SILVER ANNIVERSARY: SURVIVAL STRATEGIES
Six simple rules add up to 25 years of (mostly) bliss
Globe and Mail 2008.07.22
JUDITH TIMSON (jtimson@globeandmail.com)
We celebrated our 25th wedding anniversary last week. "How on earth did this happen?" I asked my husband, as if I were inquiring about a catastrophe instead of a triumph.
We live in an age in which popular culture seldom celebrates the long and relatively happy marriage. It's difficult to imagine a movie or play based on the same: Riveting! Absorbing! Resonant! You'll want to see One Ordinary Couple and delight in how they say to each other, for years on end: "How was your day today?" (Well you would, I guess, if it starred the Jolie-Pitts, but then they're not ordinary, are they?) Yet the truth is no couple and no marriage is ever really ordinary.
Marriage is, as my great-uncle Tom wrote to me before my wedding, "life's greatest adventure." (And the only adventure, as Voltaire more cynically put it, open to the cowardly.) It is also the very complicated dance two souls do when they vow to face the world together day in, day out, raising children, enduring crises and striving to carve out professional and personal fulfilment while - sometimes with gritted teeth - putting the interests of their partner first or at least on a par with their own. [This makes it sound scary!]
Since our generation was inexplicably the first to be brought up with little idea of personal sacrifice, I think marriage has been a steep challenge for the baby boomers. Not to mention its waning attraction among the next generation - the marriage rate is falling, and all over North America and Europe the institution of marriage has lost its cachet. (I know one elderly woman who refers to marriage as "the more traditional family route.") Never mind, I remember my own wedding day with wonder. Not just the hoopla but the hope. Why wasn't I more nervous about marrying? After all, my parents had divorced. Yet somehow I figured, dancing with my new husband on the rooftop of the Park Plaza Hotel, that we could do this. And somehow, at least for the first 25 years, we have.
Still, I don't believe you should brag about your marriage. First, because we all know where the bodies are buried - and there are always secrets and moments in a marriage that are so dark you don't want to ever think about them again. And second, the best way to fool the gods into giving you more of what you want is to not take undue credit for it in the first place.
But I figure I am at least entitled to pass along these modest tips to help you stay married through the tough times:
1. Forget that hoary edict about not going to bed angry with each other - I would never have slept if that were the case. Of course you can go to bed angry. Just don't take a weapon. Instead, hope that simple physical warmth will hold you till the dawn. And be grateful when it does.
2. Talking every little thing out can be highly overrated. Sometimes it's important to clear the air immediately, but often during a tense or wan time, a walk in the park, a paddle in a canoe or a quiet drive together will do.
3. Don't keep a ledger - even if it's for housekeeping or child care (I did the dishes last night so you get scrubbing those pots tonight). Trust that the contributions will even out over time.
4. Hard as it may be, always attempt to give your partner the benefit of the doubt. If you assume good intentions, a lot of umbrage simply falls by the wayside.
5. Since most arguments are said to take place within 15 minutes of spouses walking in the door, greet your partner lovingly no matter what disasters have occurred during your day. The Gap has personal greeters; marriage needs them, too.
6. And, finally, accept that you have to ride the cycles of happiness and discontent. Virtually everyone I know who is married confesses that one minute they are looking at their loved one and thinking, "How did I ever get so lucky?" and the next they feel like they're watching a horror movie with their spouse in the scariest role.
Knowing the good cycle will inevitably return is immensely reassuring.
These may seem like flimsy rules on which to forge a marriage, but they're a simple reality check against the avalanche of unrealistic expectations surrounding most marriages. Adjust if necessary to fit your marriage, then add all the good stuff, or what one of my sisters-in-law recently wished us many more years of: "love, caring, understanding, curiosity, optimism, intelligence and more." And whether you've accomplished 25 years of married life together or even just one, pop the cork of some good champagne and celebrate.
It is indeed a triumph.
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