"In our back yard there are some wooden barrels - cut in half - the kind you make flower pots out of. They've been empty and bone dry. One day, I looked in one of the barrels and I found a hearty green plant with beautiful red flowers. The plant had come up with all the rain we'd had lately in what had once been barren soil. That flower represented to me our marriage - we're making something out of nothing. The flower is magnificent - and there are no thorns or stickers. I'm going to water that flower - I'm not going to let it die."
This reflection comes from the lips of a man who came within an inch of abandoning a marital relationship of some years' duration but returned to invest one more moment of time and found - like the near-hidden plant that blossomed in the barrel - that his relationship was also capable of flowering into something of ultimate worth. He had only to water the flower - to not let it die.Most marriages are like that - capable of blossoming - if we are willing to cultivate the embryonic possibilities we discover. We must be willing to do the watering, the weeding and the cultivating, and in the end we, too, can have flowers. Here are observations that may help you take a closer look at the potential of your marriage:
Marriages need to be nourished every day. "An intimate relationship faces the same challenge nature puts to all things - grow or perish," observes Norman M. Lobsenz, author of the article "Do You Have a `Green Thumb' for Marriage?" who says: "Just as a gardener enriches the soil with minerals and nutrients, so a spouse should nourish the emotional ground in which a marriage is rooted. I've seen too many marriages wither, simply because the partners did not provide enough loving enrichment to keep it alive."
Lobsenz urges couples to offer the comfort of physical closeness, to lend a sympathetic ear and to talk to each other about the qualities they value in each other. Finally, he urges couples to nourish their marriage by supporting a spouse's growth. He relates an example of a woman in her 50s who thought her husband would laugh when she said she wanted to get her teaching credentials. But when she got up the nerve to broach the subject, he said, "If that's what you want to do, go for it."
Marriages (luckily) require individual growth. . . . W. Meade, author of the article "The Uncharted Adventure of Marriage," lends this perspective. He relates: "I once invited the woman who finally married me to a Valentine's Day dinner I was throwing for various friends. `What would you like me to bring?' she asked.
" `Angel food,' I said, without noticing the look of distress on one who had hoped I would suggest some simple vegetable. (She'd told me many times since then that she'd been certain I'd ask for something sensible like broccoli.) "On the appointed day at the appointed hour she arrived looking composed and glamorous. In her hands was the most bedazzling glazed angel food cake I'd ever seen: fragrant, amber, glistening . . . perfect. I knew at that moment she was the one.
"It was a few angel-foodless years later that I discovered her culinary coup was the first cake she'd ever produced and the last one she intended to attempt. (She'd discarded several tries and had succeeded only with the coaching of a good baker friend.) I began to understand that my married life was going to be in some important ways quite different from my bachelor fantasies. You know, home; hearth; perfectly ironed shirts; supple pliant wife; angel food cake. Our romance was actually going to lead into a tougher, richer experience than had ever existed in my imagination. But that did not become unavoidably clear until our romance - once too hot to handle - segued into a marriage too endearing to abandon.
"I've come to think of marriage the way I think of other growing things. Marriage, which by its nature makes it possible for not only man and wife but the entire family to grow and change, is a confluence of pain and delight."
Marriages never stay the same. "Nothing that's truly vital remains the same. That's why a change in either of you can be a powerful catalyst for growth," offers Lobsenz, citing the observations of a woman who says: "I have been wed to the same man for 33 years. Yet he has had several different wives in that time - a bride, a friend, a lover, a colleague, a mother, a businesswoman. I wonder if he knows how our marriage has grown with each change in my role."
In the change process, feeling "out of sync" occurs frequently. Speaking of the research she conducted for her book "The Marriage Map," Maxine Rock observes: "I learned that it is not uncommon for husbands and wives to evolve into their separate roles on widely divergent timetables." Feelings of being "unsynchronized" will pop up when couples least expect them, coming at different stages of a marriage and erupting most often during times of change, she notes.
However, "it may be comforting to know that being out of sync is so common that psychologists simply assume it will happen to us all," she points out. "There are really two marriages operating at every point in the marriage cycle: His and hers."
The trouble is, a couple usually expects both members to change in unison, stresses Judith Stone, author of the article "The Marriage Go-Round." Not so, she says: "Most of the time people alternate. Leapfrogging helps the relationship; one partner's growth triggers the other's. The difficulty comes when the couple thinks they ought to be perfectly in sync. . . .
"It's not hard to feel anxious when your mate surges forward," she says. "People feel disappointed in themselves when they feel the urge to stifle their partner's development. That urge is a sign to look inward. Something needs to be taken care of. Their security is based on their partner's insecurity and dependence.
"People are most change-resilient when they don't depend on someone else to make them feel worthwhile and fulfilled . . . . When you no longer need another person to complete yourself, you become capable of wanting, not needing, your mate." The reason for getting married and staying married is not, "I wonder what you'll do for me" but "I wonder what you'll be like in 30 years."
Dr. Larsen is a therapist practicing in Salt Lake City.