Till Death Do Us Part: Love, Marriage, and the Mind of the Killer Spouse

Chapter 1

Why Marry?

Marriage is a dynamic and ever changing institution with its share of potentially major problems. Although many couples find it extremely fulfilling, just as many, if not more, find it difficult and heartbreaking.

The stark reality is that the majority of marriages fail. And many marriages are full of violence and abuse, which sometimes escalates to murder. In light of these potential drawbacks, one can raise a very good question: Why marry at all? In fact, why do human beings pair off knowing there's a greater chance the emotional and financial investment will be for naught? One could ask the question, "What's the point?"

Marriage emerged some forty-five hundred years ago and evolved into a widespread and accepted institution that bonded families, maintained order, and created wealth. Unlike today, where many of us are searching for our romantic "soul mate," marriage was originally more about economics than deep emotion. In her book Marriage: A History, Professor Stephanie Coontz writes that until recently marriage was considered far too important to be determined by something as irrational as love and was more or less a business venture, an institution that provided for the necessities of day-to-day existence and survival of the species. It was only over the last century that the primary motivation to marry was based on feelings and emotion rather than the ability to provide stability.

Today, given the stark reality that marriage is prone to failure, are there psychological and biological underpinnings that pull us in this direction, and not only once or twice but over and over and over again?

According to Professor David Buss, an evolutionary psychologist from the University of Texas, we as humans are designed to fall in love. However, we may not be equally as inclined to stay in love. Buss and others believe that it is "natural" for both men and women to become disenchanted with a mate, suddenly finding him/her irritating, unattractive, or totally unreasonable, their flaws revealing their true selves and the mind going into "the grass is greener" mode. For married adults this often leads to adultery.

One look at the numbers and it's easy to see that many people find their mates unsatisfactory on many levels. According to several studies, a whopping 80 percent of married males and 50 percent of married females have sex with outside partners. It's also natural for many married individuals to find some other person superior on most counts when compared to the terribly flawed spouse one is saddled with. Although this may sound hopeless in terms of achieving a successful relationship, what is natural is not necessarily unchangeable. On the flip side, long-lasting, happily married couples do feel better about their lives, and they live longer, too.

According to biological logic, men tend to look for women with physical characteristics that indicate they are at the peak of their childbearing years, while women seek security. But some believe the so-called logic of this theory is flawed.

All of us are evolutionary survivors. We had to be made of strong stock in order to survive the environmental challenges thrown our way. While both sexes are certainly vulnerable to infidelity, men are much more inclined to actually acquire additional mates (like a harem) or to engage in a casual fling.

If we look at the DNA of love, genes don't speak per se, but they do affect our behavior by creating feelings and emotions that build and are maintained, thereby altering our brain chemistry. Anthropologists have discovered what laypeople have known for years -- that love between a man and woman is universal. Marriage, like love, is also universal. So marriage, at least from an evolutionary perspective, functions as a social reproductive arrangement that customarily involves the extended family and provides a way to raise a stable and healthy family.

Helen Fisher's essay "The Nature and Evolution of Romantic Love" concludes that all of these qualities -- love, attraction, sexual chemistry -- result in raising a family with children and increasing the chances for survival. So, to love a child and develop the appropriate paternal investment requires having certain relationships in place. From the biological perspective, the first step toward becoming loving and devoted parents was for a man and woman to develop a mutual attraction. The genetic payoff of having two parents committed to a child's welfare seems to be the main reason why men and women fall in love and swoon over one another.

Having two parents rather than one ensures a better chance for the offspring to survive and procreate. Unlike our nearest animal relatives, humans are a species of "high parental investment." In every known hunter-gatherer society, marriage is the standard -- not necessarily monogamous marriage, and not always lasting marriage, but nonetheless a marriage of some sort.

While marriages in the past were more practical unions than they are today (when marriage is supposed to be loved-based) people have been selecting mates since the beginning of time. And when we look for a person to spend the rest of our lives with we often imagine an ideal Mr. or Ms. Right. An ideal life partner is someone whose personality, compatibilities, and purposes align with our own. If someone corresponds to our internal image of the "perfect" dream lover, we may "fall in love" with him or her. But the fact is we can easily get turned on by men or women whom we would not and should not consider an appropriate marital partner.

So, if we decide we are going to spend most of our adult lives married to one person, we have probably built up some specific ideas about what kind of man or woman this person should be. The ideal mate for most of us would be someone who turns us on sexually, who would be a great parent, and who we can feel romantic toward. The more discerning person may select someone who he or she can live with even if their romantic feelings are not as intense as they may be with other people.

Even as adults, men and women still want to be taken care of, and many of us balk at the idea of committing ourselves to the often multiple grim realities of responsibility and adulthood. This inability to accept adult responsibility contributes to our romantic fantasies, in which we are completely and effortlessly cared for.

And that takes us back to our childhood.

Some of the most popular love songs could also be describing the mother/infant relationship, i.e., Leanne Rimes, "How Do I Live without You?" or Celine Dion's "I'm Everything I Am Because You Love Me." We're often pulled back to that blissful, chronic state of infantile helplessness. In other words, we hope when we marry, our childhood needs and wishes will be met.

These powerful fantasies and wishes underscore our deep yearning for an intimate connection to another person. This is ultimately who we want and hope we will end up with when we finally fall in love, choose our mate, and get married.

The characteristics of a person's attachments exist the day a person is born. In every romantic relationship our adult attachment style mimics the way a baby feels toward his or her mother, who is usually the main caregiver. Lovers can also see each other as a child that needs to be taken care of. From the crib to the tomb, this biological behavioral system governs our close relationships. And there is no adult relationship closer or that has more expectations placed on it than the marital relationship.

Freud viewed love from the perspective of the sexual drive and theorized that love and sexuality are rooted in infancy. A person's first love is his mother. The mother/first-love object provides the infant with not only food and nourishment, but also with a supply of sexual pleasure that he or she will later on seek from his or her adult lover. Freud looks at adult love and sexuality as an extension or rediscovery of motherly love.

According to researchers Arthur Aron and Elaine Aron, authors of Love and the Expansion of Self: Understanding Attraction and Satisfaction, love can be viewed as an expansion of the self. We are attached to others because they will help us be everything we can be, which, in addition to familiarity, is a major prediction of attraction. In the beginning of a relationship, similarity draws us to a person, helping us to feel familiar with and in sync with him or her.

Many people in the psychological community believe the unconscious mind plays the most significant role in who we fall in love with. Some profess that we fall in love because the unconscious mind believes it has found the partner who will finally make up for both the emotional and psychological damage we experienced in our youth, thus making us whole again. According to psychologist Dr. Harville Hendrix, from the moment we are born we are complicated and dependent beings who continue to have an ever-changing circuit of needs. Freud noted correctly that humans are "insatiable beings and no parent, no matter how devoted, is able to respond perfectly to all of these changing needs."

FAIRY TALES

Fairy tales and folklore also influence our ideas about love, marriage, and relationships. The attractiveness of many myths and legends comes from the basic human needs and experience they reflect.

One of the major themes in many legends is love and marriage. The most appealing characters are the heroes and heroines. The typical hero is the knight in shining armor while the leading female character tends to be the passive princess, waiting for that one special man to rescue her and carry her off into the sunset. What is of note is that most of these myths and legends are written by men. The knights, for instance, were often murderers and rapists. But these myths embody the male fantasy of what men want women to be and how men want to be viewed by women, as heroes who transform women and so become their saviors.

Almost every little girl wants to be a fairy-tale princess. My 2 1/2-year-old daughter is going ...