I wrote this for an undergraduate English class in 2005

Marriage

Another Saturday night, I sat at home and asked myself where I had gone wrong.   I had tried again to persuade my wife to spend some time with me, arguing my point quite passionately.  In the end, she walked out the door dressed to make men notice and headed for her favorite dance club.  I knew she would come home late and be quite amorous, but was this what I wanted: spending every Saturday alone while Phyllis went out to express her individuality in the hopes she would come home and lavish her built-up energy on me?  It wasn’t enough, but could I ask her to stop?  She claimed it was who she was.  That night, I realized that we did not have the exact definition of marriage and probably never would.  A month later, Phyllis packed her belongings while I was at work and left me.  Six months later, we were divorced.  We had spent five years pursuing a love that was not based on a mutual definition of marriage.  

Since that day, I have sought to find a personal definition of marriage.  Having been married and divorced twice, I wanted to gain a better understanding of what it meant to be married.  I compared my first two attempts at marriage.  I watched dozens of married couples, talked to people in both failed and successful relationships, and read a few books on the subject.  Most people think they are familiar with what marriage means, yet while I know three couples who got married this summer, I also know three others who are getting a divorce.  Many people of my generation enter into it without knowing what it really means, and so they are doomed to fail.  After spending the last twenty months reflecting on the matter, I now understand what marriage is to me: marriage is a commitment to achieve a lifelong partnership for the sake of fulfilling our need for intimacy and love through faith, compromise, and understanding.

As an example of a couple with a strong relationship, I looked to my parents, who have been married for 33 years.  They have had their ups and downs, and they somehow have survived.  By watching them, I found the first ingredient for my definition of marriage: commitment.

Commitment is something many newlyweds take for granted.  When we enter into marriage, we are promising to do something that is against our human nature.  We are promising to consider someone’s view other than our own at all times.  We are promising to suspend our self-centered natures.  This is no easy task, and it will most likely take a lot of work.  Every morning after the infatuation of the first two years of marriage wears off, we must consciously choose to love the person with us in the hope that by allowing our spouse to feel love, they will reciprocate and fulfill our need to be loved in an intimate relationship.  Every day of marriage is the keeping of that promise.  

My mother tells of a time in her marriage when she no longer liked the man my father had become, how every day she had to choose to stay with him. This went on for a couple of years, during which time she decided to love him and wait for him to open up to her needs.  In time, her patience was rewarded.  He was as lost as she was, but it took time for them to learn to give each other what they needed.  They gave each other the time that was necessary because of their commitment to a promise and to each other.

By looking at the relationship of my sister Danielle and her husband Don, I came to my second breakthrough.  Faith keeps marriage afloat in troubled water. 

My sister had taken me into her home for two weeks after my wife left.  I was a wreck, barely able to take care of myself.  I watched the way she ran her house.  I started to ask her questions about her marriage.  She committed, but she told me that was not enough; she also had faith.  In her mind, so long as she did her best, God would see her through to the other side.  This shocked me because I never thought of my sister as a religious person; she never spoke of it.  While we were all raised Catholic, I never saw our religion as anything more than an obligation that interfered with my opportunity to sleep in on Sundays. 

My sister explained that whenever she had a crisis in her marriage, she would continue working on it with faith that it would all work out in the end.  After hearing her view on faith, I looked at every happily married couple I knew.  In every case, they shared a common faith, whether it was Christian, pagan, or faith in the law of averages.  They all believed that hardships would pass if a person weathered them faithfully.

Through my two attempts at marriage, I discovered that compromise and understanding are two vital tools for marriage.  In addition to good, honest communication, these two traits are essential to building trust and showing the maturity of a developed marriage.  Each person brings individuality to a marriage, which must be forged with that of their partner like iron and tin into the steel of something greater than its components.  Compromise is the hammer that shapes steel.

Most couples enter into marriage in a state of infatuation, only to find that one day, they wake up, and the obsession is gone.  A couple finds that they agree on a lot less than they thought they did.  This is natural, and until the obsession is gone, true love cannot begin.  True love occurs when someone makes conscious efforts to express love.  This love takes effort, discipline, and lots of compromise.  In the course of their daily lives, individuals in a couple will make choices based on their backgrounds.  These choices and how the couple deals with differences will shape their marriage.  In situations where couples make different choices based on their backgrounds, a compromise must be made.  Perhaps a woman grew up in a family that expressed love by helping each other with the daily chores, while her husband was raised in a family where his mom did all of the housework and his dad focused only on earning an income.  In order to express love to his wife, the man may have to compromise and show his love by rolling up his sleeves and helping her.  Through compromise, that husband has taken a step to shaping the nature of their relationship.

If compromise is our hammer, then understanding is the anvil or base that holds us steady.  Through understanding and reasonable, honest communication, we build trust and a more profound love.

A friend’s father tells a story that exemplifies the importance of understanding.  He was throwing a summer-stock party when he and his wife were in the early years of their marriage.  They had two children who were very little, both of them under the age of 4.  Trying to be a good college professor’s wife, my friend’s mother had been busy all week preparing for the party while caring for the two young children.  His bosses were coming to the event, and this was his chance to network.  They both were really stressed about having a successful party because his career was just getting started.  When he came home on the day of the party to check on the preparations, he walked into the kitchen just as his wife decided she had endured enough. 

As my friend tells it, his mother “took out her frustration on a defenseless chocolate cake” that she had baked for the party, flinging the offending baked goods right out the back door.  The husband watched the cake sail out into the backyard and decided that, really, it wasn’t all that important to have perfect desserts that night.  His understanding of her unique communication allowed him to weigh what was most important to their marriage and react accordingly.  A lesser man might have been overcome by his frustration and responded to the cake toss by yelling, thereby adding to their mutual stress.  Instead, he saw the level of her frustration and understood her act for what it was.

After all of my soul-searching and asking questions, I reached my definition of marriage just in time for what I hope is the last great love of my life. I am engaged again, and will step into marriage this coming year.  Hopefully, I will be a lot wiser, and I am definitely committed to making a daily choice to love my future bride with faith, compromise, and understanding.  I have learned that sometimes a couple is in harmony, working together for what both need.  Sometimes, you go crazy working to make sure your spouse has what she needs.  Sometimes, your spouse goes crazy working to make sure you have what you need.  And sometimes, well, it’s just time to throw the cake.

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2024 Addition

Back in 2005, I wrote some thoughts down, and then I married Peggy in 2006. Surprisingly, we’re still going strong! Looking back, though, I realize that a lot of what I said back then sounds a bit naive. I also glossed over some key points—like how Peggy is my rock, supporting and caring for me in ways I can’t always articulate. It’s like she has this superpower: without even saying a word, she inspires me to be a better, smarter, kinder, and more progressive person. Honestly, I just want her to think I’m cooler than when we first met!