On Marriage, A Life-long Companionship....

[Ramesh Kakar]

 

On Marriage, A Life-long Companionship....

(This write- up was intended for the childern of the author but it can of some use to everybody who is married or about to get married.)

If we are lucky, we humans live 70 to 100 years. Very few seem able to do this

happily by themselves. Most find life is better when its joys and disappointments are shared

with someone else. Though there are several alternative solutions, the most common is a

lifelong companionship of husband and wife in marriage. This arrangement typically has

three stages.

 First is the romantic stage, when the couple enjoy discovering mutual

enthusiasms and interests and the joys of loving each other. 

Second, typically, is the period

in which they jointly produce, nourish, and rejoice in the development of children that are

uniquely their own.

 Finally, there is the period, after children have gone out on their own,

as they live out their final years together.

Many marriages today do not last long after the romantic phase, presumably because

many people think of marriage as being simply a romantic relationship, and their romantic

interests shift. Other couples stay together only through the child-rearing stage; they find

little basis for continuing together after the romantic interest and the shared project of childrearing

is over. For many people these and other paths are the wisest and most satisfying.

But it remains true that for most couples, marriage is a life-long companionship

which continues through all three stages, "till death do us part". Although not every such

marriage is a happy one, it says something that so many couples continue them. And the ideal

of marriage as a life-long companionship is favored by many more, even among those who

do not have one.

Thus without derogating other life styles, I want to present some reflections on

marriage as a life-long companionship. Since I am firmly ensconced in such an arrangement

myself, and have every intention of continuing in it to the end, my remarks will be partisanly

in favor and biased by personal experience. I hope they may nevertheless be helpful to

anyone who is interested.

I might have called this "On choosing a wife" or "On choosing a husband". But it

takes two to enter into a marriage. My sons do not choose a wife, nor does my daughter

choose a husband. Rather it is something like this: some men are looking for a woman who

might be their life-long companion, and some women are looking for a man who might be

their life-long companion. The desired solution is to get the right match. If either one has a

life-long commitment in mind, it is probably a wise first step to be sure the other does also.

If such a marriage comes about, it is because each thinks or believes that the other will be a

person they could live with happily until death. But are they right?

I. 

It is impossible to know whether such a marriage will work. When I married my wife

I was quite unsure, but promised her (by-passing my firm formal vows) that I would stick

with her for at least seven years. When the seven years were up my third son was on the way

and I had quite forgotten about the promise. My wife, who seemed to feel uncommonly

secure, did not raise the question. It was about twenty years later - when my wife indicated

distress as various male acquaintances in 'mid-life crisis' began to ditch their wives, usually

for younger women - that I finally came through with an unconditional commitment. My wife

tells me that she never had any serious doubts about her commitment. Perhaps it was because

I am a professor of philosophy and trained to doubt everything.

But if excessive doubt is possible, so is complete certainty for the wrong reasons. The

wrong reasons, I think, are sins of omission, not commission; namely, not attending

sufficiently to what each of the three stages demands. Is each member of the couple thinking

about all three stages of the life-long companionship?

II.

The romantic element is important and indispensable in almost all cases. Marriages

of convenience may work for royalty and inheritors of great fortunes, but for most of us the

joys of loving and being loved intimately are realized in just one simple economic setting,

our homes. We do not want and cannot afford both a marriage for convenience and an

intimate continuing liason for love. The desire to love and be loved intimately is surely one

of the strongest human desires and, for most of us, realized chiefly in marriage.

Essential to romantic love is womanly beauty and handsome manlihood. But the

concepts of each are all too easily and misleadingly sterotyped. Stereotypes for the beauty

of a woman's face and figure are displayed on magazine covers and all sorts of commercial

advertisements. Movie actors present many male steroptypes in the form of "leading men".

At some point in college I concluded that physical features - the right bodily

proportions and shapes, hair and skin color - are not the deciding factors in what makes a

woman, or a man, attractive. Attending a coeducational college I observed too many young

women and young men with perfect features who simply did not attract - and other, less

physically well-endowed individuals whose behavior, personality and spirit, made them very

attractive and popular. I never completely rid myself of being attracted to classic physical

beauty, but I recognized that it was not enough in itself.

I do not know whether I would have asked my wife to marry me if she had not been

physically beautiful. What I do know, is that this was not the deciding factor. I decided to

marry her upon realizing that she was a "good" person in a special sort of way. It is this

quality - I will spell it out more carefully later - which I loved and still love. I have the

feeling that I would have loved her for this quality even had she been differently endowed,

though I might have been slower to discover it.

Romantic love is not, of course, found only in the first stage of marriage; in some

sense it can continue throughout a life-long companionship. To be sure, the pure physical

beauty of a young woman and the handsomeness of the young man fade as the years go on.

But physical beauty is not just what we are born with; it is what we do with what we have.

Obesity and physical deterioration, when they could be controlled, are signs of weak

character and as such ugly. But wrinkles and white hairs, like congenital deformities, can be

vehicles of a proud spirit when the will and the spirit is there. The physical beauty of youth

is present in each new generation and old age can not diminish its attraction. But the beauty

of spirit expressible in old age can not be denied either. Romantic love begins with an

awareness of visible forms, but it is always really love of the spirit; and this becomes clear

as the focus shifts to the spirit which shapes the visible forms.

Thus it is the spirit exemplified by the woman and the spirit exemplified by the man

which must be matched.

III

The second stage - raising a family - is not for everyone. It is the usual, but not the

universal, pattern. Today women have become increasingly interested in the kinds of careers

- in business, the professions, government - that have traditionally been pursued primarily

by men (and still are), and men are very slow to think of themselves as primarily carers of

children. Yet children not only get born; they must be cared for. Initially they are watched,

cleaned and fed, day and night; tasks traditionally performed by the wife while the husband

was out working to support them. As children go through school they need support and

caring as well as motivation by encouragement and discipline. Again, traditionally the mother

has provided the primary care and support.

Children are a delight and objects of deep affection; but also, raising children is

messy and difficult in many ways. Practically, it involves tedious and boring work, and the

discovery that children can be disobedient, irrational, and independent calls for a strong sense

of duty, patience, and over-riding love. A man's or woman's interest in their profession or

simple devotion to social, cultural or intellectual pursuits that children can not share, can

create tensions in a family which fire an urge to escape. The practicalities of child-rearing

force radical changes in the romantic life-style based on mutual adult interest and lovemaking.

But in most cases the rewards of having children are great. Despite teen-age

rebellions, few people fail eventually to be grateful to parents for giving them the privilege

of living, and few fail to recognize in adulthood the honest efforts and sacrifices made by

their parents.

 Parents' rewards are not just the joys and affections which mix with the

drudgery and frustrations as children are being reared. Children are ways to keep in touch

with what is new and exciting and changing in the world. And this novelty continues after

children have left the home and as grandchildren arrive.

 In the normal case, the two parents

share together a real, though tentative, satisfaction in having completed a relatively

successful project. Once firmly in the past it stays with them the rest of their lives: the

knowledge that they will leave behind something good which would not be there had they

not done it together. Not only this; they also have a bank of affection - in old age when they

are much less involved with other people they remain important in some real sense to their

children. 

Some couples, sharing a disinterest in having children or because of over-riding

interests in a career, agree to forego child-rearing. By foregoing the rewards just mentioned

they sometimes gain others through successful careers which leave even more substantial

contributions to society behind. Or it may just be that by temperament they are able to live

richer and happier lives that way than if they tried to raise children.

Regardless of whether, for a life-long marriage, the two partners have a common

project of raising children or not, it seems important that 1) they have some common

projects, and 2) they have some separate interests.

The romantic stage is a stage of self-absorption. Husband and wife are in love with

each other. But if it is nothing but mutual admiration it soon becomes dull. Constant change,

novelty and contrast against a background continuity is needed. Different interests are

essential. The husband must have activities and interests the wife is not engaged in; the wife

must have activities and interests the husband in not engaged in. Then they have things

outside of themselves to talk about. They retain their independent individualities. Each finds

something to admire in the other that they do not find in themselves. There is nothing more

dull than to live with a copy of one-self. It is important in all of this that neither become so

absorbed in their own interests that they fail to listen to and respond enthusiastically to the

interests of the other. It is entirely possible to be fascinated by activities that someone else

enjoys but one does not want to engage in oneself.

Common projects need not be children - perhaps a common business or a book

cooperatively written. But children are the dominant common project of most marriages; they

force husband and wife to concentrate on something other than themselves, grappling with

problems, overcoming obstacles and sharing in successes together. When husband and wife

are distinct individuals, differences between them on how to deal with and raise children will

arise and must be resolved. Often a distinct allocation of responsibilities in a common project

helps remove the problem.

For example, I often differed from my wife on what was safe for our children to eat

or do healthwise; but since she generally took care of them when ill, the job of deciding what

was healthy was made her job.

Where the husband (or wife) works while the wife (or husband) cares for children,

each has things to talk about at night that the other missed. It is important for each to keep

alive their interest in what the other person is interested in. It helps each to talk out their

enthusiasms and frustrations; and in listening to other interests, each achieves a bit of

distance from his or her own pre-occupations.

When both husband and wife have careers, a similar exchange of interests is

important for the same reasons. The lack of such exchanges thrusts them back into what can

become a tiresome routine of mutual admiration. Furthermore, while there is a natural bond

with one's children which makes joint interest in their doings come naturally, joint interest

in another person's career requires a more conscious effort. Genuine (but not obsessive)

curiosity and interest about the details and problems of the wife's (or husband's) career, and

shared joys in its accomplishments, helps a lot. On the other hand, if the two careers seem

to dictate widely separated places of employment, the dilemma of choosing between either

separation or subordination of one career to the other may arise. Thus, there are special

problems for a life-long marriage when dual careers take the place of child-rearing.

Above all, mutual support and cooperation should reign in all areas of serious

activity, never competition. Couples who compete, whether for favored treatment from their

children, or to prove themselves superior in intelligence, or in money-earning ability, or in

political standing, or social status with friends, pave the paths with potential frustration and

frictions. Friendly competition at cards or tennis, perhaps (as long as it doesn't matter who

wins); but deadly serious competition, never.

How any given individual, man or woman, will respond to such situations can never

be completely known while they are still single. Certainly, mutual agreement on what the

marriage will be is important. But beyond that, a person's life when single often includes

evidence about his or her future life when married, not only in their stated preferences, but

in their behavior. How does he or she act with children? with colleagues? with people who

have interests different from their own? How do they respond to failure? to success? to the

ignorance of others? to unfairness by others? From observing all these things (not just how

one acts with you), one gets a sense of attitudes, of dispositions to respond and act in certain

ways, a spirit. And it is the spirit of the man and the spirit of the woman which,

complementing or conflicting with each other, will govern the life-long companionship. The

spirit is part of what makes the body beautiful, and it is essential to what makes it lovable -

or not.

IV.

In the final phase - when the children are gone, and the romantic period of their youth

is at best a cherished memory - husband and wife are in a sense alone together. Having

retired the husband (or wife) no longer has an economic nitch in society where other people

depend on them, looking to them for help or decisions. The children, too, no longer need

them; there is even the danger that children will treat them as helpless and think of them as

children incapable of making the right decisions, thus diminishing their self-respect and

independence. Personal medical problems arise and increase, and each thinks more than they

used to about illness and eventual death. Focus shifts to plans for retirement, financial

security, wills and estates.

The past with its successes is firmly behind them, but by themselves memories of this

past are thin nourishment, like warmed-over porridge. The children and grandchildren are

in the distance, a solid testimony to the life they lived, but usually a small part of their active

life now. Romance is still there - deep and steady - but in a more tempered, less hotly

passionate form.

What can keep it from becoming the narrow, dull, routine of mere self-absorption and

mutual dependence?

Only two things - continuation in different outside activities and interests which

involve real goals of people other than themselves, and common projects in which they work

together for interests they share.

By this time, presumably, they will have long ago learned to recognize and make

allowance for character traits or quirks that they initially found distasteful in each other. So

they pursue their times together smoothly with little or no genuine anger or bitterness. And

they have a large resevoir of experience which reassures them of their worth to each other

and to others.

V.

Finally, a few guidelines (for what they are worth).

1. Your Grandfather Baker gave us a 200 year old grandfather's

clock (it is now 240 year old). Inside of the door in front of

its pendulum he pasted:

Mutual Love and Forbearance

Brad and Imogene 1949

This was pretty good advice!

2. Enjoy ideas and external events and things openly; people are

lovable for what they love.

3. When angry or annoyed, hold it in until you can describe what

angers or annoys you without bitterness or hostility.

4. Always be as polite to your spouse as you would be to any friend;

appreciate with thank-yous; when you slip up, beg pardon.

5. Do not expect emotional feelings to be always in high gear;

remember, when they are low ebb that the tide will come in again.

6. Don't expect ever to know everything about a person you love;

people are complex; no one completely knows even themselves.

7. Recognize and revel in mysteries - the mystery of where you

came from, the mystery of what a person is, the mystery of the

bonds that tie people together.

8. Do the unexpected once in while, but in a way which reveals

strengths not weaknesses.

9. Remember that no one is or can be perfect, nor should they try

-- neither you, nor your spouse, nor your children. But each

should be supported when they try to do their best.

10. Relax and enjoy life. Love is not the only thing. There are

many other very exciting things to life.

11. You can hurt your spouse more sharply than anyone because you

are more important than anyone; you can also be more nurturing

than anyone else. Don't muff it!

12. Don't forget your place in the universe; you and your partner

are a tiny part of an unique, awesomely complex, magnificent

region in the vast reaches of space-time. You are immensely

privileged to exist at all and to be able to explore it with

someone else. Don't waste the trip!

There are a great many fields of good green grass. Sometimes

the grass looks greener in the next pasture; but if you already

have good green grass in your own field, don't leave it.

- Author Unknown.