This topic is broader than it seems; also narrower. It is broader because I have in mind all the things that lead to love, that enrich it, that impoverish it, and that cause it to fail. It is broader because I’m really not talking just about my own kind of marriage or my own actual marriage. I want to consider all kinds of love and marriage, but especially the places where they coincide.
It is narrower because however many kinds of love and marriage I look at, I look at them from my own perspective. It isn’t really a narrow perspective. I’ve had a lot of experience and I’ve read a good deal and I’ve talked to a lot of people in the processes of constituting or dissolving marriages. But, through all that and partly because of it, I’ve developed some ideas of my own and whatever I see, I see with those ideas in mind.
I confess that I come to questions of love with my own still recent experiences in mind. I went out on the dating market at the age of 67 in an episode I now call Dating Boot Camp. It’s funny now, but it was confusing and stressful at the time. My own experience of romantic love, all three times, was more like an airbag going off in my face than like a slowly dawning realization of affection. I’m not saying it doesn’t happen the other way; I’m saying only that this is the way it has happened to me. It feels more like something happening to me than like something I do.
In my experience, marriage is very like and very unlike. You don’t get the pop of a new infatuation in a stable marriage. Thank God for that! On the other hand, marriage is a pattern of learning about your wife (“spouse” would be appropriate here, or “intimate other,” but those are clunky and “wife” tells about my own experience) developing the habits that sustain your enjoyment and regard of her, learning how she sees the world, what language she speaks, and what language she hears. Learning a spouse is more like learning a foreign language than it is like having an airbag go off in your face. Trust me on that; I’ve experiences both.
Everything I know about marriage has emphasized staying of the positive side of the ledger. If you think of the range of a marriage as from -1 through 0 to + 1, I emphasize staying in the part above 0. Partly, that’s just me. I am so very bad at recovering from a dip into minus territory. I’m sure there are people, wives probably, who migrate from +0.9 to -0.9, like Arctic Terns, and celebrate the enormous range they cover and the excitement of experiencing it. I’m more a permanent resident and not so much a migrator. When I go as far south as +0.3 the red lights start flashing and I go on full alert.
That’s not a lesson I would teach anybody. That’s just me. It has helped me to focus on the kinds of things that keep the love vibrant and, in that way, keep the marriage vibrant. I like the routines of marriage partly because you can make them, at any time you choose, the vehicles for an intense appreciation of your wife or husband. And these amped up routines can serve as requests for more or as appreciation for more. I call them “please” and “thank you” gestures. But first you have to have the routines in place.
I like equality and asymmetry in marriage. It’s a personal taste. I thought that the establishment of the “separate but equal” standard (Plessy v. Ferguson) would have been a pretty good idea if anyone had been serious about the “equal” part and several generations of black activists have agreed with me. I’m serious about “equal.” I wouldn’t want to be married to a woman who thought herself more important or less important than I am. On the other hand, the kind of marriage I like best emphasizes the differentness of the partners and celebrates it. Where a difference becomes a disadvantage, it must be reconsidered, of course, but I love holding doors for Bette and she loves having them held for her. It doesn’t mean I’m “better at doors” than she is. It means that every time we go anywhere, I have several chances to please her and she has several chances to show me that she is pleased. Put that up against a display of bilateral door competence and see what looks best to you.
When Bette and I were married in 2005, we sent a letter to the people we wanted to have as the principal supporters and critics of our marriage. We called them “guarantors.” The posts above the label “Love and Marriage” will explore each of the four parts of that letter, so all I really need to do on this Page is to provide a frame of reference.
I think most marriage can be better than they are. I know mine can. But I also think you don’t get very far in improving a marriage by dealing with the complaints. The best thing about dealing with complaints is that it shows you are willing to deal with complaints—to take the person seriously, to listen carefully, to make something good out of what was bad. I think making a marriage strong and resilient is a lot better than dealing with the grievances that take a particular form but that are, more often than not, only a grieving that the marriage is not strong and resilient.
