love and relationships

On Marriage


I was supposed to write a post on marriage for 50 Something, the grog where I am a contributer. It was a response to an article in The Atlantic Journal by a writer/performer/blogger named Sandra Tsing Loh. She’s getting divorced. Not because she is a lazy Gen-X with delusions of having it all, as long as the all doesn’t include any drudgery like working on her relationship, but because marriage is an outmoded and impractical institution whose very existence is why people cannot manage to commit and stay together. Or something like that.

But then, the governor of South Carolina went hiking the Applachian Trail in Brazil and proved to be a horrid author of bad love letters, Farrah died – which is somehow pivotal to my inner child and Michael Jackson super-nova’d all over the media providing me with a chance to show a cruel heartless side of myself I usually reserve for the widdas.

Of course a child-free weekend and a wedding anniversary may have played into this too, but somehow the whole marriage piece didn’t get written.

And then someone else did a much better job than I could have and I thought, Meh, why revisit it? It’s not as if I have vast experience to draw on.

It was then that it occurred to me that just being married didn’t make me any more of an expert on marriage than being widowed made me a role model for other grieving people. Ultimately our paths through life are hacked through life’s jungle with painstaking perseverance and intestinal fortitude.

But I did go back and reread Ms. Tsing Loh’s article. She was married for twenty years and I wondered what possessed a person to walk away from a mate who wasn’t engaged in any deal-breaking activity. Perhaps I had judged her too harshly?

And a quick second through convinced me I hadn’t.

Marriage was just too much work. Work that, on a rating scale, fell after the maintenance of children, home and career. Marriage, apparently, is supposed to sustain itself forever and ever on the initial burst of lust and Disney Princess fervor from which it began. If it can’t, it wasn’t meant to be.

And certainly some relationships have a shelf life. Tsing Loh’s probably falls in the category of those unions that haven’t anywhere to go, but is it grown up to recognize, own it and move on or have an affair, blame it on hunter/gatherer DNA and trash marriage in general?

I approach my marriage as a work in progress. A masterpiece revealing itself to be a mural to rival Monet’s lillies. It will take as much forever as I am allowed to see it all and whatever work is involved is, therefore, worth the time and effort.

Anyway, I’d have written something like that if I hadn’t been distracted by life.

Special Marriage Meme for Our Anniversary


I found this months ago on Archie’s site and thought it appropriate for the celebration of Rob and my second wedding anniversary which is today. Archie found it originally over at Litlove’s delightful blog and then saw it again on Lily’s entertaining blog.

What are your middle names?

Mine is “Marie” the same as my mother’s. Rob’s middle name is “Shaun”. I don’t know the significance of it.

How long have you been together?

We met on the YWBB, specifically on a post he put up on the general section of the board. That was in December of 2006. Rob saved that post. Our first long conversation was in a chat room. We ended up being the last two people there despite the fact that there was another woman stalking Rob at the time and pulling him out to side chats. Eventually he ditched her to talk with me although on the surface neither of us were looking at our getting to know each other as anything more than virtual friends. 

How long did you know each other before you began dating?

We were e-mail pals for about  five or six weeks before we were more than that. We were in contact just about every day. Support at first but that changed rather quickly and became more of the getting to know you stuff that happens when people first meet. 

Who asked whom out?

He sent me an e-mail the day after the first anniversary of Will’s death. It was long, rambling, very sweet. I was stunned. I liked him, but he’d been so adamant about internet romances being bad things (there was a lot of that going around on the widda board at the time) that I put the idea way on the back burner. My BFF was always pushing me to try and sound him out about the possibility of he and I, but I rebuffed her. I respected Rob too much and wasn’t going to endanger our friendship by being forward. Our first “date” was via the phone. I was reluctant to go to the phone. I don’t do “good phone”, but he was as easy to talk to as he was to correspond with.

How old are you?

I was born in Iowa in 1963. He was born in Ontario in 1961. I have never been younger than a man I was with. It’s kinda fun. He grumps a bit because he was younger (a few months) than Shelley and he hates having lost the age “advantage”.

Whose siblings do you see the most?

Mine, I guess, but we live pretty far away from family. Rob’s siblings are younger (some a lot younger) and they aren’t a close-knit group. I have met only his sisters and not his younger brother. Funnily, I have met all of Shelley’s siblings, nieces and nephews and many of her cousins, aunts and uncles.

My sister, DNOS, and her husband and son are the ones we see the most, aside from Shelley’s family.  My younger siblings are not really part of our lives, but Rob has met them both. He’s also met much of my extended family and I have met a few of his mom’s extended family.

Which situation is hardest on you as a couple?

I had to think about this a long time because I don’t think we have any issues that are “hard”. There have been issues that have come up concerning the children and other family members, but nothing that we couldn’t deal with. Recently we have been tossing around the “where will we be buried” thing again. I have a plot back in Des Moines where Will is but haven’t much desire to be buried there myself. Rob’s late wife is still, mostly, in a container in our basement. I think it would be easier if we all just faded into nothingness like Yoda did, but that’s just me.

Did you go to the same school?

No.

Are you from the same home town?

No. Not even the same country.

Who is smarter?

That depends on who you are asking and what the topic is, but generally, I would say he is a tad bit smarter than I am in most areas and a whole lot smarter in his fields of expertise.

Who is the most sensitive?

To others? He is. I am about as tactful as a face plant on the pavement. In terms of personal slight? That would be me. My feelings get hurt very easily because I read things into people’s actions and words that perhaps they don’t realize they are telegraphing along with the surface content. It has made life hard for me and sometimes still, I feel the need to back away from humanity to ease the scraped raw feeling I get from being too close.

Where do you eat out most as a couple?

My food allergies make eating out … challenging. There is a place I love in Edmonton called The High Level Diner, but mainly, it’s Humpty’s, Boston Pizza and Subway.

Where is the furthest you have traveled together as a couple?

By road? To Iowa and then southern Illinois for our honeymoon. But long trips are a fact of life here in the Great White North. No place we have been has been less than a five hour drive. We’ve been to Jasper to get married, Regina and Penticton to visit Rob’s mom, Fairmont Hot Springs and Revelstoke for vacations. We’ve gone farther north (yes, there is a farther north) to Grande Prairie for funerals. Rob and I also went to Arkansas on our first road trip, and we met in person for the first time in Idaho Falls.

Who has the craziest exes?

We don’t have those. My husband is buried in Iowa and his wife’s remains are in a container in our basement.  So what we have is … unusual … by the standards of many.

Who has the worst temper?

We have the same temper and that is the problem. We are both the stewing sort that give off radioactive heat, but we really don’t disagree that often and we are both working on the whole “talking” as opposed to “clamming up” thing and I must say we have made remarkable progress on that front. 

Who does the most cooking?

He did in the beginning because I had never really cooked an entire meal family style before in my life. I do the lion’s share now but he is good with breakfast on vacations and weekends.

Who is the most stubborn?

Again, kind of a “two peas” situation. I am the more flexible though, imo.

Who hogs the bed most?

Me. I am a snuggler. He moves away (because I apparently give off quite a bit of heat) and I follow until he is clinging to the side of the bed. He takes all the covers though.

Who does the laundry?

Me mostly but he will often take it upon himself to do the wash. He folds too – much better than I do. I can’t complain at all when it comes to the housewifey things. Rob has the attitude that he is as responsible as I am for cleaning and whatnot.

Who’s better with the computer?

Not even a contest, he is.

Who drives when you are together?

Rob always drives even on long trips (because I drive too slow – the speed limit). I prefer to be driven really. It would be nice to live in a place where one is able to walk most everywhere but that’s not the reality right now.


So there you have it. If anyone is inclined, please join in the “Marriage Meme”. 


Damned If You Do


I read The Globe and Mail fairly regularly. One of the columnists, Sarah Hampson, has a semi-regular feature on relationships with a tendency to view marriage as a glass half empty. Because she is divorced, she focuses about half or more of her columns on divorce – the process and the aftermath. She is playing to her strength and the fact that divorce is one of the most common of denominators in many people’s lives anymore. Cynicism shouldn’t be a given, but she has a jaundiced eye. There are many divorced people who do not cast such a world-weary glance at the institution of marriage or love in general, but she isn’t one of them – though she will give credit where it is due.

Her most recent piece was on the Obamas’ Broadway date night and their tendency to promote their marriage as a successful one – which by all accounts it is. Her issue though is that they don’t air the dirty laundry as much as they try too hard to put a good face on their relationship, or at least that is what I read between the lines. She feels that the Obamas are being disingenuous.

Interestingly, I ran across a blog piece the other night that said much the same thing only the targets were ordinary bloggers who write about themselves. The blogger questioned whether the women whose blogs she reads are really telling the truth about their relationships, mothering experiences or their sublime contentment with being single. The writer thought that perhaps they were fudging and putting on airs to maintain a façade in a game of one upmanship because … I don’t know … because if you are chronicling your life in the blogosphere (or living it in the public eye as the President and First Lady do) and you are not doing it reality tv show style – with dysfunction being the main ingredient – then you are not real? You are faking it? Happiness and contentment are not common? Misery and longing is the major theme of most lives? Real relationships have sticky thorn-like issues? The average single person would rather not be*?

I have touched on this subject a time or two. Recently even. And I don’t think I am deliberately cultivating a façade because I keep private details about my marriage and my children private. There is no fourth wall in blogging, but each blogger does establish boundaries with their audience. I can be as revealing (some would say TMI) as John and Kate, but the truth is, I don’t want to, and Rob and I are so not John and Kate and so not interested in being so. We do not have a dramatic life. We are two remarkably well-suited mates who live a pretty ordinary life that just happened to have an unusual beginning. If anything, I feel a bit guilty FOR BEING happy, content and right where I belong. It’s not as if this has always been the case and I marvel often how I ended up just exactly where I should be. 

I am not Dooce and my motivation for blogging is, as it has mostly always been, about writing. 

What I think Ms. Hampson and the blogger are about is projection. A Facebook acquaintance recently  posted an update that read,

“It’s all about them. It’s all about them.”

And what he meant was that regardless of how your life manifests in the public sphere, others will interpret it through their own experiences and the spot in life where they are currently residing and make whatever is going on about whatever is happening in someone else’s life about what is not going on in their own.

Ms. Hampson, for example, is divorced and writes about the experiences of the divorced and all the other downer topics that consume the single. Since I was single a long, long time,  I know those gray-colored lenses through which she peers and how they tint the landscape with a pessimistic and cynical hue. Naturally, she would see the Obamas’ as posing, flaunting and perhaps even trying to hard. It looks like that when you haven’t had a relationship that really fit.

My dear friend Cissy, whom I have known for twenty years and is the big sister I had to go out and find, has a marriage that to anyone not privy looks effortless and loving. It is certainly the latter. Cissy and her husband were my role models. Had I never met them, I wouldn’t have married at all because I didn’t learn much about marriage from my own parents beyond endurance. But Cissy’s marriage is not effortless. There has been ebb and flow and back again during their 25+ years. I have not been privy to the details but I have been assured time and again that issues come up and are dealt with and it stays between them. Where it belongs.

Here’s what I learned about marriage – quickly – that the person you talk to when things are at ebb tide is your spouse. People who “poll the audience”, so to speak, do themselves no favors and their relationships much harm.

I never discussed Will and I with anyone really. Things that came up stayed between us. And we worked at making time for each other and communicating regularly throughout our day and allowing each other space and individuality. I brought these lessons with me when I began dating Rob, and he in turn brought with him the very similar things he’d learned from his marriage to Shelley. And key to this? Our relationship is about us. 

I am a writer. A blogger. I open small windows into my daily life just like everyone else in my genre. Just excerpts. Little splices really. It might seem like an Obama photo op, but I don’t think the world is a worse place because happy, successful couples share their lives. It is certainly healthier than the Spencer and Heidi’s of the world. Or the John and Kate’s. Give me a First Couple who date after 16 years of marriage and obviously delight in one another any day.

 

*My Auntie is 78 years old and never married. She will be the first to admit that she has known lonliness, knows it still from time to time, but she is not sorry she never married. She has more friends than my mother – and that is a feat – and she is never home between her social life, her volunteering and the army of devoted nieces and nephews who include her in every family function imaginable. And Auntie is not an isolated example. I know people in my own peer group and even people in the blogosphere who are not lamenting the single life. All life choices have an up as well as a downside and nothing can ever be said to be permanent.