IT’S one of the things we are most afraid might happen to us. We go to great lengths to avoid it. And yet we do it all the same: We marry the wrong person. Partly, it’s because we have a bewildering array of problems that emerge when we try to get close to others. We seem normal only to those who don’t know us very well. In a wiser, more self-aware society than our own, a standard question on any early dinner date would be: “And how are you crazy?”…. Nobody’s perfect. The problem is that before marriage, we rarely delve into our complexities. Whenever casual relationships threaten to reveal our flaws, we blame our partners and call it a day. As for our friends, they don’t care enough to do the hard work of enlightening us. One of the privileges of being on our own is therefore the sincere impression that we are really quite easy to live with.
If one considers marriage on its merits, it seems patently obvious that pledging to spend the rest of one’s life with another person is at best fantastical and at worst unrealistic. Such a pledge can seem to the uninitiated a virtually guaranteed exercise in futility, destined to end in considerable pain and heartache. Marrying another person- “wrong” or not- can expose a lot in both parties. Few of us are anything close to prepared to negotiating the long term with the same person along for the ride…but that’s not to say it can’t be done. It’s absolutely possible to negotiate life’s hurdles and crises with your partner in crime by your side over the long haul. I suppose that’s why so many of us say “I do.”
The challenges can be especially daunting (and unrecognized) in one’s 20s, when self-awareness tends to be at low ebb for most humanoids. People grow and mature at different rates, and managing those changes can be a HUGE challenge. I know; I’ve been there, I’ve done that…and not with an overabundance of grace or alacrity. This truth has left me with boundless admiration for those who manage to navigate life’s peaks and valleys together; it takes commitment and the willingness to do the work. Marrying the “wrong person” depends on your approach and definition. As with anything else, lemons can be made into lemonade. You just need to be willing to do the work.
I don’t mean to make the idea of a lifelong commitment sound like drudgery. It may be for some, but the quality and joy of such a commitment is largely dependent on those undertaking that journey. When it comes to marriage, as with most anything in life, attitude is everything. Without optimism, marriage- and life in general- can be a journey weighted down with a surfeit of misery and despair. Hope is what keeps us moving forward, and if there’s one thing a marriage should begin with, it’s an abundance of hope.
For most of recorded history, people married for logical sorts of reasons: because her parcel of land adjoined yours, his family had a flourishing business, her father was the magistrate in town, there was a castle to keep up, or both sets of parents subscribed to the same interpretation of a holy text. And from such reasonable marriages, there flowed loneliness, infidelity, abuse, hardness of heart and screams heard through the nursery doors. The marriage of reason was not, in hindsight, reasonable at all; it was often expedient, narrow-minded, snobbish and exploitative. That is why what has replaced it — the marriage of feeling — has largely been spared the need to account for itself.
Here in the 21st century, marriage is- at least in the Western world- no longer viewed as an economic or political transaction. Daughters aren’t married off to cement alliances, end wars, or advance political agendas. People- women in particular- are no longer defined as property, commodities whose value is delineated in political and/or economic terms. Thankfully, I didn’t have to give Erin’s father 40 goats…or I’d still be single.
These days, men and women are free agents, able to make their own decisions and determine their own fate. This relatively new historical reality has created the modern marriage of feeling. Freed from the pressures and political/economic considerations of the marriage of reason, individuals may now choose their own marriage partners for their own reasons.
What matters in the marriage of feeling is that two people are drawn to each other by an overwhelming instinct and know in their hearts that it is right. Indeed, the more imprudent a marriage appears (perhaps it’s been only six months since they met; one of them has no job or both are barely out of their teens), the safer it can feel. Recklessness is taken as a counterweight to all the errors of reason, that catalyst of misery, that accountant’s demand. The prestige of instinct is the traumatized reaction against too many centuries of unreasonable reason.
The success or failure of each model of marriage was (and is) up to the married couple and the approach each party took to the union. Much depends on the reasons each person enters into a marriage…and those reasons often have little to do with the object of one’s affection. Very often, it’s about ourselves and what we’re looking for…and whether or not we recognize and are willing to honor that.
[T]hough we believe ourselves to be seeking happiness in marriage, it isn’t that simple. What we really seek is familiarity — which may well complicate any plans we might have had for happiness. We are looking to recreate, within our adult relationships, the feelings we knew so well in childhood. The love most of us will have tasted early on was often confused with other, more destructive dynamics: feelings of wanting to help an adult who was out of control, of being deprived of a parent’s warmth or scared of his anger, of not feeling secure enough to communicate our wishes. How logical, then, that we should as grown-ups find ourselves rejecting certain candidates for marriage not because they are wrong but because they are too right — too balanced, mature, understanding and reliable — given that in our hearts, such rightness feels foreign. We marry the wrong people because we don’t associate being loved with feeling happy.
I suppose the short version is that finding the “right” life partner is a delicate undertaking fraught with all sorts of hurdles, hang-ups, and complications. The baggage each person brings with them impacts the prospects and quality of a marriage; how that baggage is stowed can be key to whether the boat floats…or sinks.
Too many of us enter into a marriage without being fully cognizant of who we are and what we truly want out of life. I can speak to this, because a lack of self-knowledge was the proximate cause of the demise of my two previous marriages. Turns out that entering into a long-term relationship believing the other person to be all that you need to be complete is a recipe for disaster.
The good news is that it doesn’t matter if we find we have married the wrong person.
We mustn’t abandon him or her, only the founding Romantic idea upon which the Western understanding of marriage has been based the last 250 years: that a perfect being exists who can meet all our needs and satisfy our every yearning.
I don’t believe in the idea that we marry the “wrong”…or “right” person. The choice of partners very often has far more to do with ourselves than with any potential partner. The more accurate question would be if one is in the “right” or “wrong” emotional space to enter fairly into a marriage. If a person is able to gain a greater familiarity with themselves and what they want and need, the odds are good that they’ll marry the “right” person…because they’re the “right” person themselves.
It took me a long time to recognize the truth and wisdom in that seemingly simple concept. Self-awareness may sound simple, but finding it can feel like chasing butterflies. For me, it’s an ongoing challenge to be honest with myself about what I need and want..and to trust that my partner has my back. I wish it hadn’t taken five-plus decades to get to that point, but the good news is that I’m in a very good place. If there’s one lesson I’ve managed to force through my sometimes astonishingly dense skull, it’s that my happiness begins with me. If I can deal with that effectively and honestly, the odds are good that I’ll be a good husband and partner. It’s an ongoing struggle, but at least I (usually) recognize my demons.
Any good marriage runs on honesty and hope- honesty (first and foremost) with oneself and one’s partner, and hope- the belief that two people can and will negotiate their way through life together. It’s an awesome and empowering feeling to know that, no matter what, someone always has your back.
You just have to do the work.
