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94 Russian social science Review
Russian social science Review, vol. 54, no. 1, JanuaryFebruary
2013, pp. 94113. 2013 M.E. Sharpe, Inc. All rights reserved.
Permissions: www.copyright.comISSN 10611428 (print)/ISSN 15577848
(online)
M.E. Eliutina
Marital Relationships in Old Age
The data of a sociological survey conducted in the city of
saratov in 2009 reveal a narrow perception of the everyday lives of
an elderly married couple on the part of those who are in regular
contact with them (relatives, neighbors, and friends). They are
most often described in terms of a declining trajectory of health
and material security, or performance of generic activities
(gardening, tending grandchildren), and only rarely in terms of the
emotional relationship between the married partners.
In the scientific literature most of the emphasis is placed on
young families, which are seen as meriting social priority in
todays so-ciety. The problems of elderly married couples that
represent the insiders of social life are left on the periphery of
scientific interest. Scientific research tends either to ignore
them or to automatically project onto them the standards and
resources of life and activity that characterize young families.
This approach is due to the fol-lowing factors.
The number of elderly families [i.e., marriages] is
shrinking,
English translation 2012, 2013 M.E. Sharpe, Inc., from the
Russian text 2010 the author. Supruzheskie otnosheniia v pozhilom
vozraste, sotsiolog-icheskie issledovaniia, 2010, no. 11, pp. 8392.
A publication of the Russian Academy of Sciences; the Department of
Philosophy, Sociology, Psychology, and Law, Russian Academy of
Sciences; and the Russian Union of Industrialists and
Entrepreneurs.
Translated by Kim Braithwaite. Translation reprinted from
sociological Research, vol. 51, no. 1.
Marina Eduardovna Eliutina is a doctor of sociological sciences,
a professor, and head of the Department of Sociology at Saratov
State Technical University.
94
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Russian social science Review 95
linked, first, to higher mortality among men of various ages; in
this life situation, a widow is rarely likely to remarry, and
second, to a tendency toward an increasing divorce componentonly a
limited number of married couples live together later in life, as
married.1
Todays cultural traditions ascribe to an aging person or to an
elderly family a problematic, deviant status, conditioned by the
perception that their resources have been depleted. The particular
character of elderly families does not get the attention it
deserves. At the same time, social practices have brought in their
wake cer-tain negative social and economic consequences. It has
become obvious that elderly families occupy their own special
niche. It has become a unique place where fundamental human needs
are met, a sphere in which the basic activity and leisure-time
com-ponent are accommodated and practices of mutual support are
engaged in. The family holds one of the top places in the value
structure of representatives of the older generation. Just having
someone who is close becomes the predominant value, the ability to
live life together with that person and to be engaged in shared
activity [1].
The family of an elderly person is characterized by particular
features with its own configurations and contours. It is no longer
a child-centered structure, and the search for personally focused
pursuits takes place. What becomes most important in this regard is
a special mode of interaction both within and outside the fam-ily,
under the conditions of a limited social dynamic and a limited
choice among alternative life strategies. The elderly family
func-tions on the principle of communicating vessels, which makes
it a quite sturdy monolithic entity. For each of its members the
family serves as a roof that offers protection against malign chaos
(Boris Pasternak). New significant goals are formed, such as
autonomy and the adaptation syndrome, and strengthening of the
status of intimacy.
With regard to the structure and functions of the elderly
family, starting from the empty nest phase, a number of functions
gradu-ally begin to be lost: loss of the socializing function (when
the children leave the family) and a reduced transmission of
cultural
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96 Russian social science Review
experience and knowledge. A situation takes shape in which the
elderly, feeling out of step with the changing conditions of the
time, remove themselves from the upbringing of grandchildren, and
in this way a closed circle is formed. Old age becomes dis-posable:
if the family no longer serves the function of socializa-tion and
having children; and if the function of the relaying and
transmission of cultural values has declined and is less useful to
the state and to society. The fact is, however, that when certain
functions are diminished, other functions become stronger. The
supportive function of the elderly family gains priority, as
married couples provide mutual aid in economic matters and
psychologi-cal compensation for all kinds of burdens. Based on its
protective function, the family acts as a barrier to any immediate
incursion by other social institutions (in particular, the state)
into its private life. The mediating function is manifested in that
the family of an elderly person often serves as a kind of little
bridge between relatives, a connecting link in interpersonal
relations, the keeper of the history of the family and its
traditions, the family albums and memories of the family homestead.
This function is manifested with special salience in the case of
mixed extended families, that is, family alliances formed on the
basis of remarriages, with a complex structure of kinship
relations.
The ideology of the family is changing in the direction of
privacyfrom a strategy of expansion and explicitness in the social
space toward greater focus on its own problems within the family.
An increased need is sensed for security and stability; more
attention is paid to existential problems; introversion
predominates (immersion in the world of inner feelings); and less
need is felt for active involvement in the external
environment.
Often the mode of existence of elderly families is beset with
problems (poverty and intergenerational conflict). In terms of
economic indicators, elderly families can be differentiated into
two groups. For one group, which is classified among socially
vulner-able groups, the main source of income is the state pension,
social insurance, benefit payments, and subsidiespractices of
survival that are characterized by constant economizing. The other
cohort within the older generation enjoys much more wealth,
authority,
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and prestige. According to a study by the Institute of
Sociology, Russian Academy of Sciences, The Low-Income Poor in
Rus-sia: Who Are They? What Are Their Lives Like? What Do They
Strive For? conducted in MarchApril 2008, with a sample of 1,750,
retirees today are the most unprotected group in the Russian
population. Half of them are classified as the low-income poor, and
another 30 percent are poor. Only 20 percent are classified in the
relatively well-off population strata [2]. At present, the incomes
of elderly families are about two times smaller than the incomes of
young families [3].
In our study of elderly couples, we base ourselves on two key
terms. First, the concept marital relationships refers to the
spatial and temporal closeness of a man and a woman as husband and
wife, the private nature of their interpersonal relations, and it
includes the exchange of both activities and sentiments (G.
Homans). The characterization of relations between husband and
wife, in terms of content, may vary from order and serenity in the
marital relationship, and clashes and conflicts that can have
destructive consequences. The regulation of marital relations is
designed pri-marily to maintain trust and a feeling of
security.
Second, the term old age of the family includes two senses: a
particular stage in the development of family relations; and a
particular type of family, in which the spouses are classified as
belonging to the gerontological group. In our study we have used
both semantic meanings of the term old age of the family. The focus
is on the key everyday problems of elderly married couples who have
lived together for a substantial amount of time. We were interested
specifically in the matrimonial state, the partnership that has the
status of an independent institution that plays a vital role in
older age, as well as the presence or absence of interpersonal
conflicts behind the scenes (Mamardashvili), which always result
from hidden, private causes. We also focused our attention on
determining the specific character of signifi-cant others social
perception of the everyday problems of an elderly married couple. A
qualitative survey was conducted for the purpose of diagnosing
relations between husband and wife. The collection and analysis of
the material was carried out us-
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98 Russian social science Review
ing the double reflection method [4] based on an unstructured,
informal interview. We used both a targeted sample (we selected
people in advance who represent informationally significant cases
about which we had preliminary knowledge) and the snowball method,
in which the following question was posed to each informant at the
end of the interview: Can you name someone among your associates
who regularly interacts with an elderly married couple? We selected
a number of informants based on the answers we obtained. The
empirical base is represented by twenty-six in-depth interviews
with elderly people (age sixty-five and older, living separately
from relatives and having lived together for twenty-five years or
more) and seventeen interviews with people who interact regularly
with elderly married couples (children, relatives, and neighbors).
We surveyed inhabitants of the city of Saratov (FebruarySeptember
2009).
The survey results revealed a definitely narrow perception of
the everyday problems of an elderly married couple on the part of
those who have been in constant contact with them for a long time
(relatives, neighbors, and friends). From our perspective, this
specific perception of the everyday problems of an elderly married
couple stems from the dominance of the medically oriented
por-trayal disseminated in the mass media, of the image of the
elderly person as someone who is dependent and ailing. The semantic
axis of the problems mentioned by our informants as characterizing
the everyday life of an elderly married couple, includes the
following meaningful aspects.
The emphasis is on the secluded and well-ordered nature of the
private life of the elderly family, which is perceived as a kind of
Small Town in a Snuffbox [Gorodok v tabakerke; 1838 tale of
Vladimir Odoevsky], as a kind of hermetically sealed environment in
which there is no dynamic of development and renewal.
Well, they actually have no special problems, they get up, they
have something to eat, they do a few things, they do not have to
rush off to work, their life is well ordered, and anyway what would
they need at that age? We come to visit on holidays, and sometimes
we drop in for a week. (male interviewee born in 1963)
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The elderly family is seen as an object of assistance, which
will need a certain amount of material and personal help either at
pres-ent or in the near future.
Right now our parents are getting along without outside help.
But, you know, getting old does not make you stronger, they will
need help, they might even need a caregiver, all kinds of
situations can come about. (male born in 1968)
Among the main problems of elderly peoples everyday lives, the
two most often named are health and material security. At that age,
each one has a whole array of ailments, first one illness worsens
and then another does. A lot of money goes to buy medicine, which
is getting more costly all the time (female born in 1963).
Their pensions are meager, I do not know how they manage to
cope. I can see that they are thrifty, they do their shopping in
the bazaar, where things are a little bit cheaper although not by
much, than they are in the stores; they schedule all of their
upcoming expenses in advance, they make sure there is enough to pay
for their utilities, and they never buy anything like durable
long-playing household things. (male born in 1971)
The informants emphasize that the spouses focus on their
everyday domestic problems among which the informants made special
mention of these: dacha and garden activities, children and
grandchildren:
In the summer they plant and water things, and in the winter
they do things in the home. The rhythm of their life is seasonal.
In the winter they can hardly wait for summer to come in order to
get out of the city and go to the dacha. They feel better there and
associate with their friends. (male born in 1966)
They tend their grandchildren, feed them, welcome them home from
school, and watch over them (female born in 1973).
A fusion without individuality. In the way they express things
the informants, as a rule, combine husband and wife into the verbal
constructs them or the old folks, which wipe out any
differentiation between the couples roles and presuppose a totally
standard formula of behavior whose semantic meaning is
expressed
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100 Russian social science Review
in sayings such as the man and wife are alike in all things and
old age is not fun.
The informants answers reflect an unjustifiably narrowed
rep-resentation of the everyday problems in the life of an elderly
mar-ried couple. The answers are dominated by extensive,
quantitative characterizations of the elderly spouses, fixated on
the existence of changes of the reductiondeteriorationdecline type,
with no focus on any intensive qualitative characterization of
their life. The construed social portrait of the elderly family
represents it as passive and helpless. Often, the term elderly
family itself is not interpreted as an analytical term but as a
synonym for some-thing that basically belongs to the past although
it still exists in the present. As a result, elderly families are
firmly entrenched in peoples everyday consciousness as the
outsiders of social life, as homebound hospices living lives that
are characteristi-cally relaxed, in which nothing essential or
significant takes place. None of the respondents mentioned, even in
passing, any interpersonal relations between married couples and
problems associated with them. Apparently this area of family life
at the present age phase represents a blind spot that is not
subject to public expression or characterized by problematic
tension. It can-not be ruled out that ignoring the zone of
interpersonal interaction may be a kind of defensive reaction to
the prospect of growing old together.
Based on the results of the survey we have singled out two types
of interpersonal clashes behind the scenes: those that are current,
involving local matters that can be settled peacefully as a rule,
and those that are chronic and, sometimes, have a destructive
impact. Elderly married couples may experience hidden opposition
that can turn into a volatile mixture and result in conflict. It
may stem from resentments from long ago relating to infidelity,
improper behavior, the conviction that ones partner is not able, or
does not want, to live the way everyone else does, in other words,
to live up to certain standards. Very often the piling up, the
accumulation of various resentments yields a cumulative effect that
leads to conflict. It may be manifested in an exchange of harsh
words, up
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to and including a display of outright aggression, complaints,
nag-ging, and insults. Adult children, relatives, and close friends
may become involved in the tension between the elderly spouses. All
of these things are upsetting to many people, adversely affecting
their health and ability to work.
It is perfectly clear that trying to find the kind of
all-purpose power that would make relations between married
partners sturdy, strong, and eternal is like trying to find the
special ticking power in a mechanical clock (H. Bergson). For this
reason, as criteria for our characterization, in terms of content,
of the interpersonal rela-tions between an elderly married couple,
we looked at the indica-tors of marital integration: living
together, running a household together, keeping a joint household
budget, the ways of assigning household obligations, ways of
resolving interpersonal conflicts, and the degree of involvement in
interpersonal relations. We singled out the following types of
elderly married couples in terms of the rating/category of
relations between the partners.
The Little Orchestra of Hope [a song by Bulat Okudzhava]they
think alike and have the same feelings, the husband or the wife is
the significant other with whom one can share what is most precious
and important, someone who listens attentively and will offer
useful advice, someone who helps the other to enjoy spiritual
comfort. As a rule, there is no obvious imbalance of power: most of
the decisions are made by both partners; for the most part, the
allocation of powers is linked to how each one feels, and his or
her ability to engage in various activities. The relations are
flexible, there are no notable fluctuations of sympathies and
antipathies; such a family is tolerant of conflict; the existence
of established conventions between the married partners, and
successful patterns of the habits of life, substantially reduces
the likelihood that con-flicts will arise, or it makes their
resolution as easy as possible. The married partners actions, when
there are conflicts, which, for the most part, are of a local
character, are not oriented toward destructive analysis but toward
restorative synthesis that reinforces the foundations of life.
The symbiotic nature of the married couple becomes stronger
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and stronger: elderly married partners are observed to be
similar in terms of not only life strategy but also habits and
everyday prac-tices; and shared filters are formed that make it
possible to choose a given interpretation of external events.
First, these filters represent limiting factors of perception and
are linked to neurophysiologi-cal abilities associated with age.
Second, they are linked to social and genetic factors such as
traditions, prescriptions, and language systems. Third, they are
linked with individual characteristics that also become adjusted in
the direction of greater uniformity. Often, married couples even
begin to look alike physically: Everyone tells us that we even look
alike. We have learned how to be silent together. I know what he is
thinking about or what he will say (female born in 1932).
The symbiosis, we believe, is linked, first, with the
quantitative and qualitative characteristics of the individuals
life space. In their examination of the life space on the plane of
age, researchers have noted a number of patterns: during the period
of his acme, the individual strives to expand the sphere of his
life and activity, at times rising to the global level. Little
children and older people, if the latter are no longer involved in
social activity (civic or pro-fessional), have a considerably
smaller amount of life space [5]. Second, the symbiosis is due to a
kind of natural selection that the married partners have
experienced over the lengthy period of their life together. Many
sociopsychological phenomena were not characteristic of the married
partners from the very beginning, but formed as the result of
compensation for corresponding intraper-sonal feelings, by the
experience of personal relations.
Before, when we were just starting out in life together, we
quarreled a lot, we said mean things to each other, we tried to
prove we were in the right, we felt insulted. But now, we do not
even have conflicts, and if we do happen to have a spat, we put it
aside right away. How? I go into the kitchen to have a little drink
of vodka, and all of a sudden the spat is over. (male born in
1934)
Elderly peoples heightened level of bonding also performs a
defensive function. Both married partners experience similar mental
states; they are characterized by a high level of empathetic
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feelings, which significantly helps them to find the strategies
needed to get out of a crisis situation. When he goes away, I do
not know what to do with myself, I am kind of anxious; when he
comes back it is like a burden off my shoulders, and I can find
something useful to do (female born in 1940). She is my guardian
angel, she takes care of me. This is why I cannot afford to get
sick, I see how it upsets her and she does not know what to do
(male born in 1929).
As a rule, the reduction in the spectrum of family social roles
coincides with making them more concrete. In these elderly families
we find differentiated roles, for the most part not linked to
gender but to the physical abilities of the married partners, and
their in-clinations. Each of us has particular duties. But, in the
long run, everything depends on our wishes and how we feel (female
born in 1938). In the course of the interviews a recurring refrain
was the idea of the importance of mutual efforts and sacrifices,
working to improve ourselves, the inner critic and regulator,
finding areas of agreement, meticulous conduct of our life
together, and taking account of the interests of the other half for
the purpose of building the family cathedral. Married life has to
be created like a work of art (male born in 1936).
Such a family is based on a multilevel, interconnected matrix
that binds the past and the present together and prepares the way
to overcome the present and move forward. It truly represents the
art of existence of people who are close to each other, who, based
on reflexive and willed practices, establish for themselves the
rules of behavior; and they also strive to transform themselves in
a situation where they live side by side. The married partners are
attuned to each other, they become extraordinarily attentive and
are able to detect signals of the others physical and spiritual
state, often expressed without even being conscious of it. This
type of family represents the results of gradually growing
together, a copy of the mutual efforts that have been made by each
of the married partners during all of the preceding stages of the
familys development.
The conflict harmony type with the characteristics that are
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intrinsic to the type: Life together includes relatively
peaceful as well as stormy days and also clashes that are not very
stormy. Predominating local clashes do not change the life of the
elderly family in terms of meaningful content. Small clashes are
fully commensurate with the normal mode of interaction. There is no
conflict urgency. The conflict field can be defused by means of
rectifiers of any interactions that go awry; these rectifiers
include the following. Humor and self-deprecation are points of
feeling that, in everyday life, make it possible to relieve tension
and defuse a situation. I call our family a ship of fools, of
course I am joking. I myself love to have a laugh, and my wife
always backs me up. If there is no humor, everything goes numb, and
any silly exchange of harsh words can turn into a conflict (male
born in 1943). Hobbies, collecting, simple home amusements: in this
case, the selective collecting of artifacts focuses only on the
things significant to the individual, so that the hobby has a
positive emotional charge and can be a mechanism that absorbs the
shock of negative emotions.
For more than twenty years now my husband has been collecting
postal greeting cards, and his collection fills twelve albums.
Whenever we start letting it all hang out and cannot reach an
understanding, he gets out his albums. For him, everything else in
the world ceases to exist, he puts up a wall and disappears behind
it. (female born in 1937)
There are special strategies for rewarming relations: prepare a
favorite dish, remember something pleasant, have the grand-children
come over, forgive, do not let a fault be a misfortune. These
mechanisms can lead to the softening or, more accurately, the
dispersal of any clashes and open the way to constructive patterns
of behavior between husband and wife. Nonetheless, in these
families, while there are firmly established gender roles, their
boundaries are not fixed, and this makes it possible to free the
intellectual space of the married partners relations from
prejudices and archetypes of patriarchal thinking (such as the man
as the producer of sense and the woman as the vessel of sense).
Permafrost: The married partners are neither friends nor
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enemies, neither close nor alien. Indifference takes the place
of mutual understanding or hostility. The family in this case is
only a pretty cover that hides systems that have become separate.
The characterization of the relations between married partners in
terms of content includes the following aspects: dissociation and
distance, atomization in the family, so that each one is on his or
her own, and as a rule they have individual budgets; pragmatic
differentiation of the functions, such that he goes to the store
while she does the laundry; decomposition of the other, in that the
husband or wife is perceived not as a whole personality but as a
kind of combination of functional segments.
To designate the causes that have led to the freezing of
rela-tions between husband and wife we can use the metaphor of the
butterfly effect (Ray Bradbury, A Sound of Thunder). This metaphor
perfectly illustrates the fact that in married life small causes
often bring about substantial changes in interpersonal relations
and give them a particular profile.
We are alien to each other even though we have been living under
the same roof for forty years now. We have two children and three
grandchildren. Life has gone on, and we have just continued keeping
to ourselves, in our own closed circle. The reason? I myself am
unable to answer that question. Maybe sometime in the past I
offended her somehow, but when and how? It is impossible to say for
sure. Some-times, you know, one carelessly uttered phrase is enough
to make a person turn chilly for life. (male born in 1935)
I cannot say just when our married life broke down. But
something important is missing in our lives. And now it is too late
to change anything (male born in 1932).
Conflict families are characterized by a progressive reduc-tion
of interpersonal relations to the level of simple patterns of
stimulus and response, which is manifested in the form of negative
phenomena: aggressiveness, vindictiveness, and total criticism by
the married partners. In such families the clashes are caused not
so much by antagonistic reactions to the changes that are occurring
but by the married partners themselves who are constantly getting
at each other. States of uncertainty and sus-
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picion in this case become chronic and turn the relations
between husband and wife into a vale of suffering. Often, a wide
circle of significant others will get involved in the conflict
between the married partners. Children, other relatives, and close
friends find themselves having to take the side of one of the
married partners and become the enemy of the other one. Moreover,
the provocative factor may be a completely random occurrence such
as a word uttered in passing, a look, or a gesture. In this case we
are not talking so much about local conflicts but about chronic
conflicts, the causes of which the respondents often formulated as
a general expression such as they just didnt get along. But hidden
behind each they just didnt get along is a special cause that is
not transparent or overt, is often hidden to the respondent
himself, and can be extracted by interpret-ing the interview data
that were obtained. We have singled out the following causes.
Unrealized goals or plans of development can be set when one of
the married partners compares himself or herself and his or her
life with some model or standard and, at the same time, is
conscious of missed opportunities. The feelings that are linked to
some episode in life that can no longer be made right, impose an
imperative on behavior and emotional states, where often a
situation arises in which life becomes unbearable. As a result, the
individuals no longer have any grounds for positive assessments of
themselves or their lives. Sometimes zombie situations are quite
plausible but are in reality only a simulation of something that is
actually dead. A cognitive leap into an unrealized opportunity
occurs, which is manifested in the expression what if . . . There
is an inner con-viction that some alternative would have been
better than the way things have turned out in the present.
It happened that two men asked for my hand in marriage at the
same time. I liked both of them. I thought about it and thought
about it, and, unfortunately, I made the wrong choice. To this day
I still suffer, we are like a cat and a dog living together, we
swear at each other every day, and it is always over some silly
thing. And if I had only married Sergei instead, I would now be in
heaven. Why am I so sure? Because a friend of my girlhood got him.
And she has been living without a care in the world ever since.
(female born in 1938)
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Spousal resentment of heuristic significance in any analysis of
interpersonal clashes, in our opinion, is the theory of resentment
developed by Max Scheler [6], who defined it as psychic dyna-mite,
as slow acting poison of the soul. In the authors opinion,
resentment is a negative feeling conditioned by an extreme tension
between impulses of retribution, hatred, envy, and their
manifesta-tions, on the one hand, and powerlessness, on the other
hand, which is a feeling manifested in the sphere of interpersonal
relations in the form of negative phenomena: aggressiveness,
vindictiveness, and total criticism. According to Scheler,
relations between married partners are largely affected by typical
situations of resentment that, owing to their formative character
are, so to speak, loaded with a certain dose of the danger of
falling into resentment, regardless of the individual characters of
the people involved in them. In our own study, we have singled out
situations of resentment that are linked to the following
factors.
First, are those that are linked to resentful envy with respect
to components in the sphere of interpersonal relations that have a
high value: the wealth, beauty, intelligence, successful career,
social prestige, and prized character traits of one of the married
partners with respect to the other.
My husband was always conceited. To be sure, you cannot get very
far by conceit alone. But conceitedness, multiplied by good looks
and charm, have made it possible for him to have a brilliant career
in structures of ruling authority. But power acts as a kind of
potion that goes to ones head, calms ones fears, and plays tricks
on a persons vision, and he begins to think that he is much more
wonderful than he is in reality. I call that a super-superiority
complex. But now I have the same rights as he does, and I do not
want to be his maid and have to fetch, serve, and obey his lordly
orders. (female born in 1943)
Second, those linked to marital infidelities: The theme of
marital infidelities is sounded loud and clear. I always knew he
was be-ing unfaithful to me, but I did not think it was very
important, or, perhaps, I did not really want to believe it. But
now I feel very of-fended and hurt. I am unable to forgive and
forget (female born in 1939). Often the husbands or the wifes
genuine feelings become
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108 Russian social science Review
a central and constant problem of doubts, and in these relations
the doubts may destroy their everyday lives. In certain cases such
doubts have real foundations.
Third, the resentment is linked to a situation of forced
compe-tition with a mother-in-law (on either side), initiated by
what is thought of as her blind love for her offspring.
When we got married we lived with his parentshis kind and
mod-est papa, and his mama (not a bad woman in general) who doted
on her son. She only paid attention to her little boy. She treated
me as some kind of good-for-nothing appendage to him, someone who
was always getting in the way and never did anything right. That
was how it went all the time, I always played second fiddle, she
might not even consult me or share anything with me, she would
simply ignore me. (female born in 1938)
Such a situation often leads to the formation of interpersonal
relations between husbands and wives that are characterized by an
explicitly pronounced asymmetry of control and supervision
reminiscent of relations between a willful child and a protective
parent.
All our lives my husband has been like a second child of mine. I
have to take care of everythingjob, home, the health of household
mem-bers, the schooling and upbringing of our son, rest and
recreation. His mama left all of these cares to me as a legacy. And
now everything is still the same, unchanged, with the exception of
our son, who lives abroad. (female born in 1939)
Factors of an intimate nature are linked to sexual dispositions
that do not coincide. Our survey found that sex is an out-of-bounds
topic for elderly people. To talk about such things, in their
opinion is not fitting for people of our age. Discussions of the
topic were accompanied by significant verbal side-stepping and
euphemism that proved to be more grounds for lack of clarity than
for a subject to be examined. It is kept hidden in the depth of
ones soul as a secret about these relations, and anyone who talks a
lot about it clearly suffers from a complex or has something wrong
with him, although there may actually be problems (female born in
1938). The men were much more likely to confine themselves just to
the
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Russian social science Review 109
respectable version: there are no problems at all, this topic is
discussed only by someone who has problems, and we do not have any
(male born in 1945).
Personal characteristics of behavior, enthusiasms and interests
are relegated to the background and/or compensated for by other
things during the earlier stages and manifested in greater relief
at the later stage of life together: he hardly ever helps around
the house, he picks up all kinds of junk and brings it into the
house, he is just a loafer, goes around to see people and meet with
his friends, all she cares about are the grandchildren, that is all
she talks about, hes aggressive, he does not want quiet, he seeks
new sensations.
One important element consists of the models of relations
between married partners that were learned in the early stages of
socialization. These models represent an inseparable element of
background understanding (the concept of background under-standing,
or background, has been borrowed by the social sciences from the
terminology of gestalt psychology, and it signifies an
unintentional predisposition of perception, evaluation, and action
that is determined by the sociocultural context). Models learned
from childhood become cognitive guides of life.
In his family line all the males are tough, they have no
emotions. In our first yearswe were living with his familyI loved
him with all my heart, only he did not accept my love. That is how
things went, he always cut off all my strivings to have warmer
relations. With no carrot only the stick was left. (female born in
1939)
In the answers given by our respondents we can trace the
mecha-nism by which the negatively connoted existential coordinates
of life (personal misery, alienation, and disruption of the forms
of existence) are passed down from parents to children, with an
ef-fect that possibly grows stronger. A child who is being raised
in a home that lacks interpersonal relations of genuine interest
and warmth, grows up having absolutely no understanding of love,
tenderness, closeness, and human warmth, and he passes this onto
his own offspring. A child who grows up in a family where harsh
treatment of the children has been an everyday practice is more
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110 Russian social science Review
likely in the future to include aggression in his own repertoire
of behavioral models.
In the case in question, the married partners are in a state of
cat-egorical denial of the views, position, and preferences that
proceed from the other; they live and act on the reverse side of
the kind of order that correlates with mutual understanding and
mutual support, and this destroys relations of sympathy and
concern. It has recently been easy to find materials on the
Internet about aggressiveness and abuse in elderly married couples;
these are reflected in differ-ent manifestations of physical,
mental, including emotional and verbal aggression, and financial
abuse. Accepting abuse as a way of resolving interpersonal
conflicts leads to suffering and trauma, pain, the violation of a
persons rights, and a diminished quality of life. It may be
asserted, however, that at present the mass media and the
scientific literature in this country give no objective and
reliable information about the scale of this social evil. Let us
also note that gender relations in such a family reproduce the same
pat-tern of inequality and the functionalist assignment of roles as
in the rest of normal society. Our survey revealed that despite
constant conflict situations, in the overwhelming majority of cases
elderly married partners continue to live together. A number of
explana-tions for this are possible.
There is stereotyping linked to narrowed perceptions about the
repertoire of possible actions. There is a kind of socially
approved algorithm in place, namely, that it is necessary to
continue living together, there is no other alternative. In the
public consciousness, divorce in old age is looked down upon.
Divorce is considered indecent and inappropriate, which indirectly
confirms the low status of the elderly, who are denied the right of
choice when it comes to family and marriage. A person that age has
to fit into the image prescribed by public opinion, and this
greatly limits his or her freedom. The only socially approved way
of elderly peoples social positioning involves their having to
retain their marital status.
I have known this married couple since I was a child, they are
friends of my parents. Not everything in their life runs smoothly.
But so what?
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Russian social science Review 111
That is not a reason to get divorced, something should have been
changed earlier. It should not even be talked about now. Imagine
get-ting divorced in old age. It would be odd, everyone would think
they are senile. (female born in 1964)
There is catastrophism, the intensification of fears. A feeling
of not being protected, of insecurity, a fatal threat. In feelings
of catastrophism the characteristics of the gender-based life and
activ-ity of an elderly married couple are manifested. First, the
death of one of the partners is an extreme situation that requires
consider-able effort to emerge from. At the same time, the
gender-based trajectories by which to escape from the situation of
the death of a spouse differ considerably. A man who is sixty years
old has many more opportunities to remarry than does a woman who is
fifty years old. According to the results of sociological surveys,
men who have become widowed at a late age very rarely remain
single. Either they die soon after the death of their wife or they
find themselves a female friend and assistant. Second, it is also
necessary to take into account the presence of a crisis situation,
a crisis of old age that is linked to retirement, to a change in
the repertoire of roles, a shift of aspirations from social status
to life experience and moral qualities. At the same time, the
personality becomes more anxious. Moreover, male and female crises
are of different natures. For a woman, the main difficulty concerns
her looks, a loss of attractiveness, a transition to ordinary
workday life without male attention. For a man the biggest
difficulty is in how to deal with the responsibility that comes
with mature age.
There is the presence of universal indulgencechildren and
grandchildren, the degree of incorporation in the family
environ-ment, and the unwillingness to part with possessions.
It is sad to lose what you have gained with so much hard workan
apartment, a dacha, a car, and so on. If you get divorced you will
have to divide up all of your possessions in some way, and now you
can no longer afford to buy anything. Plus, both your children and
grandchil-dren will judge you. (male born in 1944)
The results break down the stereotyped perceptions of elderly
married couples as families that no longer experience any
internal
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112 Russian social science Review
dynamic or intrigues of interpersonal relations, whose members
are just living out their days. Our study has brought to light a
whole panorama of very vital, touching, and at times even tragic
inter-personal relations between married partners. The value of
married life, marital support in the late stages of paths in life,
has a special significance and a specific character. Married life
is one of the key values in late age, one of the most basic agents
of sociopsycho-logical support and help. We have also found that
marital support positively influences processes of rehabilitation
of various groups of elderly people who are ailing, processes by
which those who are recuperating become adapted, and that improve
their ability to cope with situations of stress. Undoubtedly, the
presence of a broad spectrum of individual differences in relations
between married partners at the gerontological state of their life
necessitates more detailed sociopsychological support for elderly
families, includ-ing, among other things, the development and
implementation of a training program that is existentially oriented
in order to create the necessary conditions for improving relations
within the family.
Note1. Recently, in Russia, as, incidentally, in many other
countries, there has
been a dramatic rise in the number of elderly married couples
who have decided to dissolve their marriage officially. One cause
of divorce in marriages that have existed for a long time under the
conditions of Russia is the economic factor. It has been found that
elderly people get divorced in order to apply for a subsidy to pay
for their housing. See www.chrab.chel.su/archive/03 06
08/2/A127559.DOC.html; www.kadis.ru/daily/index/html?id=48547;
http://pressa.irk.ru/num-ber1/2006/42/007001.html;
http://kp.ru/daily/24088/319959/; and www.kuzrab
.ru/publics/index.php?ID=8528.
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