Marital Gems
Our host tells me that he met his present wife at her late husband’s funeral.
On another tack, we had a great party before the walk when our eldest grandson announced his engagement to a girl from Texas. What excellent news.
Love, Actually
I lament the report of the Centre for Social Justice that informs us that the near total collapse of marriage as an institution is predominantly among younger people. So young marrieds are today counter-cultural radicals – that’s more than sad. As a result, we in the west are emotionally and spiritually poorer because of our insistence on independence over interdependence.
“Take back control” was the most effective slogan in the past decade because we have come to desire autonomy in our lives – and Frank Sinatra’s song “I Did It My Way” summarises the mood. But marriage, sharing, having kids and the heavy responsibilities we assume shatters the illusion we can do it on our own. An African proverb tells us: “If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together.” But that apart, from a practical viewpoint, marriage is the best welfare system ever devised. Research shows that children born within a stable marriage outperform and are happier than those brought up by single mothers (many of whom struggle heroically in adverse circumstances, and against all the odds, bring up wonderfully balanced and successful children).
The chattering classes seem to rejoice at the destruction of the nuclear family. But with one in five of the adult population taking antidepressants, mental illness amongst the young soaring, and Britain having some of Europe’s highest levels of drug and alcohol-related harm, am I being a dinosaur to wonder if these issues are linked to family breakdown? Just asking. And while I’m at it, why not encourage families to look after our old and infirm instead of importing other people to do the job for us?
Our Marriage
Jane and I married in our early twenties. Of course we weren’t ready, but in our day, we couldn’t live together without acute social disapproval, so we had to get on with it. There’s never a perfect time to get married and have children, and there’s always a reason to delay making the decision – the effect on jobs and money, wondering if the other person is really “the one”, and what about the cost of housing? When are we ever ready?
In retrospect, Jane and I were mentally children, and we certainly had no idea of the baptism of fire that awaited us. Having little children is life-changing. I quote Michelle Obama: “They are terrorists. They have demands. They don’t talk. They are rotten communicators. They cry all the time. They are irrational. They are needy and you love them. So, you can’t blame them, right? So, you turn your frustrations on each other and get very angry.”
We survived. But what, in summary, have Jane and I learned? Our marriage has been like a mirror. I see Jane and she sees me at our worst and at our best. We continue to grow together in grace, compassion, commitment and trust. I was once asked by a group of singles what was the one quality needed to sustain a happy marriage, and I said, “Amnesia”. I have forgotten how Jane irritated me last week and she forgets how stupid I was yesterday.
We had to discover all this for ourselves, for there was no “marriage course” to warn us of the perils and pitfalls inherent in what we were facing – we just had to learn on the job. I recently re-read the “vows” we made all those years ago. They are terrifying, and I’m sure I had no concept of their implications at the time I made them. I now know they are vows, not easy promises to obey or ignore on impulse. They’re big stuff, and we put our souls in peril if we treat them casually. We solemnly promised to stick by one another for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health – and, by the grace of God, we’ve managed to do these things.
At its toughest, our marriage has been a carousel of mistakes, apologies, reparative work, trying to put things right and learning as we go. Grief at the loss of beloved friends is no less painful with the passing of the years – we just get more used to handling the pain. The older we get, the better our marriage has become.
For Jane and me, marriage and having our children has been the best investment we ever made for ourselves, and, ultimately, for our children and grandchildren.
Fifty Shades of Grey
As the years passed, we realised marriage wasn’t skipping around among the flowers for decades on end. Being a parent is hard work, and it never ends; sometimes it’s a great joy and other times it’s boring, costly and worrying. And that’s fine, for this is normal life.
For most people, happiness vanishes completely from time to time, and sometimes for a long time. However, experience tells us that it usually returns when we’ve stopped looking. Love, however, to quote the late Queen, does conquer all – although it takes its time about it and there are often diversions along the way. But perfection doesn’t exist.
I accept growing older. As the years pass, you become a person to whom more and more things have happened – good things, bad things, fantastic things, heartbreaking things, small everyday things that didn’t count for much at the time, but which eventually, all together, meld into something valuable. They build us up and they flesh us out. Whatever insights we accumulate in the process – even if it doesn’t seem like wisdom at the time – enrich us immeasurably as people. I have done most of my growing up since I was 50. And Jane has grown up too, although she started as a much wiser person than I was.
So, unless you are unusually clever and empathetic, the more life you have accumulated, the more clearly you can see things. As long as we don’t get stuck in our ways – which only happens if we become frightened of the world – we become more tolerant, more flexible, kinder, more broadminded, more considerate, less inclined to knee-jerk reactions and are simply wiser than we were before. Jane and I can see both sides of an argument, understand that things are rarely binary and recognise that there are many gradations of shades of grey, from wispy cloud to the bottom of the stove.
Long live growing older!