Love and cynicism
Here’s a touching column on lasting marital love by Tim Muldoon (hat tip: the Anchoress).
He writes “But no less intense is the feeling of radical security we have built together: the knowledge that through all things we can count on each other, and not feel a need to compete or fear loneliness.”
I’m happy for Muldoon and his wife. But as a person who was in a deeply committed and seemingly secure marriage for a very long time and is now divorced, I’ve got a question: what does a person do when that “radical security” turns out to be an illusion (or perhaps a delusion)? I’ve not only seen it happen in my own life, I’ve observed it way too many times in the lives of others.
Does the power of religion as the foundation for marriage (which is where Muldoon is coming from, as a Catholic theologian) matter? I think it helps, but it certainly doesn’t protect.
And how do we learn to trust anew? Is it merely a matter (as Churchill said in a more general context) of success being the ability to go “from failure to failure without loss of enthusiasm?”
“But as a person who was in a deeply committed and seemingly secure marriage for a very long time and is now divorced, I’ve got a question: what does a person do when that “radical security” turns out to be an illusion (or perhaps a delusion)?”
I’ve never know this type of hurt which must be devastating in many different ways so take this for what its worth:
You heal, you open yourself up to the possibility of finding love again, and if you do feel you have found romantic love again you have to trust your gut instincts over the yearnings of your heart.
I’ve been there. Our marriage was falling apart. Our son had died in an accident and neither of us could comfort or help the other. We lost touch because both of us were so broken with grief. We began living parallel but separate lives. Parallel and separate yet we fought…..a lot. We tried, unsuccessfully, to do counseling. (Failed because each of us wanted the counsellor to tell the other one to shape up.) We were not strongly religious, but both were and are believers in God. But that was of little help. I knew and thought she knew things were falling apart, but when I left, she said it had blindsided her.
Fortunately, the process of divorce proved to be drawn out for any number of superflous reasons. In the meantime I became involved with another woman. It wasn’t long before I found myself repeating the same patterns with her
as I had with my wife
The strain of it all added up and one day I realized there was something in me that was creating the problems. I broke off with the other woman and sought out a woman counselor. (My problem was I couldn’t seem to get along with women, right?) Then devoted my non-working life to trying to grapple with my issues. There were many and it was hard to change. (The whole detailed story would make a long book, which I may write someday.)
After a year of counseling and regular, intensive consultation with my wife, who was also doing counseling, we decided to give it another try. We believed we had a love and relationship that was worth saving. It hasn’t been easy. It has been one day at a time. Taken nothing for granted and tried our best to be there for each other. To nurture one another and to be able to talk about anything. We still fight, but we have rules and we never leave things unresolved. Amazing how much better things go when you have both decided to work on tending the relationship.
That was 28 years ago. Best decision I ever made. My life would be much less rich and far more lonely today. Had not my wife been willing to do a lot of work on her issues too, it never would have been possible.
I have friends who went through failures of their marriages in mid life but never resolved their issues. Most are now either old and alone or old and in unhappy relationships. Life is no bed of roses and deep seated happiness is a hard thing to achieve under the best of circumstances. But it is, I think, worth working for.
Or maybe I see things through rose-colored glasses and Churchill was right.
Inspiring story JJ
When it happened to me it was like death itself. A great cold and darkness. The time came when I had to chose life again or stay dead. It was life and I never looked back. It may not make much sense, but sometimes you must simply do and have faith.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cf_JWtVwexA
An inspiring and like minded song.
Love, it’s really what we’re all looking for:
Homer Simpson on the episode of his lost prom date with Marge where she picks him on the side of the road:
“I have a problem. When this car stops, I’m going to hug you, and kiss you, and never stop.”
Simply Red:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qoyz62lbgOs&feature=related
“If you find somebody to love in this world, you better hang on tooth and nail.” –Don Henley in “New York Minute.”
Well, neo, I think your questions are pointing to the core of the problem, which of course is an unhappy trade-off:
True security involves very strong sanctions, both in law and, above all, socially (and that’s where religion really proves its mettle). But then, as you have noted many times before in similarly themed posts, people sometimes, perhaps often, get locked into a “radical security” that is like a prison.
On the other hand, we can trust individuals to know best what constitutes radical security at any given time, and peel away legal and social (religious) sanctions. Then we get what we have now, and the cost is that absolute certainty is less attainable than under the sanction system. And loneliness and the devastation of separation and divorce are their own kind of prisons.
Things really have changed, as I can attest being demographically in the cohort of the kids or grandkids of many people who post here. Growing up, in high school, we used to joke entirely casually when we saw a pretty girl, to this effect:
“Damn, she would make a GREAT first wife.”
That was 16 year-olds in 1997. It wouldn’t surprise me if it’s 13 year-olds in 2011. However much we still hear the echoes of past sanctity surrounding the institution of marriage, the substance of the sanctity is gone, both internally in the form of belief, and externally in the form of sanctions.
Nothing is more important to our lives than having that absolute, unquestionable love. When you have it, the feeling of the general goodness of life is pervasive; it pierces through and saturates every sour moment and off-key circumstance like the soft drone of a xylophone. It’s simply indescribable. To have had that and seen it evaporate not only leaves you exposed and vulnerable, but it explodes the ability to trust and that general sense of the positive thrust of life. Cynicism menaces; doubt intrudes; a vague feeling of disorientation sits at the back of one’s mind and leaps out and attacks without notice.
For my money, the best statement of what all of this feels like and its significance is the little essay of Michel de Montaigne’s, “Of Friendship,” where he focuses on his sense of loss after losing his dearest friend, Etienne de la Boetie, to an early death. In a situation not exactly the same but similar, I read it and broke down in tears. Montaigne is the brother of anyone who knows such loss.
I’ve found out too young what it feels like to lose this “radical security,” and I can add with the confidence of personal experience that there is nothing that can desiccate the sweetness and light of life quite like it. (I’m on a Matthew Arnold kick today for some reason).
I have no answers, merely commiseration.
We boomers were suckers not only on socialism but first and foremost on all things related to sex. I now see all things I believed when I was 18 as dangerous nonsense. I always make sure that I warn the kids and in fact all young people for the ‘free love’ nonsense. I have seen so much misery coming from it that I have sworn to be an oldfashioned marriage-defender till the day I die.
It is almost funny when I hear myself preaching (‘marriage doesn’t work, YOU work on the marriage, you have two jobs, one at home, one outside, the first is by far the most important etc).
And indeed, even when you take it seriously, it can go wrong, especially in todays decadent atmosphere, where a strong, lasting and harmonious marriage is even more difficult to achieve.
But at least you know you have tried, you know you have lived and fought for something worth fighting for, something greater than your poor individual self…
As Mother Theresa said:’God doesn’t ask us to be succesful, He only ask us to be faithful…’.
“What have I become
My sweetest friend
Everyone I know goes away
In the end
And you could have it all
My empire of dirt
I will let you down
I will make you hurt”
It’s not too hard to stay faithful when everything has gone well, or at least not too poorly. But to believe in love and give it yet another chance, after it has beat you up a few times, that takes guts and a long focus.
In order to be truly happy we must take risks. That’s not foolish optimism, but dedication to our own best selves.
Now if only it were easy.
kolnai,
A very perceptive comment, especially for one so young. I envy your maturity, even though in years I am supposedly the mature one.
Many men, and I am one of them, resist growing up. We learn to do manly things, but we don’t learn to look inside and see what is churning around there. We repress it and press on. After all we have work to do, right? Many men, and I was one, are children impersonating an adult.
I learned that all of us start out in life with a sack, which we carry with us always. In that sack we place experiences and issues that we don’t want to deal with. Some are fortunate enough that, as they go through life, the sack never becomes too heavy, but many reach a point where the sack becomes too much to carry. It is then that, if we are lucky, we sit down and begin to take those issues and experiences out for examination with an eye to lightening our load. If we are successful, the load becomes bearable again and we even grow stronger from the self knowledge that the process has produced.
I wouldn’t want anyone to walk the path that I have, though if you think it might make you and/or your marriage stronger, it couldn’t hurt.
Liked your comment too, Wandriaan. Lots of wisdom there. You have obviously sat down and examined many of your experiences and issues. Maybe not in a counseling atmosphere, but in some way that worked for you.
“Damn, she would make a GREAT first wife.”
That was 16 year-olds in 1997. It wouldn’t surprise me if it’s 13 year-olds in 2011.
No. The 13 year-olds might say she’d make a great baby-mama.
A very emphatic second, from another boomer, to what Wandriaan said.
It’s about trust. I’ve been faithful to a woman who regarded me as a fool. Now I love and am faithful to a woman who relies on me as I rely on her. I don’t feel like a fool with her. I don’t care what comes our way, I will do everything to not let her down. It’s like heaven on earth.
I know what you mean. One day my lawyer called me and said my wife had tried to retain him to divorce me. It ended life as hitherto I had known it.