It is implicitly held by most married couples and explicitly stated by numerous authorities that bargaining is bad in marriage. Pastoral counselors, in particular, seem to err in the direction of urging people to “make sacrifices,” “give,” “do it for his sake.” Women’s magazines in numerous articles have urged their hundreds of thousands of readers to “be more attractive,” “stop being selfish,” ‘be more loving,” “take up fishing, you may learn to like it,” and so on. We feel that in attempting to follow such instructions people only make themselves feel guilty and frustrated for not being able to do the impossible. Should they succeed by some supreme effort, they also succeed in making the spouse feel pressured to rise to the occasion-and inadequate if he is unable to do so. For instance, if the wife decides she is not pretty enough to please her husband, having just read the newest copy of Vogue magazine, she may suddenly go shopping and buy an elegant new dress for the next neighborhood barbecue. Her husband is likely to feel unhappy about such a unilateral action-not only because the dress cost too much, but also because he had planned to wear his usual old sport shirt and khaki trousers. By the same token, if the wife decides to take up fishing to please him, he may well feel she is interfering in the one activity which he enjoys with other men, and which he looks forward to each year as a break in his routine.
We state vigorously and unequivocally that bargaining is an essential part of the workable marriage. In fact, the marriage relationship requires constant and continuing bargaining between the spouses, because attempts at adjustment are inevitable and occur daily or perhaps even hourly. The cultural preconceptions of the roles of husband and wife are so different from the actualities of the working relationship that must be maintained that bargaining is essential if each spouse is to get the other to cooperate.
Before we explore the methods of conscious negotiation, a word of caution about bargaining behavior is appropriate. A rather frequent method of bargaining which is nevertheless the least efficacious involves the use of some kind of outside standard. For example, the wife may say, ‘We’re the only family in the whole block that doesn’t have a new car.” Or the husband may say, “I’m the only man in the office whose wife doesn’t get up and fix his breakfast.”
The trouble with using outside standards as a starting point is that they can be manipulated. The individual can quote the standard or statistic that most fits his own case. Also, since each of us believes he is idiosyncratic and individualistic enough not to be guided by other people’s standards, the spouse at whom the standard is directed will resist it. The couple therefore drifts from the issue over which negotiations began, and ends up squabbling over something irrelevant.
The best kind of bargaining behavior is that which is not immediately “time bound.” That is, the couple recognizes that if one spouse does something for the other, the benefited spouse need not immediately turnaround and payoff his debt. It is assumed that there will be an opportunity for paying back in the future. This kind of arrangement is ideal, but unfortunately, as with most things, it sometimes also carries the seed of its own destruction within it. It is quite possible that A may keep encouraging B to believe that he will do something in the future, but never get around to it. This sort of unkept promise is the material for marital disharmony and bitterness. It is more apt to occur when spouses do not trust each other; or when one spouse has an extremely selective memory-recalling every detail of what he has contributed, but forgetting or undervaluing what the other has done, or what he himself has neglected to do.
We knew one miserable woman who after supporting her husband through law school also financed a boat trip to Hawaii because he was worn out from taking the bar examinations. The wife thought her day would come when he was earning a good living and she would have the house and life of her dreams. Unfortunately, he met another woman on the boat, and ended up divorcing his wife.
Since marriage is a series of adjustments, some of which may best be achieved through debate, it is imperative that spouses do three things:
First, they must examine their relationship to see if their bargaining has been overt or has been conducted obscurely underground. When spouses are trying to straighten out a discordant marriage, the bargaining must be brought above ground and be accomplished deliberately, consciously, and with stated goals. Underground bargaining too often is not bargaining at all, but manipulation for control.
Second, each spouse must examine his own attitudes to determine if he is placing his promises of repayment too far in the future. For one thing, it is possible that these repayments may never be made, but more important is the fact that such an arrangement interferes with the realistic day-to-day acceptance of “you scratch my back and I’ll scratch yours.” Of course, the setting of mutual goals for the future-owning a home, for example, or returning to college after the children are married is quite another matter. What we are discussing here is negotiation concerning things, attitudes, or behavior over which there is a difference of opinion. Each spouse wants his own way, and since this is impossible, they are negotiating a compatible com” promise.
Third, they must estimate whether they as a couple are able to bargain. Their differing opinions may be so great and their capacity for behavior control so small, that they are incapable of negotiating a compatible compromise. An extreme example might be a marriage in which the husband has a series of behavior patterns which irritate the wife. He may chew at the table with his mouth open, and dislike having his wife’s intellectual friends about the house (because he never even graduated from grammar school), wishing instead to watch television every evening; and when his wife’s friends come, the husband may dislike wearing a necktie and coat, and sit about in his shirt sleeves, sulking. He may prefer eating in the kitchen with bottles of ketchup and mustard on the table, rushing through a supper of fried steak, mashed potatoes, and ice cream, while his wife insists on eating off linen in the dining room-with candles, wine, and good conversation. In such a case the cultural difference is so great that successful bargaining is improbable.
One general indication of whether bargaining can be successful for the spouses is their ability to get through the exercises for the quid pro quo described in Chapters 42 and 43. If the spouses are able to accomplish this kind of cooperation, they may have enough cooperative spirit to bargain with each other without using meat cleavers and without causing hurt feelings and tears that make bargaining impossible. If, because they cannot get through the exercises and because they have great differences of opinion, the spouses are convinced that they are unable to bargain, they must either find an objective third person to act as an arbiter (for example, a therapist), split up, or allow one spouse to assume the complementary relationship, in which he runs the show and the other is apparently totally passive. The latter is a difficult situation to maintain but some couples deliberately do so.
H the spouses feel that they don’t really know much about bargaining, or do not understand how it functions as a behavior experience, the following kind of practice (which may seem trivial or even ridiculous) is in order before attempting the quid pro quo exercises.
The two spouses meet under the quid pro quo rules set forth in Chapter 42. After a flip of the coin each chooses an opposite position on an obvious topic such as, which is better, a Lincoln or a Cadillac? ‘Where would you rather go, to Honolulu or to San Juan, Puerto Rico? Which kind of pie is preferable, apple or coconut custard? Even the process of deciding which topic to argue about will give them a chance to learn about bargaining. They then begin this totally unimportant debate, with the idea of learning about each other’s debating tricks, verbal skills, use of emotional ploys, and so on. Usually three or four minutes of such activity are enough to destroy boredom and to show how each behaves in this kind of situation.
In the second exercise one spouse (again chosen by a flip of a coin) is to convince the other that he should have such-and-such, or be allowed to do such-and-such; the other spouse is required to be totally silent, just listening. Even a man and woman married for many years may be surprised to discover how little each has noted about the way the other behaves when he is attempting to get his own way. So often we close our minds at the first few words or first sentence of a bargaining session and consequently know very little about the other spouse’s behavior.
The third exercise, to be carried out on a subsequent evening, requires complete honesty from one of the spouses. A flip of the coin determines which spouse is to have the privilege of talking the other spouse into agreeing to something that he really wants to do or have. This “something” should be actually feasible for the couple. The spouse who is to listen flips the coin again, without letting the other see it. If the toss is heads, he is to end up agreeing with the other regardless of how good or bad the bargaining has been. If tails, he is to end up disagreeing. About this he must be completely honest with himself and obey the dictates of the coin even if he would prefer to ignore the toss and decide on the basis of his spouse’s argument.
The first spouse then will never know whether his eloquence and debating ability would have won the day if the decision had not been determined by a flip of the coin. Here we are teaching the spouses something important, namely, that since bargaining in marriage is a constantly occurring affair, and it is not simply a matter of someone winning or losing. When one spouse yields to the other’s blandishments, he does so primarily so that he will be yielded to in turn.
To put it differently, even though on any particular day bargaining may appear to be a matter of winning or losing, over the long run it is all a matter of negotiation. 