Musings on Marriage

When Susie and I announced we were going to be married, the reviews were decidedly mixed.

She had broken up with her then-current boyfriend on Super Bowl Sunday, 1995, after a extended, painful time of turmoil. We announced our engagement to her parents at graduation four months later; in truth, we'd decided to get married even earlier.

I was 22, she was 21.

Some of our friends, even our closest, were dubious. And while most people expressed joy and support, a few felt it necessary to share their doubts with us.

"You won't last five years, I'm sure of it," said one fellow, whose own five-year-long marriage was then on the rocks.

"I'm happy for you, but I don't get what you see in her," said another.

"Are you sure you know what you're doing?" was a particularly pointed question.

(Answer: Yes, we knew what we were doing, and why we were doing it. We certainly didn't know what would come out of what we were doing, but we had high hopes.)

* * *

I've always remembered these and other comments; goodness knows, it's not the sort of thing that's easy to forget.

So a year ago, when my friend in L.A. told me she'd gotten engaged to her boyfriend/roommate, I kept my doubts to myself, and wished her the best of good fortune, and meant it.

After all, who am I to know what lies in the shared heart of another couple? No one (with the exception of millionaires and pop stars) enters into a marriage lightly. And like snowflakes, each marriage is an unduplicatable pattern of intertwined dreams.

However.

I spent time with her recently, now that she's a married woman, and she's changed.

Sure, it was just for a certain period that I saw her, and it could have been many things that were affecting her.

But it seems to me that some of the sparkle in her soul has been sucked out into her wedding ring.

She laughs, but not as wildly. She criticizes, but not as pointedly. And she still flirts, but it's desultory.

Again, there are charitable interpretations. Marriage has calmed her, perhaps. Or has given her more of a quiet inner strength than a brash external one.

Or it could be that the frenetic energy of her earlier days has been turned into a more directed force, that she's channeled it into her work or her spouse or any one of her many projects.

I've always been a big supporter of marriage. I think it brings wonderful opportunities and growth to both people involved. But I've also been witness to some unhappy marriages, watched as they have spun off kilter like a washing machine struggling to keep a heavy load spinning cleanly but instead wobbling and banging its way towards its own destruction.

What should a compassionate human do? Share the truth he thinks he observes? Offer relationship-extending advice to try to re-balance the load each is carrying? Or tell the person to get out before more pain is caused, before the wedding machine rocks off its base and slams into a wall?

* * *

During a wedding, the assembled are asked to help respect and keep a marriage true and strong; sometimes that task is a significantly challenging one. I think it ought to be taken more seriously, more literally than I think often wedding guests take it. There ain't no such thing as a "free" open bar. And when you look at the length of a marriage compared to the length of anything else you do in your life, the comparison can be staggering, and the effort required can truly be appreciated.

Again, I think of the doubts of others (and, let's be honest, of ourselves) Susie and I started under, and the comparitive certainty that other, already-failed marriages of my friends started with, and I wonder how anyone can think they know anything about this crazy thing called commitment.

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