June 16, 2001
WORKING ON THE IDEAL MARRIAGE
With startling unanimity, America's young adults idealize marriage.
In a survey done for the National Marriage Project, located at Rutgers University, 94 percent of never-married singles ages 20-29 agreed that "when you marry you want your spouse to be your soul mate, first and foremost."
And almost as many, 88 percent, believe that their soul mate is "waiting for you somewhere out there," and 87 percent believe they'll find him or her when they're ready to get married.
They think the divorce rate is too high (88 percent), and they agree marriage is hard work and a full-time job (86 percent). They think it should last a lifetime, with 78 percent agreeing people shouldn't get married unless they plan to stay together, and only 6 percent think their own marriages are likely to break up.
Doomed to disappointment, most of them.
The percentage of people who never marry has been creeping up for decades.
More couples live together before they marry, which predicts (though it may not cause) a greater likelihood of breakup. The divorce rate is down slightly, but if current patterns persist, more than 40 percent of existing marriages will end in divorce.
The figures come from an annual report on "the social health of marriage in America," prepared by the National Marriage Project, this one titled "The State of our Unions 2001" (on the Web at marriage.rutgers.edu). The project's chief concern is that "marriage is declining as an institution for childbearing and child rearing, with devastating consequences for millions of children."
Even the dedication to ideal marriages is not necessarily good news, project researchers say, because it appears to reflect a greater concern for the parents' satisfaction than for their children's welfare. Only 16 percent agree that the main purpose of marriage is to have children.
But I was struck by the widespread belief that a good marriage is something you have to work at. Since the study focused on twenty-somethings, I consulted two twenty-somethings of my acquaintance. My son, Peter Seebach, and his wife, Jessica Hajicek, both 28, were married in 1994.
"Twenty-somethings say they realize that marriage is work, but they don't have clue one what (ital)kind(endital) of work," Jesse writes. (We did this by e-mail; they live in Minnesota.) "I said the same things before getting married, and even a couple of years into the marriage. I thought I was willing to work, but I wasn't, not then. Only in the past couple of years have I realized that the work I was refusing was the work I needed to be doing, and only in the past year have I figured out how to do it."
Peter says, "It's one thing to say 'I'll love you when you grow old,' or 'I'd still love you even if you were ugly.' It's much harder to say 'I'll stop making smart-ass comments during your favorite movies.' "
Some dreams, Jesse says, "have to be thrown away to make room for new, tandem dreams, and this isn't some starry instant rapport, it's a boardroom-meeting tedium of hammering plans out of fog, and it takes (ital)years(endital)."
"I suspect that a lot of this happens in solitary life, too," Peter agrees. "You have to give up some dreams to pursue others. Marriage is just a bigger bite of that, all at once, than most people expect."
The worst mistake, Peter says, is assuming that any conflict must have a winner and a loser to be resolved. For a concrete example, consider what they call the pop-timer.
At the beginning of their workdays, Jesse goes upstairs to her attic studio to write or paint. Peter, who telecommutes to his job as a software engineer, goes downstairs to the basement where most of the computers are.
"For years, Jesse ignored me," Peter writes. "Or, if you will, for years, I got in Jesse's face all the time and she couldn't get any peace and quiet."
The solution? When Jesse takes a break to get a can of pop, she pays a visit downstairs. "Instead of me going to see Jesse, Jesse comes to see me. On (ital)her(endital) schedule. We compromised; I accept that she controls the timing, she accepts that she has to see me more often than she might otherwise want to.
"A few months later, as we've adapted and learned, we're both happy. We both won."
A little thing, but marriages can crack over little things before they fracture over big ones.
Even soul mates are made, not born.
(735 words)
(E-mail from Peter and Jesse for marriage column 6/16)
-----
From: seebs@plethora.net
Sent: Wednesday, June 13, 2001 12:10 PM
To: seebach@rockymountainnews.com
Subject: Re: marriage study
Jesse writes:
>I'm all sleep deprived and spacey, so I'm not as coherent as I
>might be. Still, I have a few thoughts on the article your mom sent
>us. Or have you already told her what we thought of last night?
>Anyway, please pass this on to her after you've looked at it, if
>I haven't given away any state secrets. :)
(My comments will be interspersed, and subjected to review. -- Peter)
>20-somethings say they realize that marriage is work, but they
>don't have clue one what *kind* of work. They say they're willing
>to work, but they say that to prove they're not lazy or ignorant,
>not necessarily because they are really willing. I know because I
>said the same things before getting married, and even a couple
>years into the marriage. I thought I was willing to work, but I
>wasn't, not then. Only in the past couple years have I realized
>that the work I was refusing was the work I needed to be doing,
>and only in the past year have I figured out how to do it.
(I think part of the problem is that the kind of work it takes to make a
relationship work isn't the kind of thing you need to do for almost anything
else.)
>The kind of work that has to be done to make a modern marriage work
>is different from the kind that last century's financial/political
>marriages needed. People now are unsure how much they should change
>themselves and their expectations. We're the generation that grew
>up on 'Be yourself' and 'You're great just the way you are' and
>'Follow your dreams' and all those other wide-eyed affirmations.
>We feel, deep down, that it would be cowardly and perhaps morally
>wrong to change ourselves for the sake of another.
(... and yet we cheerfully promise to do so, without thinking about the
implications.
(It's one thing to say "I'll love you when you grow old", or "I'd still love
you even if you were ugly". It's much harder to say "I'll stop making
smartass comments during your favorite movies.")
>And the logic follows that if the right thing to do is to 'be
>yourself,' and the same goes for everyone else, then there *must*
>be a soulmate out there who is intrinsically perfect for you,
>because otherwise being yourself wouldn't get you love. And there
>*has* to be love or we might as well take off and nuke the place
>from orbit, because who cares about being human without love?
(Heh.)
>We're a very romantic generation, I guess.
(Yes, but not entirely in a good way.)
>What I had to learn was that self-honesty and self-loyalty aren't
>enough; you also need to adapt to your environment. Without the
>power to adapt, you're crippled. A marriage is a very different
>environment from solitary life, and requires a lot of adaptation.
>Expectations have to change, your view of yourself has to change,
>your view of your spouse has to be flexibe. Some dreams have to be
>thrown away to make room for new, tandem dreams, and this isn't
>some starry instant rapport, it's a boardroom-meeting style tedium
>of hammering plans out of fog, and it takes *years*.
(I suspect that a lot of this happens in solitary life, too. You have to
give up some dreams to pursue others. Marriage is just a bigger bite of
that, all at once, than most people expect.)
>The most important thing in a marriage isn't love, it's cooperation.
>If you never feel that passion again, but you enjoy working together,
>you're going to make it.
>I still feel that a life without any passion is wasted, but I've
>learned that it doesn't have to be sexual passion. Intellectual
>passion lasts a lot longer. An anecdote: Recently I had an idea
>for a one-shot comic book, and in describing it to Peter mentioned
>that I liked the characters but couldn't think of a way to turn it
>into a series, and anyway the main character was a killer and people
>don't identify with that. Peter suggested a redemption-themed plot
>so simple and elegant and beautiful, my thought at the time was
>that angels must whisper these things in his ears while he sleeps.
>Just hearing that perfect idea from him did more to renew my faith
>in our marriage than any hormonal passion could have done.
(Perhaps interesting to note: I have no interest in comic books, except
as light reading. I don't want to write a comic book. I have no interest
in being "part" of the creative process of a comic book.... except that
*Jesse's* comic book is interesting, as a part of my wife's life's work [try
saying that three times fast], so I pay attention to it...
(Realizing that the spouse is an intrinsic source of interest in topics
that are otherwise dull is important.)
>A thought on the finding that premarital cohabitation coincides
>with a higher rate of divorce: I don't think there's a direct causal
>relationship there. Rather, I think that those couples who don't
>cohabit, because of religious or moral standards, are for the same
>reasons less likely to divorce, whether the relationship is working
>or not. My own feeling is that cohabitation before marriage is a
>good and practical way to evaluate whether a romance can turn into
>a working marriage.
(Of course, I disagree; you would have to cohabit for a very long time,
and even then, when you're cohabiting, you're not doing the same thing.
You aren't committed; you know you can always jump, and that means it's
a lot less confining... which means it doesn't answer the *hard* question
about marriage, and may even give you a false impression that you're
done.)
>It's no guarantee, but it weeds out the
>dilletantes. If you can't clean up after his cats, do you really
>want to have his children? If her snoring makes you love her less,
>do you really want to grow old together? That kind of thing.
(And yet, I think those *are* the things that break a lot of these marriages,
because cohabitation doesn't often last long enough to get to the phase in
a relationship where you notice these things.)
>I think that people of our generation are unsure what marriage *is*
>-that waiter guy is proof that some people are *really* confused.
(Yes. And part of the confusion is that marriage *is* many different things,
any of which work...)
>From the perspective of a 20-something who is married, and has
>busted ass to stay married and learn how to do it right, I wish I
>could give a definitive answer but all I can offer is my opinion:
>marriage is a job of work. It's like owning your own business.
>It's exciting and fun, but you have to stay on top of it, it's not
>going to happen all by itself.
>Like that Liz Phair song says: "Love is nothing like they say. You
>have to get up and work the people every day."
(If we're quoting Liz Phair...
"It's true that I stole your lighter,
And it's also true that I lost the map
But when you said that I wasn't worth talking to,
I had to take your word on that." (From a song called "Divorce Song")
(The worst mistake people make is assuming that any conflict must have a winner
and a loser to be resolved. For years, Jesse ignored me. Or, if you will,
for years, I got in Jesse's face all the time and she couldn't get any peace
and quiet. The solution? Instead of me going to see Jesse, Jesse comes to
see me. On *her* schedule. We compromised; I accept that she controls the
timing, she accepts that she has to see me more often than she might otherwise
want to. So, every hour or so, maybe a little less, she comes downstairs from
her studio and talks to me for a while. Maybe we don't say much more than
"hi", maybe we suddenly have a conversation about the long-term implications
of the separation of church and state for religious charities and the welfare
system.... but I see her often enough, and she has plenty of space now. At
first, we were both accepting a situation which seemed less than optimal; a
few months later, as we've adapted and learned, we're both happy. We both won.)
-s