Although marriage dates back to biblical times, the institution has undergone a dramatic transformation in modern times. What we call marriage today hardly resembles its former profile.

In the past, marriage was about financial support, partnership, companionship, social status and children. Today, marriage is considered a romantic arrangement, a commitment between two equal individuals based on love and trust.

With this in mind, some of our basic beliefs about marriage – the assumptions we make and the values ​​we hold dear – need to be questioned on a fundamental level. What are some of these assumptions about long-term love, and how are they wrong? Let’s take a look.

Here are the five basic beliefs that everyone has so wrong about marriage:

1. Honesty equals telling the truth and lying equals deception

A pervasive notion in American culture is that lying between spouses is inherently problematic. But can it be an act of care?

What if, instead of equating respect with confessional honesty, we equate respect with preserving our partners’ honor and peace of mind, even if it means telling gentle untruths? A study by the British Psychological Society even discovered that people tell white lies because they are empathetic.

After all, isn’t that why Sarah never told Abraham he was old and wrinkled? Ironically, this confessional interpretation of honesty disrespects the recipient of the information by not considering what it would be like for him/her to live with the disclosure.

In contrast, other cultures consider what it would be like for the recipient of the information to live with the burden of knowing. After all, honesty can be cruel.

For that reason, I tell my clients not to say things that will get on their partner’s skin. Not everything needs to be said, and not everything needs to be known because, let’s face it: Truth and hostility often live side by side, and all honesty is not helpful.

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2. Problems with the relationship are always the cause of problems in the bedroom

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In our modern society we believe that if a couple has intimate problemsmust they be the result of relationship problems. We see being intimate as a metaphor for the relationship. Thus we say, “Fix the relationship, and intimacy will follow.”

However, this is a convenient assumption; that’s not always the case, and fixing the relationship doesn’t always fix the intimacy. Although love and lust can relate, they also conflict, and therein lies the mystery.

While two people may love each other deeply and sincerely in the kitchen, the same may not be true in the bedroom. Rather, intimacy is a parallel narrative that tells its own story. Otherwise, how do you explain a couple who claim to love each other as much as ever but experience difficulties or fail to share physical intimacy?

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3. Love and lust go hand in hand

For centuries, marital intimacy was either a “wifely duty” or for reproduction. Then we did away with the loveless marriage and replaced it with the marriage of love and desire. Gone are the old rules, but now we face a new problem: gone is the intimacy, the point.

You see, in every corner of the world, the romantic ideology of modern love and relationship has left citizens of the world wondering about, and preoccupied with, the dilemmas of desire. At every turn, couples around the world chase the desired dragon.

We, the beneficiaries of this revolution, have contraceptives in our hands, ideals of equality in our heads and permission to do what we want. Yet we don’t feel like doing it – or at least not at home. Couples cultivate closeness with the expectation that more intimacy will result better physical intimacy.

The message is the same, and we all got the memo: the more you know, the more intimate you become (and you become intimate by revealing every little detail about yourself), and the better the intimacy. Reconciling love and desire is about bringing together two basic but opposing human needs: our need for safety, security, and stability, along with our need for separation and adventure.

For some people, love and lust are inseparable. The security, safety and trust experienced in love act to unleash their desire. Others are more disconnected. A study from 2018 found that 15% of married couples had not been intimate for more than a year.

While on the one hand we seek predictability and stability – these are promises of the much-desired committed relationship – our other hand yearns for more, mystery, excitement and discovery.

Time and time again it comes up empty. To sustain desire for the other, there must be an element of otherness, separation, a bridge to cross and someone to visit on the other side. Reconciling the intimate and the domestic is not a problem we can solve; it’s a paradox we can handle.

4. Men are straightforward, mechanical and biologically motivated rather than relational

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Women, on the other hand, are creatures of meaning. Women require a wide range of conditions to create desire and give satisfaction. Men need frequent, constant, spontaneous intimacy; they are biologically driven and rigid, always into it and less affected by mood than their female counterparts.

Let me challenge these assumptions. Men’s need for intimacy are no less affected by their internal state than women’s. Just look at any man who is depressed, anxious or angry. These feelings undoubtedly affect his desire and performance.

The difference? Men are more likely than women to turn to intimacy to help them with their internal states. Men use intimacy as a mood regulator. But that’s not to say that male intimate health isn’t relational.

Men have a lot of fear and shame about performance pressure and fear of rejection by women, which motivates men to care deeply about their partners’ satisfaction.

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5. The ideal union is equal

Rather, the best relationships are complementary. They honor the partners’ differences. The most successful couples are creative in maximizing rather than diminishing or diminishing the complementarity between them.

Moreover, it is never the difference between the people that is the problem; it’s how they handle that difference. What couples argue about has little if anything to do with content.

They fight because they feel unheard, disrespected, devalued and unacknowledged. They feel alone. That’s what people suffer from in relationships.

You see, we live in the age of self-criticism. We constantly strive to improve ourselves. Otherwise we wouldn’t shop so much! And that view has entered the individual psyche and the psyche of the couple.

Couples spend more time criticizing themselves than appreciating each other. And unfortunately, people are sometimes much more eloquent about criticism than praise. We must become better equipped to express praise and acknowledge what is good and what works. Only then will we be able to appreciate what we have – our lives, partners and marriages.

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Esther Perel is a licensed marriage and family therapist who has appeared on the Oprah Winfrey Show and The Today Show and whose work has been published in the New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, The New Yorker, Vogue, Ha’aretz, The Guardian and more.