I thought you’d change after we got married… Parallels between sustainability and marriage

Recently I’ve had the opportunity to examine current perceptions on how to move towards sustainability.  Toolkits seem to be unanimous in their requirement that the first and most important step of behavior change will pull society together to actually attain sustainability.  For the sake of the argument, let us liken sustainability to a marriage.  Both states require the amalgamation and bringing together of disparate camps to make the whole stronger than the parts.  Additionally, both require maintenance and upkeep in order to be successful. 

When reading on the topic, my original thought was the metaphor of how some romantic relationships move on towards marriage, sometimes with one or both of the partners expecting or hoping that the other will change soon into the marriage.  From experience, I think we all know that this will not happen; when this is imposed on them, people become even more entrenched in their way, and the marriage will fall apart. Is this not a threat then to the idea of sustainability? If we directly hope that changing behavior will be the crux of reaching sustainability, we may already be putting odds against the system, making bets as to when the marriage will fall apart. Even if it is systemic and culture based, you are faced with outright oppression. No matter how strong we may feel about staying in a marriage, if it is not working, you will leave.

It seems to be a set of conflicts that we fight with continuously. We see the need to have a happy marriage, strive for sustainability, but we feel the impact of the tools that are trying to change us, and this is what is going to make us recoil.

How can we ignore our emotional, psychological self? The connection with addressing the behavior side? Perhaps we need to bring people into the behavior change decision themselves. If the behavior change were supported through incentives or punishments, there would be revolt... but if we focus on choiced change, there may still be hope.

(Yes - I know choiced is not a word - the syntax works for me in this case.)

Changing behaviors of someone is the most daunting thing you can attempt; those that think they can do it within a relationship such as a marriage are fooling themselves.

It brings forward the sense of the tensions that exist between what we feel to be true to ourselves and what those that we respect impose on us.  Various sources purport that the only way to attain sustainability is through the cultured change of a population, and I guess I can see where they are coming from.  In order to make real change in the world, we need to change the behavior of people. 

In order to do that, the lenses through which people see the world must be focused to better receive the proactive message of change.  This, I think, is the key leverage point to make change, encouraging and supporting people to make the transition to the new and more successful state of sustainable living.

How does one actually bring about behavior change, without the recoil?  One aspect of a successful marriage is that the individuals grow and change together within the marriage.  Not that they change in the same way, but that they change together, organically.  Recent discussions I’ve been in have drawn a discourse between the use of motivation or support as tools for change.  My perspective is that motivation would be the more impactful choice, as it brings about a push from the underlying driving forces of the individual.  If we can understand these aspects we will have a better understanding of the individual’s approaches to their lives, and so how to better make change.  So then – is behavior change really the solution, or is understanding the underlying motivations of the individual and collective the more applicable leverage point?  Meadows, in Places to Intervene in a System, indicated that one of the highest levels you can make change in a system is in addressing the goals of the system itself.  This supports the idea of attaining behavior change by addressing the motivations.  If you can learn their motivations, learn their goals, and speak to this front, you would have a leverage point that would change the system at near the most impactful level.

I won’t leave you hanging – addressing the paradigm from which these goals stem can see the greatest change.  But hey  - baby steps.

But this is really what it is all about… we individually have a stake in our lives and how we live it.  There is no master puppeteer that can make us dance to his whim – we decide this for ourselves.  This subjective view of the world is not something that a magic bullet can find – rather, it is the crux.

A daunting task, to be sure.

And on trying to change someone after marriage - forget about even asking him or her to change how he or she squeeze out the toothpaste from the tube!!!