Love's Got Everything To Do With It

Every relationship has its pressure points and ours is no exception.  There was that “thing” that happened.  We don’t sweep it under the rug or minimize the magnitude; it is what it is.  We live with its reality every day, as many couples live with the strain of addiction, disability, unemployment, disease, poverty, depression, ambivalence, or a host of other scourges that test their resolve at staying together.  Our marriage is in a perpetual state of recovery.

Though cataclysmic, our issue remains a private matter.  I don't share or ask other people their advice on my marriage.   In recent years I’ve seen an alarming number of marriages among close friends disintegrate.  Some were surprising while others were not.  In more than a few cases we danced at their weddings.  Each is a singular tragedy.

The choice of whether to end a marriage is always available—today, tomorrow, the next day.  I do not need to list the relationship crimes and misdemeanors my husband has committed because he knows what they are (and occasionally, he gets reminded).  Suffice it to say that divorces have been founded on far less, especially in today’s “no-fault” world.  The kids are now grown, so collateral damage would be minimal.   It would be challenging, but I could make it alone.  I have abundant skills and resources as well as a good dose of natural chutzpah.  It would be another one of life’s adventures that would likely take a variety of surprising turns—maybe even for the better.  I can imagine myriad ways that such a push would benefit me in the long run.  It would jettison me out of my comfort zone into a land where women prove every day that they are, indeed, the stronger and more resilient sex.

And that would be fine except for one thing:  I love my husband.
 
Thirty years ago, when I was way too young to understand what mysteries life would hold, and way too impressed with myself to doubt my own convictions, I chose a man I loved deeply to share my life.   I remember sizing him up against one of my father’s pearls of wisdom: “On the day you marry, your relationship is the best it is ever going to be.”  To be sure, the man was a work in progress.  And to confound matters, his family and mine were polar opposites.  Whether viewed through a lens of religion, economics, geography, food, music, favorite television shows, or just basic human values, our backgrounds couldn’t be more different.  At the time, we were both in graduate school, years away from becoming the professionals we aspired to be. Yet it was clear to us that despite our differences we sought many of the same things.  From our vastly different points of origin, we became close companions on the journey to our common destination.

I’ve known couples who profess to be soul-mates, annoyingly finishing each other’s sentences while marveling at the serendipity of their coupling.  Blinded by their apparent compatibility and alikeness, they are caught off guard when complex issues divide them into opposing ideological camps.  One couple I know takes disagreement to such a personal level that one of them considers dissention by the other as abandoned support rather than as a simple difference of opinion. 

Isn’t it all too common these days that we must have a winner and a loser?  Reality TV laments “unfortunately, we must send someone home.”   Our own government can’t manage a bipartisan compromise because someone always needs to chalk one up in their Party’s win column.   We no longer “agree to disagree.”  Nor do we value a “win-win” scenario.  Today, your defeat is my victory.  I win because you lose.
 

As “winning” retains its status as a trending topic, marriage will be the victim.  Couples who cherry-pick the most palatable vows and nit-pick the pre-nup find little comfort in a collection of contingencies, loop-holes and what-ifs.  I have steadfastly tried to avoid drawing a line in my marriage that I may be forced to cross.   

I made a commitment to wed only after carefully considering the spirit and the austerity of the vows.    “Til death do us part” is not a conditional statement; it is a limitless promise.  While we have enjoyed many moments of joy and celebration, the years have not been without a lot of difficulties and struggles.  My husband and I, as it turns out, are very different in nature, so it was inevitable that our marriage would be stress-tested.

Two people create something tangible when they work together.  The products of this joint effort—rather than the faults—are what come to mind when I ponder my marriage.    There are countless tiny moments and memories that are meaningless and inconsequential to others yet precious to me.   There’s that time my husband made reservations for an anniversary dinner on the wrong date until he glanced inside his wedding ring and realized his mistake.   Or the way he painstaking tilled and mowed a ten-foot patch of grass so we would have a “yard” at our house.  Or the time he was so desperate to remove an annoying spot on his contact lens that he used my nail polish remover, dissolving the contact into a blue smudge on his finger.   Or the way he became a human crane to lift me off the couch after my Achilles tendon surgery.    Or the way he salivates over stinky cheese as a preferred alternative to a decadent chocolate dessert.   Or the way he tried to write me a love poem and could manage only the seventeen syllables of a Haiku.   Or the way he purred over our babies asleep in their cribs and whispered, "Look what we made".  These are the fibers that entwine to form a lifelong bond.

I tell my husband that I knew I loved him when I stayed over his house and he ordered me to floss my teeth.  When I asked if he had floss I could use he said, “Waxed or unwaxed?  Minted or Unminted?”  This was only the first time I fell in love with him.  True, he is often insensitive and frequently stupid.  But falling in love with him is easy.  I do it all the time.