In the disposable era of the '90s many marriages reach a stage of disrepair and disuse, with couples judging the marriage as no longer meeting their needs and wondering whether they should just shuck their worn-out model in favor of a new shiny one.
For a ton of reasons, the answer is no. As food for thought, consider the following perspective:- Over a period of years, a couple has invested in a marriage - not only financially - but in the form of creating a family - an irreplaceable context for living. To move on to create another family context (which out of necessity many people must do) requires years and years of welding together fragments of families - human beings who were formed in quantitatively different ways. Not an impossible task, but a very difficult one - and in most instances - much more work than refurbishing a marriage.
- A declining marriage often collapses under the weight of its own burdens. The marriage is a living entity, and the forever-growing people in it are constantly evolving,as is the relationship. The needs of both individuals invariably change over the years, and often the implicit initial marriage contract is no longer viable.
With new growth come new needs and the necessity of a flexible marriage contract that serves these new needs. In essence, a marriage often reaches a point in mid-life in which it must be redesigned if the marriage is to serve the people in it, rather than the people in it serving the marriage.
- Without realizing it, a couple makes a phenomenal investment in a relationship over time as the partners, on an unconscious level, settle one by one thousands of small issues, and individuals each come to terms with the idiosyncrasies of the other.
Often a person will leave a marriage, launching a new relationship from that pad, expecting to get all of what she or he had that was viable and comfortable in the old relationship - plus! The legacy the person receives instead is the task of entering a new relationship in which the old set of conditions doesn't hold, where there is no "rule" book, and where (once the couple has passed through the bedazzled phase) each collision over differences requires the settlement of all the small issues over again.
This takes years.
- As does every other living entity, a marriage passes through phases of evolution, one of which in midlife is a stage of emotional and sometimes physical separation. In every marriage of more than several years' duration, each partner has - if asked - a story to tell of disillusionment, of ways he or she has been violated or mistreated. Each has become a criminal expert with archives containing all the crimes of the other person.
Partners will often stand apart (often after going "splat" against a brick wall from some traumatic and unexpected event), assessing their hurts and wear and tear and their chances of happiness in the future without the partner. If the couple weather this stage, address the disrepair of the marriage and redesign it to meet current needs, they then recommit to the marriage and throw away the key.
This decision and the work of this marital stage propel the couple into a more mature marital stage. The rewards of the final stage - should the couple reach it - are that, finally, differences are settled, each partner is fully accepted and encouraged to pursue individual growth, and the couple invest heavily in their treasure - the relationship.
On the other hand, should partners abandon the marriage in this critical period and move on to another relationship, they must pass through all the initial stages, collect their archives of crimes and weather another separation stage. Or, they go on to yet another relationship where they repeat once more the same stages.
- The stresses of the '90s are excruciating, with couples being bombarded moment by moment with overwhelming stresses and pressures that relate to meeting the survival needs of families. Often, the accumulation of acute stresses such as a business failure, a death of a significant person, or a move or change of job blows the marriage apart. Experiencing too much stress in too short a period of time often causes one or both partners to succumb to clinical depression - the kiss of death to a viable relationship.
- The cultural forces that run rampant in a runaway, overheated culture quietly and insidiously erode the relationship as couples receive conflicting and confusing messages regarding their roles, and the media (as in the film "Sleepless in Seattle") perpetuate the myth of the "perfect partner," causing individuals to search elsewhere for their happiness.
- Disrepair of marriages also often results from partners running on their individual treadmills a hundred miles an hour, day after day, year after year, tacitly expecting the marriage will serve them simply because they paid the price of a marriage license years ago. Instead, without investment of time, energy, and resources, the marriage deteriorates.
In the '90s, it's a wonder any relationship survives, but it's also clear that the answer to a troubled relationship isn't to go out and get another one. Rather, the answer is embodied in this story: "A man with a bristling gray beard came and sat next to me at lunch. He had pale blue eyes and he talked of yachting in the English Channel: `It's not dangerous at all, provided you don't learn to swim.'
`Why is that?'
`When you're in a spot of trouble, if you can swim you try to strike out for shore. You invariably drown. As I can't swim I cling to the wreckage. That's my tip: if you are in trouble, cling to the wreckage.' " Superb advice to any couple in a troubled marriage.