The All-or-Nothing Marriage by Eli J. Finkel Article Analysis

In the recent decades there have been many shifts in the standard American marriage, and the likely benefits and outcomes of marriage. This, as the authors view, is like a bandwidth, where out of every week we only have so much time and energy to our disposal and it is our job to manage it in a way where we can support our needs, as well as the needs of our relationships. The needs that people have on a daily basis range from our biggest needs and most necessities like food, water, and shelter to much higher and enjoyable things like self-actualization and growing as a person. As the authors explain, marriages are now having the shift towards the higher needs of individuals in the relationship vs just marriages being more focused on providing the basic necessities, which means that in marriages now there is more of a commitment from the individuals, making it an all or nothing scenario.

In the article, the author explains the concept of a suffocation model in a marriage where it results in an all or nothing situation. The benefits of having a marriage in modern times are that these marriages will have a greater impact and overall satisfaction than those in previous times due to the fact we don’t have to worry as much about having the basic necessities. This allows marriages in the modern times to spend more time focusing on the higher aspects of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, allowing couples to grow more as people and be happier with their partners. With the basic needs already being covered for most marriages in the modern era more time can be spent growing as an individual in the relationship, which helps to promote individualization and overall breeds more satisfaction in the relationship. On the other hand for those who struggle with meeting those basic needs or who are not able to manage the time they are given are put in a difficult situation because in marriages now, more is expected out of both of the partners than to just meet the needs for the family, but to help them to thrive and grow as people. This is very apparent in poorer marriages with much less satisfaction being gained from the relationship, as they are not having enough time to spend growing and achieving the higher needs that they are desiring as people. This is the main point that the author is trying to convey to the reader is that while maintaining that marriage is harder and requires more effort to be put in the outcomes as well will provide even greater satisfaction.

In my own life I have seen similar reactions in my own parents because as their time gets more and more constricted their overall satisfaction with how life is going goes down as a result. When both of my parents were working at the same time and they would get home, just to sleep and repeat the day just so they could make ends meet they were more stressed and less happy overall with the outcomes the relationship was providing. As a child growing up it was a hard sight to see your parents having this dissatisfaction even though it wasn’t being expressly shown, but it did show as a good lesson to learn that there will always be ups and downs and what can be learned from these times. Eventually when my parents had more time for us kids they also had more time for each other and with that they became happier and more willing to branch out and try new things such as finding hobbies or a new career. I found this to be particularly interesting because once you look back on those memories of the past you gain an insight into the lessons that were being taught and a greater understanding of what you can expect in your own future.

To conclude, this was a very well written and structured piece of literature and it did help to reinforce and change some of the thoughts that I had about marriage as a whole. From the beginning I believed that marriage really was all or nothing because more often than not you relay very similar feelings to those of your partner to bring the relationship up or down. Finkel’s point about the hierarchy of needs was an interesting addition into the scope of marriage because of how nowadays the lower needs of the hierarchy are already being taken care of, so we now need to help our partners and ourselves fill in those greater roles, to help us achieve satisfaction and true joy in our relationship. In conclusion I found this article to be very informative and had an interesting view on the standard American marriage.