Is Marriage Really Necessary?

I’m an avid fan of The Bachelor. One of the Bachelorettes is underscoring my belief that you can’t have realistic expectations in your first romance. The girl on the show is saying that she knows that Jake is the one for her because instead of putting a smile on her face, he’s making her glow. That’s great, but where is that glow going to be when you have to make a choice between your mani/pedi day with the girls and paying for Jake jr.’s soccer registration?

Recently I’ve seen several 50+ year marriages being celebrated or talked about. To me it’s a double edged sword. I used to think that my Grandparent’s marriage was sunshine and roses but when I was able to handle the truth learned that there were some very dark days in the Clare household. My wedding was moved up a year in part because my in-laws were separated. They’re back together now and will be celebrating 42 years this summer.  

I come from an interesting perspective on this issue. Not only am I very happily married, but I also got married early in life. It would be easy to understand why I would believe people change and marriages should be dissolved if I were divorced, but I’m not and yet I still do. When people are committed to each other, we keep pushing and pushing until they are committed not only to each other, but to a legal system and religious community for….what? Because it’s what’s always been done? Because a marriage license means one relationship is better than one without one? 

In the days of yore people got married in their early teens to secure and prolong families. Parents and townspeople arranged the best matches, the kids got together, and that’s how people got married. Life expectancy was somewhere in the mid-20’s and the highest aspiration you would have was to hire someone to help reduce the time it took to raise babies, plow the field, sell your wares at market, cook, and clean. 

Now days most of us are living into our 70’s and 80’s and we have more options available to us. We’re much more mobile so we may not choose to marry someone from our village, let alone parent approved.  

Instead life is more like this. We learn about our world from teachers and our parents. Those ideas help us form who we are and what we think of the world in our late teens and early twenties. Then we’re sent into the big world to think on our own. We have life experiences and our ideas become our own changing us. It really does sound easy, but from what I’ve seen, those changes happen in cycles of 15-20 years. In the days of yore, 15-20 years after marrying, you were, well, dead or dying. Now days 15 years after 17, the new age of being young and single, the yore equivalent of 11 and 12, you’re fighting your way in the corporate world, having babies, trying to have babies, finding a house, trying to start a home. Reality sets in that there are divides between single friends and coupled friends as well as friends with babies and friends without. Suddenly your bff since third grade would rather be putting on the jeans that make her ass look hot and hitting the club than listening to you gush about how Angelica is pooping on the potty. 

Life forges ahead, you make new friends who can relate to pooping in the potty and get settled into another cycle of 15-20. After that cycle it hits you that you’re not happy where you are. This can be geography, career, personality, health, or any combination thereof. Let’s say you set out to lose 60 pounds of post-baby weight, and your babies are 13 and 16. Your attention turns to healthier eating, getting exercise, and suddenly your husband who has always appreciated the full fat ice cream stash is wondering what the hell tofutti is. You try to pretend to be happy sitting on the couch spending “us” time, but you become resentful because you know your hiking group is taking on your mental opponent, the mountain you know you can get to the summit of, you just never imagined you could. 

For me, this is when a relationship needs to be sorted out. Can hubby live with a health nut? Can you live with holding onto an extra 5 pounds because you’re swapping gym time for couch time? You have to find concessions- hubby will walk a half hour twice a week and wife will stock Haggen Daz. If, however, even the concessions are deal breakers, then there is no point continuing the cycle of resentment and anger, though, if you’re married, now you have to battle a legal and religious battle to be able to move forward. 

Moving forward either in a repaired, reconstructed marriage or in a bitter, angry one, the 15-20 cycle begins again. Menopause, caring for aging parents, paying for college. Empty nest syndrome sets in and both spouses are looking for an outlet for their extra time and energy. Book club and poker nights clash. She’s too philosophical, he’s too stodgy. She wants to stay close to the comforts of home and the grandchildren, but now that retirement has come, he wants to see the world- or at least the Grand Canyon. 

And these are secondary priorities. I know many of my high school buddies who were staunch conservatives are now liberal or vice versa. It is hard to understand how they can be so completely different at 37 than they were at 17! But I can understand. This economy is hard. Friends who never imagined their career would leave them jobless are living with their parents have had to not only sacrifice, but all out give up things they felt they had earned and deserved. Some of us have had children born with health issues. When you measure love in a glow-about-you first love way, multiple surgeries for one child with 3 others at home doesn’t appear in the picture. 

When I was 17, I thought I’d be living in an outlay of my hometown in a 2 bedroom apartment and 4 cats, teaching. I thought I’d get married at about age 34 because my time was ticking, not because this was “the one”. I did not want to bring children into this awful world. Instead I got married at 22, a shocker to myself. Almost 15 years later I’m married to a different person, and so is he. I am using my teaching education to supplement my children’s learning and support their teachers. I’m on fire about writing. I do social networking which was not even an option in 1991. He is on fire to start a dojo in our area concentrating on the style of martial arts he began at the age of 12 but gave up on until around 30. He has started a computer business, a far cry from the non-profit radio station he envisioned in 1993. 

I realize that I am exceedingly blessed that every time I’ve reached a cross road, my husband has been able to support me. There were times when I really thought part of taking the other road meant that he would not be with me. And there have been times like that for him as well.

We’re the good case though. There are so many more who do have to say to their partner “I can’t go down that road with you” for a variety of reasons, most having to do with changes in life cycles. I hate when people vilify the other partner, make them the bad one. No one wins when a relationship ends in anger. If, instead, we can be happy for both people who are now moving on to be the best they can be, then everyone wins. Honor the fact that at one point two people had enough affection for each other that they committed to one another, lived under the same roof, maybe had babies, maybe started a business- had a life together.  

That is why divorces are as much of a reason to celebrate for me as most 50 year marriages. In the marriages, it means both parties were able to grow together; that when the one partner was terrified because s/he was moving in a new direction, the other partner said “That’s not so bad, maybe I’ll come with you to check it out.” In a divorce, both people are free to move forward, hopefully with the support of their former partner who is mature enough to acknowledge they can’t go there and, instead, find a new place of their own.

If love is truly kind and patient, then why do we attempt to keep people locked in its institution if the other residents are bitterness, anger, contempt, resentment, and fear through legal and spiritual means? Why do we insist on a tradition that makes it harder for people to move forward? If you’re going to bring up children, please don’t. There are ways in the legal system to ensure that children are provided for. And, if a parent really wants to be a part of the children’s life, they will find a way. I have a friend who drives from Atlanta, Georgia to High Point, North Carolina every other weekend and stays in his ex-wife’s apartment so he can see his kids. Awkward? Hell yeah. What he has to do. Yes. And equitable division of property? It’s done day in and day out in estate cases. But, of course, that’s when people can’t agree. Then again, saying I’m happy for us that we had what we had and am excited to see you forge your own road while I’m forging mine even though we had planned to go the same road “’til death do us part” is easier said than done. 

Change is inevitable. As live, we grow and change. I don’t know that marriage was meant to sustain 25 years, let alone 50. I think it’s great if it can, but do not see it as failure if it can not. I do not see a need to continue a tradition that makes it more difficult for people to be more who they are through a system which has nothing to do with what it means to be in a committed relationship (legal) or a community which claims to be based in love but will be the first to condemn you if you break its tenants. (religious)

Enjoy!