From the author: published on the website of the center for practical psychology "Alpha Genesis" Anna, 33 years old, sought psychological help, complaining of a feeling of chronic fatigue, apathy, and lack of interest in life. Medical examination did not reveal organic causes of the disorders. Anna was born and raised in a small town in a family with an alcoholic father. She was very worried about this and was ashamed of her father. After graduating from school, she moved to Kyiv and entered the university at the Faculty of Philology. Anna was popular with men. In her second year, she met a man 19 years older than her, a successful lawyer from an intelligent family, and a month later she married him. She was attracted by his self-confidence, success, education, good manners - everything that, as it seemed to Anna, she was missing. However, Anna was not happy in her family life, she felt awkward and constrained in the presence of her husband, among his friends and relatives, she considered herself not smart enough and was ashamed of her origin, which became a source of chronic tension and discomfort, apathy for her. Anna’s motivation for marriage can be called inadequate (“wrong”), since when getting married, Anna tried to compensate for her feelings of inferiority by joining an idealized partner, she wanted to increase her sense of self-worth and self-respect. Inadequate motivation for marriage can be conscious or unconscious. In any case, it is almost inevitable that sooner or later the disappointment in the partner and marriage that occurs in any relationship will worsen. I will note the most common motives for creating a marriage that jeopardize the well-being of family life: Marriage as an opportunity to make up for a deficit. It is observed in cases where one or both spouses marry out of a desire to stop feeling the lack of love, communication, care, warmth, attention, and want to avoid feelings of loneliness and uselessness. Marriage as a way to separate from the parental family. The desire of young spouses to separate from their parents is one of the most common inadequate motives for marriage. In this case, the creation of a new family becomes a specific message to parents that their child has become an adult and has the right to independent decisions and an independent life. Marriage as a way to overcome any crisis: creating a family out of revenge on a former lover, as an attempt to cope with the loss of a significant person, as a way to survive professional failure, etc. Marriage in order to comply with the norms of the social environment regarding the age of marriage. For example, marriage is concluded with the goal of fitting in with already married peers. Marriage as compensation for feelings of inferiority. Marriage can be a way to compensate for one's own perceived shortcomings. In this case, joining an idealized partner allows you to increase your sense of self-worth and self-esteem. Marriage is an achievement. It is observed when one of the partners receives material or social benefits as a result of marriage. Forced marriage. In this case, marriage is a way to solve life difficulties that have arisen. These include unplanned pregnancy, housing or financial problems of one of the spouses, etc. With the “wrong” motivation for marriage, the partner’s personality is not valuable, only his presence or his functional characteristics that are important for meeting one’s own needs are important.