For Better or Worse

How do we maintain a marriage through all of life’s ups and downs?

He left for work and the door seemed to close tighter behind him… My chest was tight; my throat was tight. The fire from our words prickled my skin and my head pounded like something rabid was clawing its way out. I just couldn’t keep doing this. Our fights were always the same… about sex, about needs, about money, disappointment and temper… Our patterns were destroying us. I felt like I must have seams because they were coming undone. There was no way I could live like this anymore.

I’ve always found life confusing. As a child I’d sit under the kitchen table and read bible stories, I’d look up at the stars and wonder if aliens sent me here. As an adult, I haven’t been much different. I’m always searching for answers. I’ve read books from spiritual guides like Thich Nhat Hanh, read philosophers like Immanuel Kant and Albert Camus, and I’ve read about various theories of physics in an effort to find guidance.

According to what I’ve read about Chaos Theory, divorce is natural. Patterns in nature interact and cause unpredictable disorder. There’s a shake up, turbulence, that mixes everything up. As a result, two things what were once traveling side-by-side, end up miles apart. Two adjacent molecules of water, for instance, end up in two separate oceans. The atoms that make up our bodies came from stars light years away. This is the natural order.

Divorce, then, would be the natural order, right? It makes sense that people would grow apart after traveling parallel for a time. Patterns of life, expansion, contraction, changes in views, cares and outlooks, create disorder. They rock the boat, disturb the status quo. And those two people who were so in love all those year ago, surprisingly find themselves questioning how they could go on loving each other, traveling side-by-side through life, or even questioning how they could have ever loved one another at all.

Most of the couples we know are divorced… My husband’s parents are, and they divorced their second spouses as well. Out of our children’s friends’ parents only three couples are married. And of our personal friends, I can’t say we know more than a few who are still married to their first spouse. In fact, a few just divorced this year. I went to my first ever Divorce/birthday party for a friend, and Jason just got word just last week that another of his buddies is getting divorced.

So, where does that leave us? Are we destined for divorce? I can tell you, confidently, the answer to that is no. There have been times when we thought that may be where we’re headed, but here we are… about to celebrate 19 years of marriage this June.

So how do we do it?

Is it fate…?

At age 21, we were both college drop-outs taking a black and white photography course at the local community college. I left school because I had some issues I needed to run away from (you can read about them in the stories posted below, if you’re so inclined), and he left because he was unfocus and unsure of his path.

He asked me out at the end of the semester, and one date quickly turned into daily. We became completely infatuated with one another. Summer came and we didn’t work; We literally just woke up and hung out together until bed time. We watched movies, ate junk food, he cooked me green spaghetti sauce… it was supposed to be a spinach sauce… what can I say, he tried. We talked a lot, took pictures and went for hikes, and we kissed for hours.

Neither of us were virgins, but we waited a few months before taking that step. It may not seem like an important thing, but he was the first person I dated who didn’t pressure me. He saw that I wasn’t ready, without me saying it, and he put on the breaks and let me know that when I was ready, he definitely was. There was a level of mutual respect that was built right from the get-go.

So the sun was shining, birds were singing; We were kids, and love was in the air… Maybe fate did have something to do with it. I do believe in these sorts of things, but not solely. Life isn’t all peaches and cream. Storms are inevitable…

So maybe there’s more to it than just fate… maybe it’s also fight?

I was an active alcoholic for the first 6 years of our marriage, which neither of us were genuinely aware of. He just thought I was irresponsible with my drinking, and I just thought I was an asshole. Mix that with his anger issues and you can imagine… we had some pretty epic fights. No one became physical, but it was far from pretty.

As a result, we built our foundation on some seriously shaky ground. Our patterns were completely dysfunctional. We would both explode. That would scare me so much that I’d compulsively take the blame for more than my share of everything just to keep the peace. A dysfunctional skill I learned growing up. And there are plenty more of these destructive patterns that tornadoed their way through our marriage.

When I entered sobriety, that was the first step toward stopping the insanity. The second step was starting a family. Now, it wasn’t just the two of us; It wasn’t just our marriage at stake. We were responsible for two other lives who depended on us for everything. Life doesn’t get more serious than that. We had everything to fight for, and that’s what we did… when we weren’t fighting each other.

Enter Therapy…

I began seeing a new therapist, and together we’ve seen two marriage counselors. Sobriety helped, but then the real work began. We had to acknowledge our destructive patterns and decide to work on them, together. It wasn’t my fault, and it wasn’t his. It was ours. And we both had to step up.

There have been times when we thought we might not make it, when we felt so much pain from each other that we just didn’t know what to do. That scene above happened in some varied form on more than one occasion, and somewhat recently I’ve actually said to him, “Something has to change. I just can’t live like this anymore.”

That didn’t mean we should divorce, though; That meant we needed to work… harder than we had ever worked in our lives, because our marriage was about to die a horrible death, and neither of us wanted that.

So, what exactly did we do? For one thing, we talked… and talked… and talked some more. And more importantly, we listened.

We learned how to do active listening.

It sounds silly, but so much of our problems stemmed from a feeling that the other wasn’t listening. And in many cases, we weren’t. We built our whole relationship from destructive patterns that we were now changing, and we needed to learn how to communicate if we were going to be successful.

This process of active listening slowed everything down, helped us focus, helped us really hear the other person. We were able to empathize and see where we could improve. We were both right, and we were both wrong in every single argument. And we both had very hurt feelings.

This June 9th will mark our 19 anniversary of marriage. This past May 1st marked our 22nd year together since that first date. More than half our lives we’ve been together now, traveling side by side, periodically clashing so hard that we both feel like we’re going to veer off into different worlds. Our time together is a wonderful adventure mixed with incredible wonderful moments and a lot of pain and hard work.

While we don’t know the fine details of our friends’ marriages, I can guarantee you most of them experienced similar marital strife. It’s the nature of relationships. They had patterns and miscommunications, hurt feelings, and their turbulence pulled them apart. Their lives followed the natural order.

Ours could too… we will, certainly, never be trouble or argument free. But so far, the difference between them and us is that we keep working on it.

It takes two to tango…

Fortunately, we are both fully invested in this dance. We both know and accept that marriage is a tough road; It takes hard work. And the work is constant. In many ways, it’s like steering a car. If I stop paying attention, or if I let go of the wheel, it’s not going to steer itself; I’m going to hit something. Everything will fall apart.

There is no easy formula to a successful marriage, but there is a simple one; Both partners have to want it, and both must stay vigilant and keep working on it… continue steering, planning out the trip, taking turns holding the wheel and reading the map.

Now, there are plenty of people who have more complicated issues like abuse or infidelity. And there are others who may do what we do and still find that they’re better off apart. They genuinely need to go their separate ways. No judgement, it happens. But I do believe that some marriages, like ours, can be saved by pressing on with that hard work of change.

There’s no guarantee that my marriage will withstand the test of time, but if we keep doing what we’ve been doing, I think we stand a pretty good shot.