Dan and I will have been married 18 years in June, and I’m sure Dan would agree with me, as I with him, that we are not the same two people who exchanged wedding vows on that warm summer evening in 1991.  The importance of that statement (not being the same people) cannot be explained to someone just starting out, for everyone beginning a new life together thinks the sky is blue, and their partner will hang the moon.  Of course he or she will!

Rarely do you hear about how couples maneuver through marriage, in a way that explains why they’re still together.  Marriage 101 is not something that was offered in high school or in college when I was a student, but I think there would be some value to it.  How to fight appropriately.  How to see yourself in terms of the other person.  How to stand up for yourself.  How to negotiate decisions.  How to spend money.  How to become you when there’s now two of you.  How sex should and can be used and enjoyed.  Certainly, it’s a choice on both sides–to stay, to learn, to give–but I think it’s more than that!

You learn that you can’t make anyone love you.  You learn that you’ll never change the other’s root desires (only he or she can do that).  You learn that you are not responsible for his or her everyday decisions (aside from the moral ones, in which someone might be hurt).  You remember all the funny and endearing things you loved to begin with.  And hopefully, over time, you alter your behavior to maximize the other’s.  You become a team, not two self-serving individuals.

This is hard, in my humble opinion.  The journey is full of dark valleys and heart-warming mountaintops.

When I read about other marriages, or people’s descriptions of them that feel right and true, I understand something–that none of us talk about it in that much depth, and certainly, not enough for us to learn the actual techniques for solving fixable problems.  You’d get that in therapy, I know, but shouldn’t you be able to get it from friends?

I’m in the middle of Mary Doria Russell’s The Sparrow, and her description of one of the couple’s marriages (between George and Anne) is startling, if only for the fact that I’ve never heard it before–in just those words.  Here is one of the passages, in which Anne is talking to their friend Jimmy about the unnaturalness of asking their priest friend Emilio not to be in a relationship:

“[Anne] reached out for her glass of wine but only twirled the stem in her fingers, rotating it slowly, watching the burgundy glow in the low light.  ‘We all make vows, Jimmy.  And there is something very beautiful and touching and noble about wanting good impulses to be permanent and true forever,’ she said.  ‘Most of us stand up and vow to love, honor and cherish someone.  and we really truly mean it, at the time.  But two of twelve or twenty years down the road, the lawyers are negotiating the property settlement.’

‘You and George didn’t go back on your promises.’

She laughed.  ‘Lemme tell ya something, sweetface.  I have been married at least four times, to four different men.’  She watched him chew that over for a moment before continuing, “They’ve all been named George Edwards but, believe me, the man who is waiting for me down the hall is a whole different animal from the boy I married, back before there was dirt.  Oh, there are continuities.  He has always been fun and he has never been able to budget his time properly and–well, the rest is none of your business.’

‘But people change,’ he said quietly.

‘Precisely.  People change.  Cultures change.  Empires rise and fall.  Shit.  Geology changes.  Every ten years or so, George and I have faced the fact that we have changed and we’ve had to decide if it makes sense to create a new marriage between these two new people.’  She flopped back against her chair.  ‘Which is why vows are such a tricky business.  Because nothing stays the same forever.  Okay.  Okay!  I’m figuring something out now.’  She sat up straight, eyes focused somewhere outside the room, and Jimmy realized that even Anne didn’t have all the answers and that was either the most comforting thing he’d learned in a long time or the most discouraging.  ‘Maybe because so few of us would be able to give up something so fundamental for something so abstract, we protect ourselves from the nobility of a priest’s vows by jeering at him when he can’t live up to them, always and forever.’  She shivered and slumped suddenly.  ‘But, Jimmy!  What unnatural words.  Always and forever!  Those aren’t human words, Jim.  Not even stones are always and forever….Until you get the measure of your own soul, Jim, don’t be quick to condemn a priest, or anyone else for that matter.  I’m not scolding you, sweetheart,’ she said hurriedly.  ‘It’s just that, until you’ve been there, you can’t know what it’s like to hold yourself to promises you made in good faith a long time ago.  Do you hang in there, or cut your losses?  Soldier on, or admit defeat and try to make the best of things?’  She’d looked a little sheepish then and admitted, ‘You know, I used to be a real hardass about stuff like this.  No retreat, no surrender!  But now?  Jimmy, I honestly don’t know if the world would be better or worse if we all held ourselves to the vows of our youth.’”

To continue that thread, my friend Clare sent me this yesterday, regarding a book called A Thousand Days in Venice by Marlena De Blasi, about a late-in-life passionate romance, which provides lovely insights into the dynamics of marriage: “Living as a couple never means that each gets half.  You must take turns at giving more than getting.  It’s not the same as a bow to the other whether to dine out rather than dine in, or which one gets massaged that evening with oil of calendula; there are seasons in the life of a couple that function, I think, a little like a night watch.  One stands guard, often for a long time, providing the serenity in which the other can work at something.  Usually that something is sinewy and full of spines.  One goes inside the dark place while the other one stays outside, holding up the moon.”

I have found this to be true, and the fact that I can say that and look at it in the light is astounding, because I, of all people, wanted marriage to be the fairy tale it isn’t.  Which isn’t to say I’m not happy with Dan right now.  Quite the opposite.  It’s just that when I think back on our lives together, I would want to repeat none of it; I simply wish for us to continue choosing each other, despite the chaos around us.  It really is a daily thing.  Have you found the same?