Marriage: Getting Through the Rough Patch
Art: Peter O’Toole
Marriage. I haven’t written about that topic for a while. There were two posts last November, one: The Latest Skinny on Soul Mates; the other: What Not to Say to an Expectant Parent.
But I am writing about marriage almost every day, because the novel I am working on features a marriage—and of course on the FIRST PAGE there’s a problem. There has to be—readers need conflict. Stress. Arguments.
The main character, Ella Singleton, is struggling because: In the last three months she’d tried to tell herself that this was only a rough patch, that he would change his mind, things would go back to normal. But no—he forged ahead. It was betrayal.
What kind of betrayal? I won’t say. But in any marriage there are bad patches, and thus a new book written by clinical psychologist Daphene de Marneffe is entitled just that: The Rough Patch.
The author zeros in on the midlife crisis in life and in a marriage: “The midpoint of life represents the moment of maximal conflict between our drive to seek external solutions to our emotional dilemmas and our recognition that ultimately they don’t work.” Example: the famous case of the aging husband finding sex with his wife boring and so first it’s the red sports car, then the affair and maybe the I’m so sorry. I lost my mind. What was I thinking?
Midlife is always a time of questioning. Individuals can no longer see a span of decades ahead, find the comfort that there is still lots of time to change course. That brings about uncertainty related to major choices: career, number of children, where we live—and of course, who we love and want to be with.
The author of The Rough Patch states that the way to be a good marriage partner is by “facing authentic emotion and vulnerability.” She states that there is a certain amount of “work” that must be done in a marriage, but softens that definition.
“The work isn’t drudgery,” she says. “The work is staying vulnerable.” And ah, that’s the twist. Vulnerable: susceptible to physical or emotional attack or harm; open to moral attack, criticism, temptation, etc.:
Doesn’t that sound challenging? My husband and I have always been good about sitting down for a talk. But Ada Calhoun, reviewing The Rough Patch writes: “Who among us has not had a grueling 3 a.m. conversation with a partner that they would gladly trade for 40 hours of manual labor? I would rather clean the bathroom. I would rather paint a house.”
Another way to say this: “I would rather not be put in a vulnerable situation.”
Really? Welcome to marriage. Welcome to life. Because we have a spouse does not mean we have been re-created, that we are now open and attune to all their needs and peculiarities, that we accept their failures or honor them to the fullest. De Marneffe often sees clients who are failing to make time and space to remember who they are, what it is in life that they truly want. This lack can cause then to dump their disappointments in life onto their partners: I’d be doing great/rich/having so much fun if it weren’t for you.
“All of life has limits,” de Marneffe writes. “Every decision has trade-offs. Every gain has a loss. I need to construct a life that’s meaningful and works for me. And that’s always going to involve loss, and there are always going to be things I give up. It’s not just that marriage makes you give things up. Life makes you give things up.”
LIFE MAKES YOU GIVE THINGS UP. When I read those words, I agreed with this successful clinical psychologist. And though I have no background in her discipline, the couple in my novel are fighting similar battles—midlife and change, the inability to find common ground. And then later on, how to keep a marriage together when other aspects of their calm life have been blown apart. Do we always know those closest to us?
He was leaning on the counter, looking at some other perennial pile of papers, his face in profile. Yes, this was the man in her kitchen. But was he the same man? If he turned her way would she find the well-worn smile, the softness in his eyes, the message of grace when he looked at her? His glasses still slanted off his long nose, his light eyebrows arched in a frown. But what was pushing at him, controlling him in ways her love could not.
In the end, The Rough Patch and even the theme in my novel, might be about something very basic and part of living a good life—continuing to care about the other person’s feelings.
Daphene de Marneffe writes: “I can tell you, as someone who has raised three children to adulthood, that every week we’re talking about hard things, things that aren’t easy to talk about. We wish we could watch TV instead. When you’re able to collaborate, and move forward with your lives and solve problems and hear each other, and make accommodations, that’s when it’s working. … People have the illusion sometimes that the goal is to have a smooth time with no ripples, when in fact, in my view, relationships are healthiest when both people are able to deal with the emotional stress of having the hard conversations to solve the real problems in front of them.”
Let’s hope that couples who have found themselves in the “rough patch” can sit down and talk, care about one another’s feelings, and come out on the other side with their love of one another still intact. I think that’s going to happen in my novel.
Art: Thanks to Pinterest and Peter O’Toole
(Visited 7 times, 2 visits today)
