a miserable marriage can help you have a happy one instead, then I am overjoyed to have turned the time-honored self-help approach on its ear with the help of Dr. Haley, while the tongue is planted firmly in cheek. Just remember to invite me to your 50th wedding anniversary party.
Footnotes:
- Flagg, Donna. (March 26, 2012). Sexless marriage is surprisingly common. Psychology Today, https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/office-diaries/201203/sexless-marriage-is-surprisingly-common.
- Morad, Renee. (October 12, 2012). 10 money mistakes that can ruin a marriage. MoneyTalk News. http://www.moneytalksnews.com/10-money-mistakes-that-can-ruin-a-marriage/.
- Social Media Study Finds Link Between Media Use And Relationship Satisfaction, The Huffington Post, (April 15, 2013), http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/04/15/social-media-study-finds-_n_3086518.html.
To read more, head to our webshop to purchase the Summer 2024 Issue of Tracy Anderson Magazine.
