MARRIED AND STILL ENGAGED
Recently I was stunned to hear that a couple I have known – and, to tell the truth, envied - for years have gotten divorced. They always seemed so loving, so intimate, so supportive with each other. For over twenty years, they worked together, they traveled together, and I would often see them jogging together – in an uncanny synchronicity of strides. What went wrong? Like everyone who hears of such an unexpected break-up, I want to find out; and not only because of their marriage, but to understand grown-up marriage itself, my own included.
It is a truism that no one knows what goes on in another person’s marriage, but that doesn’t keep us from trying to figure out why some marriages fall apart and others stick. The "why does she stay married to him" question has come up again recently in the context of the Spitzer meltdown. Certainly the stricken face of the disgraced governor’s humiliated wife Silda will haunt many of us for years to come. Her blank mask as she stood behind him on his Day of Shame recalls the iconic photographs of other women in other circumstances, the widows of assassinated leaders – Jackie Kennedy, Coretta King, Ethel Kennedy – at their husbands’ funerals. Behind the mask, what was each of those women thinking? Was she thinking about what her marriage was really like? What her husband was really like in the privacy of their "understanding"?
We all know less extreme situations that still seem mysterious at the core. The smart, attractive, successful woman who stays with the philandering n’er-do-well or the upbeat, charming, generous husband who stays with his sour, narrow-minded, zenophobic wife. We assume that the one is putting up with the other, but given that we are exploring a mystery, we have to consider the possibility that the situation is reversed. Or there may be something that is very precious at the heart of their relationship – secrets shared, good sex, trust (even in the midst of betrayal?) – that makes all the rest secondary. When Hillary Clinton wrote in her autobiography about the dynamic of her relationship with Bill that they had "started a conversation" in 1971 and that it was still going on, she demystified that particular marriage to my satisfaction.
What makes a marriage endure? Do the partners themselves know what keeps them together? Can anyone say whether it is "good" for either or both of them? Is endurance a marital virtue? Or long shared history a reward? Such questions are particularly pertinent as we outgrow our youth. Children move on, for some of us our work moves into the background while for others it becomes foreground, and the place of her marriage in a woman’s life is open to new scrutiny. We know that two-thirds of over-age-fifty divorces are initiated by women. And most women can think of a hundred reasons why a break-up might happen then. But we know so little about the marriages that stick.
I suspect it has a lot to do with how the people involved are incorporating the changes taking place in their own lives – or how committed they both are to fending off change. I am sure that trust and judgment and laughter play a part, but there must be an ineffable something else – at least in the nurturing unions – that refreshes their curiosity about each other and about how things between them will continue to turn out. My guess is that when it comes down to it, we on the outside aren’t the only ones who don’t know what makes a given marriage work. Perhaps the intrigue of that mystery is the spark that keeps the partners engaged.
posted by Suzanne Braun Levine at 11:18 AM
6 Comments:
A fascinating area for consideration. I suspect there are multiple motivations for staying "married and engaged" from the fear ridden to the richly fruitful.
As one half of a 38 year marriage I would posit that deeply shared core values, ongoing learning and each having purposeful other centered activities, quality time together and equally quality time apart all help.
Suzanne, I was one of those couples, perfect on the outside and curiously crumbled on the inside. Two perfect daughters and a close family relationship with the four of us...but the secret must lie in that we were 'too' close...boundary-less I would call it now. It felt sexless despite having engaged in relations for almost 30 years... I was dumbfounded to discover what I had missed all those years. Distraught that my desire to please took precedence over my own happiness. Your book was a gift among other highly supportive books from psychologist Robert Firestone who explained to me in great detail the properties of the 'fantasy bond' that I truly believe we existed in...
On My Own is another supportive book that comes to mind which is now helping me to make the break from a marriage that could have turned toxic but for my determination to understand fully how we each contributed to our 25 year marriage decline. It is now nearly a year and I am still not fully broken of my deep seated feelings for the loss of family or my own sexuality.
So often we label an aspect of our lives "the last taboo" - maybe the secrets of our marriages are next. I certainly think we need to talk about the love and commitment, fear and loathing that go on in the privacy of those relationships. I hope we can start the conversation here.
I'm not sure we are ever going to find a real recipe for marriages that work and those that do not. They seem to be as individual as the two people involved although there are overlays that are common to many such as children, no children, mid-life, health, betrayal, in-laws; it still seems to be our unique experiences that contribute to the reality of our relationships, particularly enduring ones. And that being said, the same thing contributes to those that fail.
After 29 years of marriage, we are often surprised (sometimes shocked)that we have survived some rather large life hurdles more or less together. Sometimes one takes the leadership role and pulls the other one on board eventually - depending where we are personally at that point. Our approach is that it (the marriage) is a work in progress - what is working today will be different than what works down the road because circumstances will continue to change, or so I assume. So you need to be present.
One thing we were both told at the same time (therapist) when our kids were little is to learn to 'raise our tolerances and lower our expectations'. However, I would say that we each actually 'heard' this concept at different times over the following years. Once we were on the same page with this thought, things began to improve. We began to accept the reality of who we are rather than the expectation or potential of who we thought the other should be.
I too like Hillary's comment about starting a conversation - it's up to each individual to keep it going.
Ekkart Tolle says when we are in a long term relationship that is a strong one we are loving the divine in the other that shines through the ego. This is my paraphrasing of his words but as I thought about this in relation to my spouse I found myself seriously considering this. We have been married for 35 years and live like polar opposites wondering a lot of the time how we ever got this far together. I am looking at him with different eyes more often now trying to look beyond the surface (ego) and I am thinking that just maybe that is it. The gaps in my personality are filled by him and vice versa which to me is a recognition of the divine. Dare I say that it takes the two of us to make one complete human being. Not a perfect one nor a couple that others would see as made for each other. Yet those times when we click is a moment when I feel completely happy and that has to be the divine,
I'm beginning to think that we long-married ones are coming out of the closet. It is so hard to figure out whether we have succeeded or just endured. But it seems to me that over time we do indeed raise our tolerances and lower our expectations, which is a pretty good piece of advice for most things.
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