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On marriage…
As you have read in the Ezzo books and on this blog, marriage is as important to parenting as anything else. In fact, marriage may be the most important thing in parenting since it serves as a foundation for the child.
I’m inspired to write about marriage because, for some unknown reason lately, my Facebook friends have been posting articles about marriage. This is somewhat timely (though I’m sure unintentional) because my husband and I just celebrated our 15-year anniversary.
I’ll share more about the articles in a bit, but first, my story. Yes, my husband and I have been married 15 years, but we met (and started dating in a young teenager way) 7 years before that. So we have known each other for 22 years. (Wow, that makes me sound old.)
When we entered into this marriage thing, I don’t think either of us really knew what to expect. We were both raised by single mothers with mostly absent fathers. No grandmother, aunt or cousin provided a role model for us. We were left to figure marriage out as we went along.
And there’s no denying that we have been through a lot: finishing college (separately), several moves, a few jobs (and two layoffs), two deployments, two children (one of whom was born during a deployment), colic, allergies, developmental delays, sensory processing disorder, asthma, RSV (at 2 months old), a toddler’s broken leg, hospitalizations and more. Phew!
When I look back on it all, I think that what brought us to this 15-year point was the fact that while we went through a lot, we went through it together. Even when we were apart (for 3 years altogether), we were in it together. We suffered hardships together. We raise children together. We grew up…together.
When I read articles on marriage, I like what I read because too many marriages are little more than an afterthought. Not enough people (in my opinion) honestly think about their marriages or work hard at them before throwing in the towel.
The first article I read (posted by a friend on Facebook) discusses three types of marriages:
1) The back-to-back marriage: husband and wife lead separate lives.
2) The shoulder-to-shoulder marriage: husband and wife work together toward a common goal.
3) The face-to-face marriage: husband and wife work together (shoulder to shoulder) but also develop the friendship and intimacy that come with looking each other in the eye. The intimacy remains even after the shoulder-to-shoulder work (like raising children) has been done.
While I like this theoretical view of marriage, I love this more practical article that talks about embracing marriage, flaws and all. I think we need more articles like this to help people realize that marriage is not the romanticized fantasy perpetuated by the media.
Let this excerpt leave a lasting impression:
Morosely, one of the most valuable parts of my marriage striving was reading about marriage and death. I devoured the stories of the widowed or almost widowed. Among the most affecting was Molly Haskell’s “Love and Other Infectious Diseases.” At the beginning of the book, Ms. Haskell’s husband, Andrew, falls unaccountably sick, the kind of sick everybody worries about most in which everything changes instantly, life is upended and you have no time to adapt or prepare.
While her husband lies swollen beyond recognition in the intensive-care unit, Ms. Haskell writes of thinking in the generous, forgiving ways we wish we did all the time. “I made deals. I would take Andrew back on any terms,” she writes. “I would no longer nag him about reading newspapers all day, or shush him when his voice rose in restaurants. I would cherish his oft-told tales, his doomsday economic theories, the fingerprints he left on walls and surfaces, the burned teakettles, his absent-minded professorisms, his driving.”
In this context — fear of imminent loss — her thoughts are expected, even conventional. We will miss everything or at least we say we will. But it is interesting to consider why. While Andrew is in the hospital in a condition a nurse describes as being “as close to death as a person can come without actually dying,” Ms. Haskell evokes the mess in her husband’s closet as the “quintessence of Andrew.” She writes that “the dozens of mismatching tennis shoes, the scuffed loafers, ties fallen from the tie rack, the hangers tumbling out” take on a “holy glow.” She refers to this mess as “the still-warm relic of a saint.”
I didn’t feel this way about Dan or his messes. I constantly, if subtly, tried to get him to stop doing things that bothered me, to submit more of his outsize personality to our marriage, to me. These were the parts of him that had resisted homogenization, that had resisted maritalization (if we can make up such a word). They belonged to Dan and Dan alone — not to our marriage, not to me. And they were the things I knew I would miss intensely if he were gone.
I suppose that while these articles get me thinking, I’m not sure that they really change my perspective on marriage. Yes, my husband and I bicker (about those little annoyances the author describes), but so far, whatever we are doing is working. We will continue as we have until we hit a bump in the road. And instead of jumping ship, we will think, talk and find the wherewithal to change our attitudes. It is, after all, one’s attitude toward the relationship that determines whether the marriage will succeed or fail.
So while marriages all around us crumble to the ground for one reason or another, we will keep fumbling our way through ours. And hopefully one day, we will provide our children with a role model of how great it can be to grow and spread your wings, not despite the marriage, but because of it.
P.S., When looking for an image to accompany this post, I encountered all kinds of lovely flawless faces surrounded by hearts, smiles and kisses. I settled on this one because it looks so real. I couldn’t, in good conscience, perpetuate the romanticized fantasy I just denounced. I have no idea who these people are (thanks Google Images!), but I love this photo!