This post, in which I speak about what I believe love to be, and not to be, has given me great satisfaction - it has prompted some of the best responses I've ever received. I was surprised this morning, walking in the door from a long night at work, to find that my wife had read it last night (she usually takes one day a week and speed-reads through my stuff). She was visibly upset, and after retreating to the bedroom where our privacy is only marginally better than standing in the middle of a Mall on a Saturday in July, she asked me if I was in love with someone else. So, the only person to actually ask me the question was . . . Lisa.
Oy.
The long and the short of it is simple - I tried to explain what I meant by what I obviously did not present very well. It was a good opening, because we had an honest and open talk about our lives, and our life together. She told me she has not held the whole "meant for each other/soul mates" nonsense for years, and so I want to retract that. I said that my intention was only to offer the realistic perspective that human beings cannot possibly receive all that they need from a single other individual across the span of a lifetime - people change, needs and wants change, etc. Without ever once breaking one's wedding vows, it seems to me that relationships with those not one's spouse can be rewarding, fulfilling, benefiting all concerned - and should be considered a good thing for all concerned. I realize this is a very fine line upon which I am dancing here, but I reiterated to her that I was not speaking from experience, but only making a general observation about the realities of human interaction, the limits of love and marriage, and the possibilities open to people who are willing to be honest enough, and open enough, to the possibilities life provides them.
Human beings are far too complex and varied over time to think that, without constant attention, a marriage is somehow going to "take care of itself". It isn't. Being with another individual, figuring out all the big and small ways to fit one's life in to another's in the face of all the vagaries and obstacles requires work. It also requires an openness and honesty that change sometimes brings both challenges and opportunities. I told Lisa last night what I wrote in the comments below, that taking the easy road of divorce when we came quite close to falling apart in the summer of '06 seems, in retrospect, to have been the coward's way out. The marriage vows include the promise to be together "for better or worse", and sometimes worse can be pretty bad (I am excluding unhealthy, obsessive, or abusive situations here; run as fast as you can from that kind of thing). With liberal divorce laws, we feel quite free to leave when the going gets rough. How much better to face new challenges together than to throw up one's hands and say, "Oh, well, I tried."
Love, marriage - these are complex, strange things, never really understood, just coped with as we move through life. I like Alan's comment about tossing a book across a room, because all that pseudo-psychobabble we are fed only makes things worse, because we believe there are people out there who actually know the answers to our questions. There are no answers, and the questions aren't really questions so much as they are problems that require an ability to be open and honest.
One last thing. A few years ago, my uncle passed away. After coming back home from the funeral, I sent a note to my aunt - whom I did not know well, but always liked - thanking her for her hospitality (she opened her house to the huge brood of family that showed up for Ned's funeral), and offering on paper condolences I did not have a chance to offer in person. One of the things I wrote has stuck with me, and I think of it often. After reflecting on my own memories of Uncle Ned and what he did for me, and our whole family, during his life, and being grateful he was the kind of person he was (you never stopped laughing when you sat around with Ned), I said that I understood there are private things, secret things, between a husband and wife and those things are the glue that holds people together, no matter what others may think they see and know about a couple. No one knows about a couple, no matter how much they may think they know, because it is those private things that are the real secret. I won't share mine, but I will say that we too often forget those secret things, those private things. Marriages are a many layered, multifaceted experience; there is no summary to any one marriage, even one that ends. I think we would do far better to allow them to be experiences to which we are open, rather than riddles to be solved or some "thing" that has a reality to which ours must conform.
We are engaged in a mystery.
Virtual Tin Cup
