It's been a while since I sat down to make any dogmatic pronouncements about what marriage is or isn't … about what it should be or shouldn't be. Maybe I lost interest once I finally started to get my own marriage sorted out. Also, now that I think about it, I realize that I am a little more skeptical than I once was of one-size-fits-all solutions. If you can find a modus vivendi that works for you and the people around you, that's probably all you need.
But I have started reading Pamela Druckerman's book Lust in Translation: The Rules of Infidelity from Tokyo to Tennessee (2007). And I find that there is a little voice in the back of my head commenting on what I read. So after reading one interview my little voice says, "Yeah, that's about right"; while after reading another it might say, "That person doesn't begin to understand what marriage is really about." So maybe I have arrived at a new dogmatic position after all, without realizing it. Maybe if I open up this post and just start typing, I can figure out
what it is that I've come to believe.
Marriage is a school for character.
I first argued that on some Internet discussion list twenty years ago, I argued it more recently than that on the Patio site, and I still believe it. Living with another person, making your plans around another person, having to consider the other person in everything you do … these things bring you face to face with your own selfish impulses, and you have to conquer them or you are lost. So it's a good thing (from this perspective) that marriage is so cumbersome to get out of. That cumbersomeness forces you to go back and try again and again before just moving out.
Marriage provides a home for raising children.
I argued this on the same Internet discussion list, I still believe it, and I am convinced it is the single most important thing marriage can do. If you have children, and if your marriage provides a good home for them to grow up in, I can excuse a lot of other dysfunctions. Of course I'm not talking about the kinds of dysfunctions that make the marriage a bad place to grow up, nor the kind that will teach the children bad ways to behave as adults. But if somehow you can manage to provide a genuinely wholesome environment in which your children can grow into kind, considerate, responsible, and mindful adults, then your other failures – though they may tarnish your life in other respects – are pretty much excusable from the perspective of your marriage. This actually deserves to be set up as a principle of its own.
Marriage must be practical, not idealistic.
Marriage doesn't have to fulfill you, and probably won't. It doesn't have to make you happy, and possibly won't – some days it is sure to make you unhappy, and for some people that's how it works out in the long run too. You don't have any right to expect or demand fulfillment or happiness from the world; and – if you did – marriage isn't the tool to get you there. By the same token, you shouldn't expect perfect transparency, where the two of you can peer clearly into each other's souls. (This is another big change in my opinions, because perfect transparency in marriage is something I used to long for.) If by some miracle this or that person really is fulfilled or made happy by marriage, that's great. Of course. But it is only a happy accident and the rest of us shouldn't get our hopes up. Your mileage may vary.
Adultery happens. Get over it.
I don't mean adultery is inevitable, because it's not. I don't mean that it happens in a majority of cases, because it doesn't. But I do want to argue that it doesn't have to be a big deal, and that most married couples would probably be happier if they were willing to treat adultery (or even the threat of adultery) as no big deal.
This is a big change from what I believed back when I started this blog seven years ago. Back then I was torn between my intellectual conviction (based largely on the arguments of Robert Heinlein's Stranger in a Strange Land) that there was nothing logical in jealousy, and the heart-rending anguish I felt at Wife's affairs. I wrote a lot of posts trying to explain (to myself as much as anyone) why I felt the way I did. And maybe I didn't have to go to so much trouble, because feelings are feelings. They don't have to be explained or justified … they are what they are. But partly they are fueled by expectations: if you expect absolute monogamy, then adultery feels like betrayal; and that's a very nasty feeling indeed. Even if your intellectual expectations about monogamy as such are confused or inchoate (as mine were), if you nonetheless expect marriage to make you happy or fulfilled (as I did) then adultery pulls the ground out from under you so that you tumble disoriented into free-fall. So it is important to understand that marriage has to be practical, that it can't meet all your earthly desires. That may not be enough by itself to stop you from hurting the first time your spouse fucks somebody else, but maybe it is a starting-point from which you can begin to work on yourself. After all, marriage is a school for character, right?
Of course, if you are the spouse left sitting home alone, you are within your rights to ask for help. It's not like you should be forced to deal with the pain all by yourself, when maybe the two of you can figure out an accommodation which makes things smoother for both of you. On the other hand, as noted above, it's unrealistic to ask for perfect transparency as the "accommodation" you need.
Another consequence of everything I have said so far is that – if you've got children in the house – adultery is not grounds for divorce. Period. In fact, if you've got children in the house then I think divorce-on-demand has to be wrong. Children don't need their parents to be happy and fulfilled, but they do need stability. So as long as they are living at home, divorce should be allowed only for causes which endanger that stability in one way or another. Such causes exist – incest, addiction, abuse, and abandonment are a few that come to mind. But claiming "irreconcilable differences" cannot be good enough, any more than arguing that your wife burned your soup. Suck it up, bubbeleh. For the sake of the children.
On the other hand, going starry-eyed romantic over your lover-du-jour is no excuse for abandoning your responsibilities as a parent, any more than your boss will accept it as an excuse for abandoning your responsibilities on the job. If you want to spend a long lunch fucking like bunnies and coming in waves, that's great – but you still have to make goddamned sure that Junior gets to Little League practice on time, that you are there to applaud at Sister's ballet recital, and that dinner is ready at a suitable hour when the whole family can sit down at once and eat together. These things are a given, one way or another. If you can find some clever way to plan a creative sex life around these constraints, more power to you.
But this consideration leads ineluctably to another one.
Marriage does not have to be between one man and one woman.
This phrase is used as a political slogan in the fight over gay marriage, and of course (as I have already explained in another Patio article) I agree with the implication there. There is nothing in the nature of marriage that restricts it to heterosexual unions. But I want to make another point that is just as important but a lot more radical: there is nothing in the nature of marriage that confines it to dyadic pairs. In fact, raising children is so much work that there is a good argument for spreading the burden among more than two people.
I speak here from experience. You may remember that Boyfriend 4 lived with us for two years. There were tensions and problems, but the really bad ones – the insuperable ones – were all related to his alcoholism. The other tensions we could handle. And honestly, as long as Boyfriend 4 was sober, it was a huge relief knowing that there was one more competent adult in the house. Partly this is because Wife was often sick, or tired, or crazy. But that wasn't all of it. We found we could each take over certain areas of responsibility because we didn't have to worry about the others. Wife volunteered in the boys's classroom. Boyfriend 4 kept the boys on task in the evenings till they finished their homework, and fixed dinners. I earned an income that could support all of us – not lavishly, and certainly not to the levels Wife was hoping for. So after a while we asked Boyfriend 4 to get a part-time job to pay for his cigarettes and other vices (booze excluded) … also to pay off some long-term debts that had followed him around for years because he was irresponsible with money. (Ironically, even though he was admittedly bad at managing money, he was able to put a brake on Wife's spending by chaperoning her most of the day.)
Even if it had been legal, it would have been a bad idea to "marry" Boyfriend 4: his alcoholism and his history of bad debts would have made the idea a non-starter. But that means somebody else in the same position – maybe as part of a different family than ours – could have a place. If a third adult helps make the family a more stable, nurturing environment for the kids to grow up in – and Boyfriend 4 certainly did that, as long as he was sober – then why not?
Once the kids are out of the house, it might be time to call it quits.
That doesn't have to be true for everybody, of course. But it was true for us. And some marriages really aren't made to last forever. I used to think that all marriages should last forever, until mine didn't. Now I understand that this is something nobody can dogmatize over, and in my dour and depressive moods I think marriage laws ought to be reformed to allow separation at a moment's notice. But not really. Because children require stability, marriage should be stable as long as the children are at home. But after that, you've done your job. Anything extra is gravy. Of course some couples stay together happily until death. Others don't. For those that don't – provided they managed to raise healthy, happy, well-adjusted children before going their separate ways – there's no room for blame. These things happen, and sometimes they are right.
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