In which goblinbox hosts a SECOND guest post! Please welcome Kristie as she speaks of marriage.
I have been married for 13 years to a man I’ve loved for over 16. By today’s standards, I was a child bride, marrying him 2 weeks after I graduated college as I did, though we dated from October of my freshman year. If I’d been smart I would’ve married him at Christmas instead of in May, and saved the 5 months double rent. But when you’re 22 you don’t know anything, and with romance in your heart, stars in your eyes, and your mother’s morality wagging its finger in the back of your mind, you don’t really think of a marriage as a financial arrangement that could be managed for maximum return. Well, the 22-year-old me didn’t. Perhaps some of you were wiser and more worldly than I. Then again, there’s a lot to be said for innocence. But that’s another post.
I truly believe that if anyone tried to tell us what marriage truly meant, even good marriages, we would think they were lying. And if we believed them, no one would ever get married. So it’s probably best no one tries. Though I often think that if we were spoon-fed a more realistic view of what human beings can expect of each other in partnership, we’d be happier, and less hard on ourselves and those we love than we are when the fairytale comes crashing down about us.
Sometimes when I look at this man I live with, and wonder how it is possible that after all these years living with him, knowing him better than anyone else on earth, he is still very much a mystery. I wonder if I’m as mystifying to him. He likes to tell me that every time I ask, “What the fuck are you doing?†he is obviously successful in keeping the mystery alive.
All that said, I’d do it all again. I know I’m with the right man, and while we don’t always like each other every minute of every day, love is the bedrock we reach when we’re scraping bottom. And even when we’re pissed at each other, we still like each other better than anyone else in the world, and we’re cognizant of that. When we’re not pissed at each other, life is pretty grand. He makes me laugh, and he takes good care of me, and he lets me buy all the guitars I want. I make him laugh, I take good care of him, and I have a killer rack. So we keep coming home to each other. Marriage vows are made over and over; don’t let anyone tell you otherwise. I have no delusions that we are impervious to the cracks and strains that break other marriages. We do the best we can, like anyone else, and hope our luck holds.
I think there are advantages to marrying young, in that you grow up together, and forge a life that always includes the two of you; it’s built that way. When you marry young, you don’t have to argue over whose stuff stays and whose doesn’t when you move in together; you don’t have any stuff. My friends who have married later in life, when they are more established as individuals, have, to my perception, found it more difficult to merge two lives into one, agonizing over decisions to share names and checking accounts just for starters. And I know that if my life changed, and I was starting over tomorrow, I am not the pliable girl I was at 22. I’d probably avoid marriage entirely, and keep a ready harem of handsome and available men to meet my womanly needs when I wanted them to, and stay out of my hair otherwise.
In many ways, our life together is exactly what I dreamed of, hoped for, and expected out of married life. However, if someone had foretold for me all the events that would befall us (or we would rush headlong into) in our marriage, I would’ve told them to put down the crack pipe. Still, we are still here, together. And that’s something.
Wedding Vows
A marriage is
a thousand tiny heartbreaks:
the heartbreaks of change, of crushed hope
and forgotten dreams;
the heartbreaks of empty hours, empty conversation
and empty pockets;
the heartbreaks of misinterpreted messages, misaligned priorities
and mismatched flatware;
the heartbreaks of vicious truths, vicious accusations
and vicious circles;
the heartbreak of begging for recognition, being unable to offer any,
and lonely, silent minutes of our aching need;
the heartbreaks of tired arms, tired lives
and tired excuses.
I had no idea how we’d maim each other,
aiming with deadly accuracy honed over years.
I had no idea of our capacity for forgiveness.
I had no idea that to carry the heartbreak, and to be standing still,
together,
is love, too.
20 Aug 2002
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All I can say is congratulations. You have accomplished what I believe is a lifelong marriage. I’m slightly older than I was when I first started looking for a wife, when I was younger I wanted someone who didnt care if I went my own way, who cooked like mom, and who would let me spend a couple bucks on drinkin myself stupid once or twice a week. Now, I look for a wife that can get pissed off at me to the point she’d seriously considering carving my liver out of my ass with a rusty dildo from a male polish prison and she’d still say there isnt another human being I’d rather be here with right now than you. I wish you the best, and thank you for sharing you’ve given me hope again
Loved the killer rack statement. But that fucking poem – ‘I had no idea how we’d maim each other’ – was brutal. Damn near made me cry.
The tone of this piece seems so… resigned, somehow, to me. ‘We grew up together, this is our home, our life, it’s what we know, we’re used to it, and I certainly wouldn’t enter into another such contract were I suddenly freed of this one, but it’s home.’ Might be an artifact of my own head space, of course (ya think?), but no advice about how you two’ve survived, no certain knowledge that X and Y made you better than the other couples who failed…
Perhaps the survival of a marriage is simply endurance and nothing else, save that one little thing: liking each other best.
“And even when we’re pissed at each other, we still like each other better than anyone else in the world, and we’re cognizant of that. When we’re not pissed at each other, life is pretty grand.”
That’s totally it, man.
That’s pretty cool that they are still together. It would be nice if all young marriages lasted like that. But I think I’m right where I’m meant to be and I feel fortunate to have been given a second chance to be with the one I should have waited for.
Not resignation; realism. I am happy in my marriage, and I didn’t say I would “certainly†avoid imperial entanglements in the future. Certainty is a luxury I no longer indulge in. I think we’ve learned over the years (and continue to learn) what you can expect from another human being, and what you cannot, and that relationships are not all or nothing propositions. I know a lot of marriages where one partner is continually disappointed by who the other is, and I think that’s really sad. It’s sad for the one disappointed, because they always feel like they’ve been short-changed in life, and it’s sad for the disappointer, because they are faced daily with the knowledge that the person they love most in the world thinks they’re almost good enough, but not quite. That sounds like hell to me. The Mr. and I have some very fundamental differences of outlook and expectations that do cause us friction from time to time (and not the good kind). But if you will only find acceptable a person who is 100% perfect with you 100% of the time, you’re destined to be disappointed. How many of us are 100% of what we want to be for ourselves every day? 80% is a goodly amount of meshing, and we’re smart enough to know we’ve got a good thing here. The fact that everyone who knows us tells us how good we are together only reinforces that feeling. A good marriage is about deep and abiding companionship, first and foremost. If you haven’t got that, you haven’t got anything. I am thrilled to have that, and consider myself fortunate that I do; no one’s resigned here. Don’t underrate the value of feeling at home with someone; I daresay, it’s one of the best feelings in the world.
Another part of that realism is being able to figure out whence the trouble comes. There will always be trouble, even in the best marriages, and every very long-term couple has stared into the abyss a few times. This summer, I, my mom (who’s been married to my dad for almost 37 years), and my cousin (who is going through a very painful divorce), talked about that, and she was rather surprised that, with our long marriages, the idea of quitting had ever crossed our minds. People need to know that that will happen, and it is surmountable, but not always. A relationship lasts because the person standing beside you still looks better than the abyss, and it’s worth trying again. When the abyss seems more tempting, it’s probably time to leap. Loving people is easy; living with them is hard, and I think it’s important to recognize whether your problems are a the result of a lack of love, or the friction of living in close quarters. Not that there aren’t other problems to be had, but often it is the day-to-day bits of sand in your shorts that erode relationships. Being able to separate the sand from the soul connection can keep a marriage alive.
I don’t give advice anymore. I think it’s arrogant, on a couple of counts. The idea that we are somehow better than other couples who “failedâ€â€¦well, I wouldn’t go there myself. A marriage that ends is not necessarily a failure, first of all. I have a friend who has been married several times; she refers to those break-ups as “when that marriage completed.†To her, at least now, that’s exactly what happened. People come into our lives for a reason, season, or a lifetime, and the relationship did what it was meant to do or it would still be ongoing. I really think it’s a healthy attitude, and valid perspective.
Giving advice also assumes that what is right for me must be right for you, which is almost never true, or that I know you and your situation better than you do, which is never true. And in this case, it assumes I can see the future. Can I say that Scott and I will be together forever? It is our desire and our intention to be, but no, I cannot. I have no idea what life will throw at us. Antiguo and his wife were together 32 years when she decided she was done and it crushed him, because he still loved her as much as ever. If 32 years can be set aside like that, I’d be foolish at 13 years to think we were impervious. That kind of arrogance leads to complacency, which can definitely tank a relationship. I can tell you a few points I think we have in our favor. We have always had similar desires relationship-wise and life-wise. We are equals, in intelligence, in education, in abilities, and we respect each other because of that. Neither of us considers the other a fixer-upper. We have excellent senses of humor. And we can talk. We have always been able to talk, about everything.
They give people gold medals for endurance, you know. Endurance requires hard choices, commitment, perseverance, an appreciation of the big picture, and devotion. Not bad qualities, methinks.
The poem made me think of that line from “Hallelujah.” …”and all I ever learned from love was how to shoot at someone who outdrew you…”
We hurt the ones we love, and they hurt us back, because we know each other well enough to know exactly what each other’s buttons are, and we are often far too clever for our own good when it comes to pushing them. I think part of making a life together comes when you can each have compassion for the other person for acting badly sometimes when he or she can’t help it, and they can have that same compassion for you. For me and Michael, that usually comes *after* we’ve been really angry for awhile, but we get there eventually. 😉
AWESOME…I can’t wait 🙂
“When the abyss seems more tempting, it’s probably time to leap. Loving people is easy; living with them is hard, and I think it’s important to recognize whether your problems are a the result of a lack of love, or the friction of living in close quarters.”
Well said.
“We are equals, in intelligence, in education, in abilities, and we respect each other because of that. Neither of us considers the other a fixer-upper. We have excellent senses of humor. And we can talk. We have always been able to talk, about everything.”
If there’s a secret? I think it’s there.
I appreciate some of the messages in this post but the bottom line is that when I look out into my environment and see 4 out 5 marraiges either failed or in the process of failing it does not leave me very inspired to run out and get one of my own. It’s a solution to nothing and a fountainhead of misery to most. Tell me I’m wrong. This culture we’ve developed here in the US is simply not designed to sustain the institution of marraige. If anything it’s designed to make it fail.
Is it really 4 out of 5 now? Fair enough, but I have to ask this question: Would you be willing to say that American culture is designed to sustain the growth and full realization of the individual (and single) person?
And while I’m asking questions, I’m interested in your (or anyone else’s) take on this one: What do you see as the cultural elements most inimical to either marriage or self-realization of the individual? Are they the same in both cases? And if so, what’s the significance of that? Are our institutions faulty, or are the people we are and bring to them less than prepared to partake in them? I really don’t know, but if institutions are made up of people, my thoughts would tend toward a necessary evolution of individuals as requisite to any evolution of our institutions.