Marriage: The good, the bad and the healthy

I am writing this as I stand at the end of one marriage. By the time you read it, I’ll be witnessing the beginning of another.

My marriage has ended for all intents and purposes. I’m setting up a new household on the other side of the world and untangling what little joint finances there were. We aren’t filing official papers yet, because it isn’t a necessity. But there hasn’t been any intimacy in this relationship for ten years. As far as “marriage” goes, it has probably been over for a while.

What can we really expect of a marriage? As I see it, marriage should be:

Image via Pixabay

1. A commitment to a partner to share all aspects of life, including practical, financial, emotional and intimate,

2. A lifelong state of being part of a family,

3. A promise to support and help a partner particularly when there is physical, financial, emotional or other difficulty, and

4. A bond of mutual caring and esteem.

When it is good, it can be the sacred and wonderful thing it is often held up as. Without such bonds society would be pretty harsh for a lot of people who don't have other strong family ties.

When a marriage ends, it is generally because one or more of those pillars has broken down, not just temporarily or mildly but in a major way.

There were times of anger, resentment and disrespect in my marriage, but there were good parts too and still are. We’d probably stay living in the same household, except that our children need to be in the US for safety and special education services, and my husband/ex doesn’t want to leave the Czech Republic. (What does one call him when we are merely separated and not behaving as married anymore?)

So, I guess it’s what is called “an amicable separation.” We still talk nicely (mostly), assist each other with practical matters and work at co-parenting. We still sometimes have interesting conversations, though they aren’t as two-sided as they once were.

One of the things we used to enjoy were in-depth discussions on politics and psychology. But in recent years, a pattern emerged in which he would expound upon a theory at length and then either get up and leave the room or start looking at his phone as soon as I responded or gave my perspective. In short, he used to be interested in what I had to say and for the last few years he hasn’t been.

That isn’t really “the reason,” but it is part of the reason for the separation. I still enjoy listening to his theories. We mostly have pretty similar views. And when we disagreed in the past, one or the other of us often went over to the other person’s theory after hearing all the reasoning and evidence. We both did it and it was a pretty balanced exchange. We had that kind of relationships, and thinking deeply and flexibly isn’t foreign to either of us.

I’d say that’s why it lasted over twenty years, despite a lot of things stacked against us. I’ve written before about how infertility problems cause the majority of couples who experience them to break up. Having a child with behavioral disabilities is another big factor. Even adopting is considered a risk factor, and I’ll bet international marriage is statistically risky too. One partner having a significant disability is a big one, and social isolation from the local community is another.

We had a lot going against us. And even though this is a real separation. not just a geographical split for practical purposes, I don’t hold it against him—even the growing dismissiveness and coldness. It’s been beyond hard. I strive for calm and pleasantry, but I am not always easy to live with either.

With all that, I’m not ready to jump on the modern anti-marriage bandwagon. I was sadly the last married adult in my family of origin. Everyone else (my brothers, my parents, my grandparents) has already divorced. And now I am joining the club. Despite trying to live a more grounded and emotionally integrated lifestyle than most, we are actually even worse than the statistical norm at keeping marriages together.

I don't know all the reasons for everyone else’s failed marriages, but my experience has been that it’s really hard to keep it together. A marriage is like a bridge under constant pressures and strain from wind, tides, river current, big trucks crossing, earthquakes and plate tectonics.

Modern society exerts huge pressures through shaming of both women and men for everything under the sun and definitely for contradictory things. Modern life is insanely complex and just basic adulting is a challenge for any self-respecting person. Add in issues of unpredictable and draconian working conditions, unrealistic social expectations, higher mobility, reliance on technology for socializing, hyper individualism, judgementalism, political, religious and ethnic walls going up, substance and technology addictions and the glorification of indifference, disrespect and violence in society, and it’s amazing anyone ever stays married.

You might ask (and some religious zealots would more than ask) why we don’t just “stick it out.” Some would say marriage takes work and we’re just choosing to give up. And there’s a lot of judgment in that.

On the one hand, I agree that marriage takes work and when we commit to marriage we should really mean it. I meant it and I’m sure my ex did too. We intended to commit to each other forever. And as for work… well, we worked really hard at it. I’ve been “sticking it out” for at least eleven years, and during that time I focused on positive-thinking techniques and gratitude practices that really helped me appreciate and even love my husband, despite a lack of intimacy and emotional distance.

And I see the cost of that. If I could go back in time and tell the former me of ten years ago that “sticking it out” and gratitude mediations were going to make me a more loving person, but that would not change the temperature of my marriage, I might have chosen to separate a lot earlier. And that’s because there was a cost. For me, the costs were very dramatic—separation from my family, friends and home on the other side of the world to name a few.

Things were so hard (practical stuff, the schools, community isolation, the winters, lack of opportunity for me to have a career) and people would ask me why I was still in the Czech Republic. And the only reasonable answer was “my husband.” And as I repeated that answer over the years, it showed me again and again that this wasn’t a healthy reason.

Still, an oath is and oath, and it is hard for me to imagine that I would have made the leap, if I wasn’t forced by my children’s pressing needs.

But now I’m glad of it. The sense of fresh air and hope, the glad exclamations and smiles of family and friends welcoming me home, even just the freedom to put what I want on the walls of my (albeit low-ceilinged) apartment without arguments or snide comments—it’s a relief that I never expected.

And as for the oath, I did swear to hold my husband as family, and that actually is unlikely to change. But family doesn’t mean living together and it doesn’t mean the single most important relationship of adult life. I also swore to do the best I could for my children and always to act as a free and thinking person with respect for the will of others. If intimacy is absent so long, then I don’t even have the right to force the issue, but I do have the right—and in some sense the duty—to take care of my own needs, so that I am not an emotional burden to others.

I have to write this post a couple of weeks before my self-imposed full-moon deadline because of all the chaos the move is expected to entail. But by the time this post goes out, it will be the full moon of August, and that is when my eldest niece has scheduled her own wedding.

She is someone inordinately precious to me. I love all of my nieces and nephews more than I would have thought possible for that many children who aren’t exactly mine. But the eldest is or was partly mine. She lived with me and my ex for part of high school and through her undergraduate degree of college. She was there when my children were adopted, the only family member we had locally who wasn’t vehemently opposed to the adoptions, the only physically present supporter we had.

But even more than that, she was born when I was sixteen, while I was on my first international adventure, studying as an exchange student in Germany. Because her parents were very young, it was a birth fraught with both joy and fear, fierce love and family conflict.

By the time she was three, I was in Siberia, studying Russian and learning to scavenge for food in a post-apocalyptic society. I clung to a little photograph of her, smiling sweetly with her long hair over one shoulder while I watched the sunlight on the far side of the world slide down my wall and I pushed away hunger and fear. I have felt connected to her all through my adult journey.

And so I want her wedding to be the best ever, full of joy and fulfillment. I don’t want to bring even the shadow of a doubt left over from my own endings into her beginning. Her groom is wonderful, brilliant, fun and quite handsome (if I may venture an opinion). She is radiantly beautiful, feisty, a freshly minted doctorate and an all around hero. What could be better? They have great prospects.

Yet it is hard for me not to think about it, since these two events are happening in the same month. And a wedding like this would make me think of my own wedding, even if my big change didn’t coincide.

I loved my wedding and I still remember it fondly. My family and community in Oregon came together for it in a way that still fills my heart. It was a glorious day of sun, flowers and so many hugs and smiles, and a night of dancing and feeling completely enveloped by good community.

Really, that’s probably one of the things that holds marriages together best. If we had been there, surrounded by that community, I think it would have been much different. And I hope our separation doesn’t disappoint those who supported our union. That still sends a tendril of worry through me, despite how long this move has been coming.

I fortunately don’t have to give any speeches at my niece’s wedding, but I wonder what advice, if any, might actually help from the perspective of a person ending a marriage right at this time. Here’s the best I can do, for my niece or for anyone else starting out:

1. Know your partner well before taking the leap. Arranged marriages may have worked at one time, when marriage was viewed in society mainly as an economic agreement. But today, in western society at least, it really is necessary to know. your partner well. I would be nervous today about any young couple getting married who had NOT lived together for a significant period of time.

2. Consider how your partner behaves, takes responsibility (or not), maintains a balanced mood, takes your needs into account, treats you intimately and exhibits the ability to be flexible and adapt. These things may change very slowly as a person ages, but you are NOT going to be able to “fix” him or her after the wedding. Take note of irritating issues and assume they are more likely to be magnified than mitigated by marriage and time. This doesn’t mean don’t ever get married, since everyone has annoying traits and habits. It means going in with eyes open and conscious decision-making.

3. Know yourself as well as you can. Be clear with yourself about what your boundaries and needs are. Look at how you want to live and what your passions are outside of your partnership. Make sure that the partnership and your partner support your other passions and who you are as a person. Make sure you are not playing a role or adopting an image that takes constant effort and is not in line with your true inner desires. We all wear masks of one sort, but at a time like this—at the beginning of a lifelong partnership—those masks should be true to the self.

4. Make sure you are both able to openly express positive feelings for each other. If I made one mistake in my partnership before I got married, it was to let my partner get away with never expressing his positive feelings for me. He said early on that he thinks “I love you” is cheesy and he doesn’t like the phrase. But the truth was that he had a hard time expressing positive feelings about me in general. This is a pattern with men I’ve known. One boyfriend, when he broke up with me, said, “I know I’ll probably never be with someone so physically beautiful.” I was like, “What the F—!” He never ever told me he thought I was attractive. Neither did the man I married. And he didn’t say he enjoyed our conversations either or that he cared about my happiness, though I know he often did from context. But never hearing any of it took a much greater toll than I would have thought.

5. I also know it isn’t as easy for everyone to express feelings verbally and it isn’t just men. But those of you who have trouble with it, consider it to be exercise. You need it. Your partner needs it. Before you get married and especially after. Get in the habit of voicing your positive, loving and caring feelings. (Note: Expressing sexual desire or need isn't the same thing. That’s about the person speaking and is ultimately transitory. This is about expressing positive feelings for a whole person and care for the inner experience of the other.) If you don’t like a certain phrase, find another one. In twenty years—this is your old auntie speaking—it really really matters.

6. Okay, now that that’s taken care of, let the joy of beginning be full. When you know your partner and yourself well and the decision is clear to you. Then it is time to be full of joy. Old aunties (and anyone else) who has had a rough time of it, needs to smile, clap and bring potluck dishes. It is good for you to start with great joy and hope. Yes, there are pitfalls. You’ll find them soon enough, but this is the time of beginning.

7. When the time of beginning—the honeymoon, literal or figurative—is over and the first hard things come, I do recommend gratitude meditations. Think of three things you appreciate that your partner is or does each day, not always the same ones. (There ARE more than three.) You don’t have to tell anyone, but identifying them clearly to yourself is helpful. It might seem silly at first, but it’s the cumulative effect that matters. That isn’t to say you shouldn’t think or say critical things. We need to adjust in relationships, but when you do need to say something that might be critical, you will also have this storehouse of things you appreciate ready to make the criticism easier to hear. Gratitude meditation will also guard against the demon that kills marriages. That demon’s name is “contempt.” Hatred, disrespect, anger and lack of sex drive can all be overcome. Contempt is the big baddie, correlated in psychological studies with definitive failure. Gratitude, not love, is the thing that keeps it at bay.

8. Let me tell you a secret. When they talk about “sticking it out” and “working on your relationship,” here’s what they mean. Keep coming back and talking again. It’s that simple. You can get mad. You will get mad. You’ll say things in anger and so will your partner. One or both of you will do bad, stupid, oblivious, insensitive or harmful things. And maybe the sex will be good and you will think you don’t care. Or maybe you’ll be so mad that you don’t want to see your partner. Nope, sex isn’t marriage. It really is only a minor component and it will not see you through. Talking isn’t everything, but it is a much bigger component of marriage. You don’t have to be wordy or ebullient. Listening is even more important than speaking. But both are part of “talking” in a marriage. And there is nothing that helps more than always coming back after breaks, arguments, problems or long silences and talking again. Make sure to listen, practice being open to hearing where the other is at. It doesn’t mean they’re right just because you’re letting them finish sentences. Understanding what they think and feel in their worldview is a key first step. And expressing your own feelings and experience of events is crucial as well.

9. Finally, don’t lose track of your true self and your own personal passions. At times, marriage can be all consuming. And that’s great for a bit. It’s also easy to get wrapped up in what your partner is doing. But it is having your own personal passions and your strong inner self that is the best guarantor of both your relationship and your own health. Encourage your partner to develop a self beyond your relationship as well, including interests and friends that you only sort of know. It is great to have as much in common as you can, but over the long run, a little something that is just yours and just hers or his will keep you both healthy and strong together.

Yeah, but who wants to listen to an old auntie who failed at marriage anyway? Well, you’re more than welcome to not listen. I was told a lot of this setting out as well and it sounded awfully abstract then.

But here’s the thing. My marriage may not have worked out in a traditional sort of way, despite twenty years of overcoming the odds through sheer will power at every turn. But I’m in a situation to be amicable and cooperative with my coparent, we’re both pretty psychologically healthy despite a very hard road, and our children aren’t terribly traumatized by our relationship issues. (I had to add “terribly” to that last sentence because we didn’t entirely abide by the advice above and the kids have been impacted to some degree, as a result.)

That may be the new measure of “a successful marriage.” If both partners remain well and whole, still communicate and cooperate in the end and have not harmed anyone else with their relationship issues, that’s pretty decent.

Good luck to the newlyweds. I wish them a miraculously easy time of it, and I also wish them the skills and sturdiness to withstand if that easy road doesn’t work out.