Quality of marriage depends on spouses' choices

A few years ago, one of our country's major auto companies used the slogan "Quality is job 1." I want to talk about another arena in life in which quality is also a concern: marriage.

Quality in marriage is not tied up in how nice a home we have, where we go on vacation, or our status in the community. It has more to do with intangibles such as acceptance, forgiveness, affirmation, encouragement and intimacy. Quality in marriage is not measured in dollars or possessions or public opinion. Rather, it is judged by our own sense of fulfillment as man and woman.

So many couples who have invited me into their marriages have done so because of their concern about the quality of their relationship. Some see their marriages as having stagnated and seek to recapture the satisfaction and growth of past years. Others sense their marriages have never lived up to their potential.

How do we find the quality we all seek in our marriages? I think marital quality depends most on two factors: how we choose to behave ourselves, and how we choose to see our spouse's behavior.

Each of us is a complex mixture of strengths and weakness, good points and bad. And these will probably all come out at one time or the other in our marriages.

During courtship we all worked hard to put our best foot forward. We tried hard to be interested, understanding, supportive. Just as important, we focused on the strengths and good points of our boyfriend or girlfriend. We usually weren't blind to our future spouse's weaknesses or bad points. But we did choose not to dwell on them (there's that word "choose" again).

Five - or 10 or 15 - years later, we are confronted with a marriage gone sour. All too often, we seem to be able to see little but each other's weaknesses or bad points. We have trouble recognizing any of the strengths or good points we previously saw.

As I've worked with couples, we've discovered that the first step in building or rebuilding quality in a marriage involves a choice. We need to choose to try to regain some of the "vision" of those first months and years together. We want to again put our best foot forward with each other. And we need to once more focus on the best in our spouse.

That's not easy. It usually means a radical change in our attitude toward each other. Above all, it involves trust. We have to trust both each other's desire to change, and our mutual ability to change.

As trust is one of the most fragile elements of any marriage, it is often the easiest to lose and the hardest to rediscover. Yet we must choose to risk trusting each other again if we are to find quality in our marriage.

The word "choose" has surfaced again and again as we've talked about quality in marriage. We choose to bring out our best in a relationship and to see the best in our spouse. That choice does not mean ignoring our individual weakness or bad points. It does mean choosing to forgive them and choosing to work together to change them.

The quality of our marriage is indeed under our control. It is our choice. We may even seek out the help of a counselor to help us in discovering or rediscovering the fulfillment we seek in marriage. But the ultimate success or failure of our efforts is still up to us.

• Dr. Ken Potts is on the staff of Samaritan Counseling Center in Naperville and Downers Grove. He is the author of "Mix Don't Blend, A Guide to Dating, Engagement and Remarriage With Children."