Will the circle be unbroken?
October 19, 2007 at 7:30 Marriage problems are making the rounds in my circle, and as we share our confusion and disappointments and try to unravel all the complexities of long term relationships, it’s hard not to get cynical. There are days when I wonder how anyone stays married. Recently a German political candidate suggested all marriage licenses should expire after seven years. There was an outcry of vocal protest in the Catholic community in Europe, but I bet there were a whole lot of people secretly thinking, “She’s right!”
When I was 26 and living in Oklahoma, I enrolled in a degree program at a university that was 66 miles from the home I shared with E. Yeah, that’s a long way to drive for classes. I hooked up with several women from my town, all my age or older, all married, two with kids. We organized a carpool for that first semester. On the long drives to school, we chatted about everything. One woman was a devout Mormon, two were Baptists—all were active in their churches, all had been married eight years or more, all were getting teaching degrees.
One day as we were driving, we started talking about marriage. One woman posed the question, “If you had to do it all over again, would you get married or marry the same man?”
I had been married six years and I was the only one in the car who answered “yes.” Everyone else either said no or hedged, mentioning that if they hadn’t married, they wouldn’t have kids, and so yeah, marriage was OK, sort of, because hey, look at these great kids!
To say the least, I was shocked to hear this from these traditional, religious, conservative Midwest women. I loved my husband, and I believed in marriage.
My second semester, I gave up on the whole carpooling thing and just moved into a dorm room on campus. E and I had a commuter marriage—I was at school 4-5 days a week and at home on weekends. This was in the days before cell phones and before e-mail. There were only three phones in the dorm, one on each floor, and there was a 10 minute time limit on using them.
I never used the dorm phones. I used to walk down to the football stadium and use one of the outdoor pay phones there. If I was lucky, I talked to E once a week while I was at school. He’s never been a guy to sit around the house, and catching him at home within hearing of the phone was tough (a lot of time he was outside). I still remember nights when I’d be down at the stadium in the dark, trying to reach E, hearing the phone ringing endlessly, willing him to answer it, hoping that he’d walk through the door any minute and pick it up.
Over time I reached the point where I seldom called. I just couldn’t stand the whole sad cycle of anticipating getting to talk to him and then being disappointed, standing in the parking lot of an empty stadium feeling like Lonely Girl. I tried to get E to come up to school sometimes, and I sometimes had parties at our house on weekends and invited my school friends, but it just didn’t work. I accepted that I had a life at school and a life at home and they seldom intersected.
When we finally began living together again after nearly two years of me spending most of my time at school, it was far harder than I thought it would be. E seemed so conservative to me compared to the artsy, creative types I’d hung out with at school. I’m sure I seemed different to him as well. We moved to Virginia, and it took a few months to learn to be a couple again, but then we became closer than ever. E’s career was taking off, and I was finally starting mine. We were living where we wanted to live and enjoying a life that had so many more opportunities for us than we’d had in Oklahoma. Still, I remembered the women in the carpool and the chasm that opened up during our commuter marriage years. I was in my late 20s, and I knew my marriage wasn’t invincible. Up until then, I had never believed marriage problems or divorce could happen to me.
Now in my mid-40s, I’m surrounded by people ending or renegotiating their marriages and am working on renegotiating my own. As my friends and I struggle to understand what’s going on with our lives and our spouses, we’re often surprised. How did we reach the point where we’re even thinking about splitting? When did we start to separate? Why is it so hard to talk to each other now? How did we come to occupy different realities in the same house? Did I change? Did he/she? Has he/she always been like this and I just didn’t notice or care? What does he/she expect from me? Can I meet those expectations? Do I want to try? If we can’t go back to the way we used to be, can we find a way to move forward without falling apart?
Some in my circle have loud fights and volatile relationships. Others of us just have a sense of things disintegrating behind the mostly calm façade of our lives. Sometimes we envy those whose marriages explode in affairs, not because we minimize the profound sense of loss, pain, and betrayal that results from that but because most of the time an affair provides a clear cut ending to a relationship—fewer discussions, less debate on what’s wrong, no cycles of hopes rising and falling, no guilt that you gave up on the relationship without good reason.
People change and sometimes grow apart instead of growing together. You can't go back, and you can't always go forward together. Sometimes a rough patch is a catalyst to getting to a better place in your marriage, but sometimes it simply highlights everything that’s been falling apart over the years and can’t be repaired. Midlife is full of remodeling projects, inside and out. Sometimes you can renovate, knock down walls, add rooms, throw on a fresh coat of paint and make a new home together. And sometimes you just have to sell the house and move on.
October 19, 2007
Reader Comments (25)
on my blog. I have been married 7 years and feel a lot like you felt in the car with those women. It makes me sad because I can't imagine not being married to my husband and I can't imagine feeling like they did. But before my friend told me about her impending divorce and the struggles in her own marriage I couldn't imagine anyone I know or myself going through that. Because it happened to someone I love, it was easier for me to imagine it happening to me, but I still feel sad rather than cynical at this point in my life.
You know, Wendy has me thinking about a tattoo. Really. I NEVER thought I'd even consider one for a minute. I'll probably never take the plunge, but it's on my radar.
Tse Fam,
I read your post and left a comment there. Thanks for sharing the link. A thought-provoking piece.
Given the dominant effects of the general free-spirited male gay life style and the rampant damage caused by inhibited male Testosterone, working on renegotiating my own relationships has been a constant factor in my whole life.
I've had four men in my life I loved dearly.
I never intentionally left any of these partners.
Given half a chance, I probably would even have married all four of them, ending up like a pathetically faded version of Elisabeth Taylor. Well, our weird trip to Puerto Vallarta should have been a divine sign I preferred to ignore :)
All visible signs accompanying the run-up towards my broken relationships were classic:
endless discussions about "needed change" that proved irreconcilable, mind-bending debates on what was wrong, cycles of hope and feelings of guild and despair. Only once it was blatant betrayal.
Basically, unmet expectations and growing apart without being able to address the lingering issues kind of sums it all up overhere.
I once tried to make one of those perceived 'graceful exists' - there was a house and a trans-atlantic relationship at stake, and trust me, I cannot endorse a divorce procedure, nor the experience.
As a non-married outsider (currently standing by my injured male partner, knowing his condition is permanent, wishing I could turn back time, still hoping but not expecting to grow old together), I feel that trying to renegotiating a marriage is the only rational option.
There may be some significant collateral damage, major parts of the marriage will probably change, but as long there is love and a willingness to communicate, go for it.
Yeah, I'm bitter. I am however very happy to hear of your happiness. You are a good person and good people deserve the good stuff.
Make no mistake: you deserve the good stuff too.
Then I met my Belgian after 5 years of enjoying being alone in NZ and then Istanbul and we're two and a half years into 'together'. We had to marry, international relationships are a nightmare without marriage but neither of us needed marriage again.
Mmmm, we must tell his parents what we did one day ...
- one spouse trims bushes while the other blogs, and no one makes chicken soup
- the thought of a vacation causes "waffling"
- financial concerns come outweigh couple's night out
- lots of excuses why not to buy a new outfit for an important award presentation
I hope your posts indicate there is continuing "renovation" and there is no "sale" in the future.
I have known many expats, at all stages of life, who have experienced marriage problems. For some the stresses associated with so many changes was just too much. For some, it brought out the realities of each personality and the marriage. Some survived, some thrived, and some are no longer.
fB - I was fascinated by your comments. I too, am not the person I was 10 or 20 or more years ago. I would like to think part of my growing and maturing and becoming a better person was because of my spouse, not in spite of my spouse.
This is what Meryl Streep said to her daughter in the movie:
Now you listen to me because I'm only going to say this once...and I probably shouldn't say it at all. There is nothing that you know about your father that I don't know. Nothing. And understand better. Okay? You make concessions when you're married a long time...that you don't believe you'll make when you're beginning. When you're young, you say, "Oh, I'll never tolerate... this or that or the other thing...But time goes by, darling. And when you've slept together a thousand nights...and you've smelled like spit-up from the babies when they're sick... and you've seen your body droop and get soft...and some nights you just think, "Oh, God, I'm not gonna put up with it another minute". But you wake up in the next morning...and the kitchen smells like coffee...and the kids have their hair brushed all by themselves...and you look at your husband, and no...he's not the person you thought he was. But he's your life. And the kids and the house and everything that you do is built around him. And that's your life. That's your history too. And if you take him out, that's like cutting his face out of all the pictures. lt just makes a big hole and it ruins everything. You can be hard, Ellen. And you can be very judgmental. And with those two things alone you're gonna make such a mess out of your life...you wouldn't believe, and I wanna be able to tell you these things in ten years........It's so much easier to be happy, my love. It's so much easier to choose to love...the things that you have. And you have so much... instead of always yearning for what you're missing...or what it is that you're imagining you're missing. It is so much more peaceful.
People grow and change, of course. But, I guess the question also is: Do you take him/her along for the process?
Or, as you put it: "Sometimes a rough patch is a catalyst to getting to a better place in your marriage, but sometimes it simply highlights everything that’s been falling apart over the years and can’t be repaired."
The sad thing is not knowing the difference. Or hoping that things will change that likely will not.
I have remarried, he hasn't. I know he is lonely. I know my kids say they understand, but I know they don't
I love my new husband, but he is also divorced with 2 kids. He feels as much guilt as I do. When you get married you make promises. I made forever promises and bailed when things got tough.
All my dreams for the future I thought I would have is gone. It is so easy to fall prisoner of the hectic pace of life and not have time left for each other. What else is really more important than your husband/wife, your family. There isn't.
I am convinced that marriage is very hard work, a lot of effort. Once in a while, it's not a bad thing to take stock of things and ask oneself whether the whole thing is worth the effort.
I have come to realize that what I yearn for sometimes is to be just me. And in saying that, feel I am commiting a cardinal sin. I love my family, my girls and my husband. They are and have been my lifes work, my lifes joy.
They say true love is putting something or someone above your own needs. While I am a selfish wanting woman, I will not destroy what I've built..because I need more. I am not the typical vision of a woman who lives for her family. As we speak I am writing instead of being at a soccer game. I draw lines. I carve out time.
But my commintment can be seen on the lid I put on myself. The boundries I do not cross. The vows I uphold. And the way I firmly oint my car towards home, when I know that I could find happiness, perhaps more..perhaps not..by going left or right instead.
"My commitment can be seen in the lid I put on myself. The boundaries I do not cross."
No, it's not the typical vision of a woman who lives for her family but it is a vision I recognize when I look in the mirror.
Thanks for sharing. Tucking your words in my pocket...
Right now they are both sneaking off to have their secret liasons but when they are both divorced it will be two people with torn lives. Maybe that will keep them together for a while. Maybe the added stresses of dealing with child visitation and all the other aftereffects of divorce will tear them apart.
No wisdom here... just questions with no answers.
Most unlikely success story? Someone I know who had an affair with her husband's best friend, the guy who had been best man at the wedding.
The affair was "discovered" when the suspicious husband had DNA testing done on their third baby, who looked just like his buddy. Oops. What a way to find out.
The two couples involved in this story both divorced. The two people who were having an affair got married, and against all odds, blended their existing families plus had children together. Custody was split 50-50, the kids spending a week at a time in each household. Everyone managed to get along, even when one party came out of the closet and brought a gay partner into the mix. This family has been together for about 14 years now.