Context is everything.
“[It] isn’t a passion-fest,” she says. “It’s more like a partnership formed to run a very small, mundane, and often boring nonprofit business.” Lori Gottlieb
I do agree with her statement. But I just don’t think that it says enough.
I’m divorced with two children. Had you asked me six years ago whether I would live with someone, consider getting married, and change my last name to someone else’s– I would have stood with complete confidence wagered one thousand dollars and said, “Absolutely not.”
Thankfully no one’s made that bet. I can keep the money and we will go to Europe.
But I’d like to tell you why my perspective has changed. And speak in defense of solid relationships and friendships. My caveat, this is a second marriage for both of us and we both have adolescent children.
Once upon a time, a few years ago, I was starting everything over from scratch. Some girlfriends viewed me as the trial case of the one who really did leave and not just winge over coffee and chocolate about the frustrations of being a mother, wife, homemaker, and putting career on the side to take care of everyone else. We felt the challenges that many mothers do- on the one hand, raising children is something you want to get right and fret over sleeping/eating/developmental milestones.
On the other you sit down as a an intelligent educated woman and think- Is this it? Please let me be more than the science project assistant and baker of cookies.
The rationalization of how being a mother fits into the whole definition of being a woman, and what’s a mother’s role versus a woman with a career- that gets to the heady waters of the mommy wars. None of us want to be charged with being a bad mom because all we did was work, or was stay home or was try to blend both and end up really tired. No one wants to be the harried upwardly mobile career hound who misses recitals because she had a business trip. We all want our children to thrive.
But I was the one who did leave, get her own place and start out again. With all the challenges that come with little boys and their tears. “Mom my heart is dust.” To the judgmental eyes of other couples who now frown with proud indignant glares that you did not have stay as any good woman should. To having to work really hard to get a chance, and then to remain in high gear to earn the respect of colleagues that I was agile and capable.
There are reasons people need to leave though. In our case it was a lack of friendship and respect on both ends. On a very basic level neither of us wanted to make the effort to make it work because neither of us really liked the other that much. And there is only so long that a person can tolerate lack of respect and maintain integrity.
And in time I got jobs, good ones and earned my own keep. I brought the boys from Tokyo to New York for a myriad of reasons. I bought a house and spent several years and went through a dozen repairmen doing various renovations, culminating in a roof replacement at Christmas time. At that point in my life my attitude toward marriage and shared life was negative.
After all, I had had my kids. I did not seek or need a man to help me bear a child. I had to do some of the “dad” things like sit in the barbershop and play catch. The procreation desire was done and complete. And I had bought and repaired my own home. I didn’t need the second source of income to make the first downpayment. I was not afraid of floods and haggling with electricians to finish a job properly and on budget.
So what good would a man do me?
Beyond conversation and physical intimacy, what really would be the point. And as someone who slept on her own for quite a few years, it seems very immature to say your life is somehow incomplete or lacking because no one is there to wrinkle the sheets with you. You don’t go bawling your eyes out because you end up sleeping alone in hotel rooms. It bums you out, but there’s more to life then shared sleep.
My perception of a partner was additional housework (more sweaty clothes to wash) more grocery shopping, mess and expectations that I would have more dinners to make and then be available for physical comforts. A third son who would not move out but might bring flowers.
That was not the brochure I wanted to read, or the life I wanted to live.
I know women and men different places in their marriages that make it seem unattractive. Unhappy marriages with distant spouses who prefer television, or hyper drive their careers over sharing time together. Ones who straddle fences by sitting in empty affairs for years, anything to keep the numb away and not have to go home for a little while. They have finessed emotional avoidance to an art. Don’t face the problems of commitment by never being truly present in either relationship. Maintain the facade of control and freedom in something only slightly more substantial than an Xbox game. Sometimes both partners know, but there is a tacit acceptance, I will look away from this and you will look away from that. Just don’t mess up this image in front of the neighbors. Capisce?
Or marriages where two people look at one another with something two levels short of distaste, or who have unspoken competitions for which spouse earns more or looks better. Resentment is a common theme in many marriages. Or barters- you do this, I do that and it’s like a business agreement that may (or may not) include sex.
Shucks.
Is it any wonder people might think twice about getting married, and question the efficacy.
Except it doesn’t have to be that way. And this is not Pollyanna speaking.
It is possible to actually have a friendship and build a partnership. Starting out as friends who truly like and respect one another as individuals is probably the most important scaffold upon which to build a lasting marriage. There are genuinely good men who are capable of loving, giving and pot scrubbing.
Maybe I’m biased because I enter marriage number two with more then a prenup.
We have both had our kids. We talk about what it means to raise them, mine especially since Chris is so much a part and parcel of Thomas and Ryan’s life. We want them to see that a couple can be caring and tender to one another. We have both bought homes. We don’t need to put our names on a title to feel we have achieved something. We’ve changed jobs, we know what it means when money is tight and you have to pitch yourself and network hard to get to the next step. That doesn’t rattle us.
But maybe most of all, we have lived enough life to know better than to have a week of passive aggressive tension because one person didn’t do the dishes.
We don’t have chore charts. We help one another in the kitchen. We make dinner together. We share the responsibilities of keeping the house in order, and we hand off as need be because one of us is working late or is tightly focused on a project.
We hold hands. We look at one another with respect. We have similar earning potential and neither expects the other to be the primary breadwinner. We are honest about our finances. We believe in one another and support each others hopes. We encourage one another to grow and reach. We feed each other cheese, olives and grapes. We want to do things together. We talk in the night after the boys have gone to bed.
In many ways we feel the life we are living right now, is a marriage.
What’s missing is the paper to legalize it, the bands to symbolize it, and changing my last name to represent being this family we have created. Because we want it to last. We have both seen and known enough of challenges and emptiness to not be determined and tenacious in how we love one another.
It is not a passion fest. But there is plenty of passion in it. We giggle and flirt. It’s not all drudgery, there is color and rhythm in our days. Perhaps because we’ve done the kids and homebuying part already we feel confident and capable in this commitment.
The Smiths plan to continue to work on making their marriage meaningful. We settle in together.
