The Secret To A Happy Marriage: A Good Explanation After The Fact

It’s the age old question: ‘Free Will’ or ‘Destiny’?

Most everybody picks free will, or at least leans heavily towards it. Not necessarily because they’ve cracked open the philosophy books, weighed the arguments and came to the most logical conclusion.

More likely the answers map nicely with the person’s innate desire to feel like they are in control of their life. Self autonomy and self authorship is strongly embedded in western culture. It’s the belief that we are rational creatures and that this rationality holds sway over our actions.

This is of course, not how this works.

Humans are social creatures and extremely prone to subtle influences from the environment around around them. Look at the last impulse purchase you came home with - a snack, a gadget, a trashy magazine - and honestly ask yourself “Did I set out today to make this purchase?”

What actually happens is that, as we travel through our day, some piece of marketing hits one of our emotional triggers and we make the purchase. The truly sneaky part is that our rational mind steps in after the fact and concocts a rational reason why we made the purchase and covers the tracks of the emotional trigger.

The mind convinces itself that it was in fact, in control the whole time.

Marketing is an ongoing, real-time experiment in trying to trigger this process in a potential customer. Copywriters are in a unique position in the marketing world in that they engage with this process with words rather than images or musical jingles. The attempt is to use words to insert ideas directly inside the mind of the prospect, excite their emotions, and give them the reason they can use to cover the tracks of the emotional trigger.

This is understood so well that the truly brilliant copywriters try to not only influence the prospect, but indirectly, the people around the prospect. From the ‘Mad Men’ era of marketing comes an expression, “There’s two reasons a man makes a purchase: the actual reason, and the reason he tells his wife.”

Good copywriting can literally do this - it can give you a story you can tell yourself about why you made the purchase, and it can also give you story you can tell a spouse, a business partner, or anyone else that’s close to you. It gives you ammunition to convince others that the purchase was worthwhile.

Anyone that buys an oversized luxurious house and tells the people around them that it was ‘A good investment’ is fooling themselves. The only houses that are investments are houses that are rented out to tenants. Being ‘a good investment’ is a story - a rational reason that can cover up the fact that the idea of moving into the house made them feel good.

Put another way, some of what you’re giving the customer is the rational explanation they will use after the purchase. You help them come up with that story they “tell their husband or wife.”

They’re not wrong or untrue stories, and it certainly won’t work 100% of the time. The best you can hope for is getting the spouse on board by convincing their emotions and letting their rationality convince them after the fact. Letting everyone feel as though they were in control the whole time.

That’s the secret to having a happy marriage while making large purchases: Net positive feelings and a good explanation after the fact.