My husband of 11 years and I sit at these weddings listening to our in-thrall friends describe all the ways in which they will excel at being married…. “I will always be your best friend,” they say, reading from wrinkled pieces of paper held in shaking hands. “I will never let you down.”…. I clap along with everyone else; I love weddings. Still, there is so much I want to say. I want to say that one day you and your husband will fight about missed flights, and you’ll find yourself wistful for the days when you had to pay for only your own mistakes. I want to say that at various points in your marriage, may it last forever, you will look at this person and feel only rage. You will gaze at this man you once adored and think, “It sure would be nice to have this whole place to myself.”
Summer is marriage season, and holy matrimony is a subject that has been on my mind a good deal of late. Those who’ve been to a wedding recently are familiar with the expressions of hopes and dreams, the happily ever after sentiments that are part and parcel of a marriage ceremony. Every marriage begins with a pledge of undying love and devotion, as well as the hope for a happy and prosperous future. Possibilities seem endless, the future bright, the love and devotion unshakable and absolute.
Then everyone packs up, goes home, and gets on with their lives. The happy couple is left to figure out how to negotiate their new life together, something no one is ever truly prepared for. I’m here to tell you- as if you didn’t already know- it ain’t easy.
Having recently remarried on August 1st, I’m revisiting a social convention I’ve not previously been very successful at. That failure, if it can in fact even be called that, has at least at much to do with my previous inability to get my $#!% together and learn to love and appreciate myself as with the shortcomings of my previous inamorata. Of course, the demise (or success) of a marriage is always a team effort; failure never happens in a vacuum. Still, my previous experience has taught me how fragile the institution can be if not tended to properly…and “properly” means looking out for oneself every bit as much as it does your partner. I’ve learned the hard way that if you expend your energy trying to make/keep your partner happy both of you will be miserable in the end. When you place your partner’s well-being and happiness above your own, a relationship that should be based on balance and mutual respect can go off the rails and become horribly out of whack.
I feel fortunate that I’ve finally done the heavy lifting involved in getting to know myself. Does this mean that I’m well-adjusted, emotionally healthy, and happy? For the most part, yes…but happiness isn’t a destination. It’s a journey, and if there’s one thing I know without a doubt, it’s that this journey is anything but a straight line connecting Point A to Point B.
I still struggle with parts of myself that I don’t like or sometimes have difficulty accepting and managing. My ADD can make simple organizational tasks difficult, and living with a planner who can be very organized can be frustrating and humbling. I still find myself reacting to triggers that have been there my entire life and have nothing to do with Erin. Even though I know I don’t need to react to something she has no responsibility for or connection with, life-long habits can be exceedingly difficult to break.
Two steps forward, one step back….
In Zen Buddhism, meditation helps practitioners detach from the cycle of desire and suffering. In my brief stint as a religious studies major, I preferred Pure Land Buddhism, an alternate path to enlightenment for people who (as one professor told us) may find it difficult to abandon worldly pain and passion because those things can also yield such beauty and comfort. He summed it up as: “Life is suffering — and yet.”
I think about that all the time: “And yet.” Such hedging, to me, is good religion and also the key to a successful marriage. In the course of being together forever, you come across so many “and yets”….
My experience has shown me that the biggest challenge in navigating a marriage is effectively managing the only thing I have absolute control over- myself. I control how I react. I control how I feel. I control whether or not I’m quick to anger and/or take offense. Sometimes that works well, sometimes not so much. There are, and will be, events and issues I have every right to be angry or disappointed about. The challenge lies in choosing which battles are worth fighting…and recognizing those I should be fighting with myself. Sometimes it’s easier to lash out at the person you love- they’re close at hand and present an easy to hit target- when I could and should more productively direct that negative energy in a more positive direction and recognize what the problem really is.
I’m fortunate to be with someone who’s very comfortable with herself and- even though this is her first (hopefully only) marriage- knows what she wants and (sometimes even more importantly) what she doesn’t want in a relationship. I’ve learned from Erin that sometimes the best thing you can do for a relationship is to take care of yourself. After all, if you can’t find it within to be good to yourself, how could you possibly expect that from anyone else?
I love this person, and yet she’s such a mess. And yet when I’m sick, he’s not very nurturing. And yet we don’t want the same number of children. And yet I sometimes wonder what it would be like to be single again.
The longer you are with someone, the more big and little “and yets” rack up. You love this person. Of course you plan to be with him or her forever. And yet forever can begin to seem like a long time. Breaking up and starting fresh, which everyone around you seems to be doing, can begin to look like a wonderful and altogether logical proposition.
Having dealt with ADD for what I in retrospect recognize as my entire life, and with depression my entire adult life, I have some significant challenges in my journey. Having encountered difficulties along the way hardly make me unique; all of us have things in our lives that hold us back. What I do know is that the hurdles I’ve faced- and will continue to face- are significant. These are things I must remain conscious and cognizant of in order that I may manage them effectively. If I can accomplish that, I can navigate my way through life with a minimum of difficulty and disruption. The challenges I experience with tasks requiring organization are here for the duration, and I’ve learned that fighting that reality is a recipe for disaster. My struggle with depression is much the same, and as I’ve learned from long and often difficult experience, it can have nothing to do with happiness. Sometimes, it’s just there, like an unwanted guest overstaying a welcome they never really had.
Will this marriage last for the duration? I certainly hope so. I know neither of us would have chose to undertake this journey together if we didn’t believe that we have something special and durable. Even with that faith and conviction in place, there’s no way to know what the future holds. We’re two very blessed and fortunate people, and there’s no reason to believe that won’t continue to be the case. No matter how hard we prepare for the future and try to be ready when it arrives, there’s no way to know what it will look like when we get there.
In the meantime, like the author, Erin and I will be dealing with our own set of “and yets”- some maddening, some humorous, most somewhere in between. That’s what happens when two independent minds decide to join forces and set off together to see what the future holds. We all hope there’s a pot of gold at the end of our personal rainbow, and I hope for our sakes that there will be.
Marriage is hard, but if you do it right, if you take care of yourself and each other, it can be something pretty special. Sometimes that very simple idea gets lost in the Sturm und Drang of everyday life. The challenge is to remember why you married your spouse in the first place, and to keep that in the forefront of your consciousness. In the immortal words of Abraham Lincoln:
“Be excellent to one another.”
