Manage your inner rat to stay married

As Valentine’s Day approaches, do you ever look at your spouse and secretly wonder, “Did I choose the wrong one?”

You are not alone. Many of us believe this popular myth: “If my marriage is unfulfilling, I must have picked the wrong mate.”

Here’s the real reason couples get divorced: Like other animals, humans instinctively scapegoat each other. For example, if a scientist places two rats on a metal grid and then passes an electric current through the grid, every time the rats feel an electric shock they will attack each other.

Research suggests that Mother Nature created our feelings of “chemistry” to guarantee that we choose our perfect mate the first time. But a little-known, unconscious instinct to scapegoat our spouses is what drives couples apart. A simple awareness of scapegoating can transform how we view our marriages.

The drive to mate and reproduce is primal, but we don’t realize that romance and our choice of mates are also primal. History is rife with stories of young people who ignored the wise advice of their relatives and chose a mate who left their family aghast. So, what do those two unlikely mates see in each other?

As two potential mates size each other up in a few seconds, they instinctively search for one particular trait they’re not even aware of.

People feel chemistry for a mate with the same level of anxiety as them. Anxiety is more than a nervous feeling. It is a natural survival instinct within us. Mother Nature gave us anxiety in order to protect our families back in prehistoric times. Our guardian instinct of anxiety enabled us to scan our environment, anticipate potential threats before they happened and trigger our fight-or-flight response.

In prehistoric days, when it was a matter of life and death, a couple was much more likely to survive if they had the same level of anxiety, because this meant they would have compatible reactions to danger. For example, if one partner tended to jump at every noise in the bushes, but her mate tended to lounge in the sun even when a lion roared nearby, this couple would not last long. Back then, you might say the couple who fights-or-flees together stays together — and reproduces.

That’s why Mother Nature provided us with radar equipment to scope out a mate with the same level of anxiety. The powerful chemistry two mates feel is essential to survival of the fittest.

Some readers may doubt they have the same level of anxiety as their spouse, because one spouse seems so laid-back while the other seems so uptight. This is a popular myth, because our anxiety can take many shapes, including workaholism, retreating into the TV, extramarital affairs or “marrying” our kids.

This begs the question, if chemistry guarantees we chose the right mate, why do so many of us get divorced? It’s not our chemistry that failed us. It’s because the daily married life of couples is like two rats receiving shocks on a metal grid. When life gets stressful, we instinctively pick a fight with our spouses.

Scapegoating is an ancient defense mechanism in the brain that allows us to off-load our anxious reactivity onto others. Best-selling author and primatologist Frans de Waal describes our tendency to blame others as one of our least conscious, yet most powerful instincts. This displacement of blame happens so often, in so many animals, that it must be hardwired in us.

From a survival-of-the-fittest perspective, scapegoating is a valuable adaptation. If we can lighten our load of anxiety, it clears our minds to better compete for scarce resources.

When we criticize our spouses, we tend to believe we are pointing out true, objective faults. But in fact, blaming our spouse may just be our anxiety talking. People with higher anxiety are more likely to overreact, so spouses with high anxiety will have a greater tendency to fight-or-flee each other, which may lead to a downward spiral that sours the marriage. When the going gets tough, rats, humans and many other species scapegoat.

Sure, we all know folks on their second marriage who say they chose wrong the first time. Our second spouse may have different traits, but the basic ways we cope with anxiety — fight, flight or scapegoating — are always beneath the surface. Until we become aware of our own anxiety and scapegoating instinct, we simply drag all of our baggage into our next marriage as well. That’s why the divorce rate for second marriages is 60 percent, and for third marriages it’s 73 percent.

This is great news, because now we can give up searching for a “spouse upgrade.” Our marriages will fare better when we let go of the illusion that the grass would be greener with a better mate.

Marriage is a school for lovers, and the key lesson to learn is not to manage your partner. It’s to manage your anxiety. This insight can help you accept yourself and your spouse as you are, for better or for worse, in sickness and in health. As my mother-in-law was fond of saying, marriage is not a “correctional institution.”