The Transition from Engagement to Marriage

Abstract

Marriage is a complex social-psychological phenomenon. From a sociological point of view, the decision to get married involves an undertaking to form a new familial unit in society; this undertaking usually involves two already formed families (of orientation) as well as various groups with which each individual articulates. Getting married also involves participant in a major role transition in society. Whether it is succesfully traversed or not will determine whether the particular new social unit is formed or not. From a societal point of view then, it is important that this transition be traversed successfully for the social institution of marriage to continue in some form. From the point of view of the individuals concerned, there are also major psychological determinants and consequences. Marriage can be seen both as providing an opportunity for growth and maturation of personality and as reinvoking a return to and repetition of certain preoccupations of childhood. The return to an exclusive two-person relationship, perhaps for the first time since early childhood, stimulates the re-emergence of both the good and bad experiences of earlier periods of development. This makes the marriage relationship especially open to a richness of emotional experience and, by the same token, renders it particularly vulnerable to emotional disturbances. 1) We are concerned with the getting married process both as a social-psychological phenomenon and from the viewpoint of preventive social psychiatry and these two viewpoint complement each other in that mental health determinants affect not only individuals' mental health but the functioning of social units. One of the major functions of the newly created family unit is the maintenance of adult personalities2), which involves psychological as well as sociological processes. Given the fact that getting married involves a transition of vital importance to one's person, to the ones with whom one was intimately involved before the marriage and to one's subsequent family of procreation, then it seems important to consider the processes that are involved for individuals making the transition. There are indications from the marriage and family field and from other fields of social-psychological enquiry that the manner in which the transition is made has major effects on subsequent events. For instance, if we view the engagement