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Somehow Married 21
Years, or “Shouldn’t I Be in Study Hall
Right Now?”
Do any of you grown-ups ever stop in the middle of your day
to wonder, Who’s in charge here? I
do: all the time. Because even though I am an adult in full possession of a
mortgage, who votes in most elections, and has 3 teenagers, somehow I mostly
still feel about 16 years old. Like…I’m making payments on my daughter’s
college bill, and thinking, Shouldn’t I
be in study hall right now?
To my surprise, last November, I celebrated 21 years of
marriage to my husband Tim. I don’t feel old enough to even be married, let
alone have done it for over 2 decades which, face it, is longer than I have
ever stuck to anything in life, except for the act of drawing breath. This may
be why I have a nose piercing and hair the color of red velvet cake. In many
senses, I suppose I am still waiting for all the adults to show up and tell me
to shape up or else.
But suddenly, when it comes to knowing how to stay married,
I find that I AM the adult here. I have beaten the odds and stayed [mostly]
happily married to the same person on purpose for a long time. All at once, I
have something to say on a subject that does not include the words, “Buy L’Oreal:
you will regret the red-box brand every time.”
Ah, staying married! How I could (and shall) wax eloquent.
It’s not something that happens on accident, lemmee tell you. Once, I remember
an oft-divorced friend telling me mistily, “You’re so lucky you found your Mr.
Right the first time around.” I nearly snorted coffee out my nose in
indignation. Seriously, since when has staying married ever been about finding
Mr. or Mrs. Right?
Staying married is
about becoming Mr. or Mrs. Right.
See, this is a beef I have with romance novels. And my
halfhearted apologies in advance to those of you who just love you a good
Harlequin or Silhouette, but to me, those 250 page books end just when the real
story’s beginning. They tell about the easy part! Following your hormones and
primal mating urges, and all that… I always close the cover of that kind of
book thinking, And then what happened the
first time she was attracted to another man?
Or when his temper
became detrimental to their relationship?
Or when his drinking
got out of hand?
Or when she couldn’t
get along with her mother-in-law and family dynamics ignited into all-out war?
This is what happens when two imperfect people, who have had
the luxury for awhile now of being self-centered, try to meld their lives into
one. It can get really ugly. You can kind of hate each other sometimes. Or
often. Or whatever.
Back in the days when I devoured Harlequins like Corn Nuts,
I remember being especially enthralled by stories with the “Arranged Marriage”
theme. You know: the millionaire sheik who marries the reluctant nanny for the
sake of….whatever benefit such an arrangement could possibly offer a sheik. The
Gentlewoman of Reduced Circumstances who agrees to a discreet, platonic
marriage in order to save the family farm. (Forgive me if I have my have my
genres crossed.) I think I connected with them so strongly because I believe
this:
Ultimately, every
marriage is an arranged marriage.
No matter how long you’re married, at some point you’re
bound to wake up some day thinking, Oh
no…what have I done? And at that point, you can either spiral downhill
fast, or you can start to work really hard and maybe make something beautiful
happen.
So, although I’m not an expert (okay…I lie. After 21 year, I
do get to be called an expert,) I would like to share with you 4 things I’ve
learned about what it takes to stay [mostly] happily married for a long time:
4. Decide that you’re
a complete family before you have children. The two of you together are
enough. If you decide and are blessed to have children, your relationship with
them should be secondary to your relationship with each other. I have not
always done this one well, but I recognize the value of it. Kids grow up and
move on to their own lives. And who do they leave behind in the house? Two
people who started out with only each other, and will continue on together. How
sad it is, if they have forgotten their own family-hood along the way. How
beautiful if they’ve sustained it.
3. Don’t give the
silent treatment. No matter how you grew up, please grow out of this one
fast.
There is absolutely nothing good to be gained by subjecting your spouse
to 2 days of Punishment by Silence. Learn to fight quick, get it out of the
way, and get on to the making up part which, after 21 years, is way more fun
than it was way back when both of us were skinny, but neither of us knew a
thing.
2. Choose each other
over your family of origin. Do you seriously still hate his mom? Are you
still vying with her father for her respect? Listen to me: both of you sit
down; have a talk. Agree to have each other’s back; to be on Team Us and not on Team Them. The best thing my husband ever did for our marriage was
to take my side in the early years, when his mother was doling out hefty
helpings of unsolicited child-rearing advice. Choose each other first, and make
your loyalties known.
1. Be best friends.
If you are married, you should be your spouse’s best friend, and your spouse
should be yours, period. There is no reason for a married person to have a
different best friend who is the same sex as the spouse. That is just nonsense:
It is wishful thinking; an escape route; it is a denial of the life that is set
before you. If you are not best friends with your spouse, then become so. Work
at it. Play Cribbage. Watch British television together. Eat cake for
breakfast. Read poetry. Go snowshoeing in the moonlight. Being married to your
best friend is so much fun that the work it may take to get there and stay
there is worth it.
My hope, on this
Valentine’s Day week, is that if you are single, you will pin your hopes less
on finding the right person than on becoming
the right person. My wish for couples is that they might realize how much of
love really is a choice. Hourly, daily choices to be the right person; to call
out that right person in your mate. If you’re committed to this, you may wake
up one day to discover, “I feel like I should be in study hall, but somehow,
I’ve been married for over two decades.”
That’s a good thing. Long love is the greatest thing.
1 comment:
My hope, on this Valentine’s Day week, is that if you are single, you will pin your hopes less on finding the right person than on becoming the right person.
This^! So very well said, Carre! :)
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