Maggie's Farm

Sounds like one of those Depressing and Necessary things like dentists...Personally, I've always felt that suicide was less of a sin than divorce. Have been lectured by my shrink that I am mistaken. So I live on, miserably.

However, Joy dear, in your profession you must learn to set aside your personal prejudices, morals and even years of observing people screwing up themselves and their family by getting divorced. I agree with your conclusions. The times I've been most tempted to leave my spouse have been when I am feeling and acting like a raging, disappointed toddler. Grownups suck it up and stay for the sake of the kids. But I've never know anyone to "electively" divorce. Yes, people leave and marry or cohabit or just sleep with someone else. But the new other is never the cause for the breakup. Only someone in a long-dead relationship is tempted to seriously stray (as opposed to those who like Tshirts that say Married But Not Dead, who are all talk and no action).

By your self description, oh fabricated Joy, you enjoy both a useful and satisfying career and a sexually and emotionally fulfilling marriage. More power to you. It is some small consolation to us real people, grimly keeping promises that feel like chains, that you do not really exist.

Oh, and shrinks never believe in romantic love. Perhaps it is because most physicians are marked and hunted down by golddiggers, who indulge them in their fantasy that they are god, or at least indulge their narcissism as a Cliffie never would. As for me, miserable failure that I am, demonstrating daily to my children that the love between parent and child is sacred, that between spouses non-existent, I do believe in romantic love. And, no, do not need the other romantics in the audience to clap to keep the dream from dying. Romantic love is better than the medieval contract I so scrupulously keep today. I may not admire people who have the guts to divorce, but I certainly envy their better love lives.

Being virtuous sucks. And I know my kids won't thank me for it--some day they will be putting the addition on some shrink's house agonizing about "Why didn't my Mom have the guts to leave the bastard..."

Ah, Dumb Brit. Grew up in the damp isles, so wish you well...and how I hope you two stay happy together. We all begin marriage blissful. Then little things like unemployment, poverty, social isolation, chronic illness, a child's disability, caring for a relative with ALzheimer's, take the bloom off the rose.

When you are a little older, and have had to take care of several others 24/7 for a few years, and have had to consistently set aside your own hopes and dreams, perhaps forever, then you can get back to me if you are still so Pollyannish. Or at least when you become a parent. Until then, you will never have to put yourself last on the list. Or maybe only your wife will have to grow up and renounce self--a familiar pattern.

I remember when I felt as you do. It's the pleasant part of youth. If you have an autistic child, tho, or if your spouse cannot get or hold a job year after year, you may find that you do not have as much power and control over your situation as you presently do.

But God preserve you in your newlywed bliss. As charming to veterans of marriage as a basket full of puppies. All potential and licking tongues...

Again, the charm of youth. A good thing too, given the depression of so many of us long-married, dutiful ones...And if the salt hath lost its savor it is good for nothing...At least that is how we sometimes feel as we strive to put a brave face on things so as not to discourage and further alienate everyone at work and at church. I am Christian too, despite the Anglican church, or would have thrown in the towel long ago. I meant it sincerely, I wish you both well, envy you your optimism, and the sense that joy is possible.

I was preaching at a friend's wedding 15 years ago and felt that I really understood things at last. Two years married myself, I was nursing my second child (who could not bear to be out of my arms). She fell asleep right before I had to speak, so I spoke softly so's not to wake her, hopefully loud enough for the congregation (a bunch of brilliant agnostics from our college with their non-Ivy spouses looking vaguely uncomfortable). As the only Christian, I had to deliver the homily, everyone there superstitious about it. The image I chose probably seemed weird to them. Told them to imagine a bunch of horses galloping around a field, whinnying, nuzzling, two pairing off. That was the waymost of us imagined romantic love and marriage. Passion, sparks, speed, power, freedom. Then reminded them of the medieval metaphor for marriage, as the yoked pair hauling heavy burdens over someone else's fields to produce a crop for another. That that was where we got phrases like "equally yoked" as the model for compatibility. That in marriage we had a job to do, to serve another, and that other was God. That if we were blessed with children they were to belong to Him, and we were to care for them knowing that. Etc.

This is still the way I think about marriage. I may have depressed my congregation of Ivy agnostics and I am sorry if I have depressed you. In my heart I believe that God cares more about our efforts towards holiness than our happiness. Our marriages aren't about our individual happiness, but are just about directing our efforts into serving God and raising children to love HIm. Selfishly, tho, I wish He had put a little more effort into the happiness department.

For what it's worth, people like myself who have been depressed a lifetime, are both envious of and encouraged by those I call "the blessed ones," ie: people who seem capable of enjoying life, love, etc. in the here and now. The words of Christ that always shine in the darkness for me are those about "I am come that you might have life, and have it more abundantly..." I had always hoped and prayed that I would live that abundant life, but middle-aged now, I tend more and more to think that it's only for the hereafter.

So we dour types tend to just think of marriage as suffering, a school for our particular sin, testing, character-bulding, etc. The idea that anyone might actually enjoy it is extraordinary.

Finally "the self-renouncing isn't a sacrifice" My word! Even Jesus found it a sacrifice....

May you stay married even longer than my parents who just celebrated 51 years!