Happy marriages

Old ycronam is still far enough under the weather that we canceled our dinner plans and stayed home last night. Dinner by the fire and "I've Heard the Mermaids Singing", a sweet 1987 Patricia Rozema film about art, honesty, imagination, love and life.

So, how is it that I'm so happily married? What does it take?

Some, like CW, insist it's all about commitment, determination, sticking it through thick and thin, and so on. I guess if you don't get lucky and/or make the right choice, that's the only way to get through the damned thing. Maybe one can have a successful marriage under those terms, but not a happy one.

For a happy marriage, you've got to have two people who are each capable of happiness, a good match of attitudes, values and interests, and a large dose of kindness and patience.

There's a lot of luck involved. First, in that combination of nature and nurture that yields two adults that are both reasonably decent people who are happy with life's prospects. Genetics can produce a colicky baby who grows up to be a whiny adult. Or a child might get good genes but grow up in an emotionally unsupportive environment that produces an adult who is untrusting, or unkind, or frequently depressed. Unhappy adults rarely have happy marriages.

The second piece of luck comes in being at the right place at the right time. If Mister Right or Miss Perfect doesn't cross your path when you're both available, you are SOL*.

And the third piece of luck comes in the extent and duration of the match. It's hard to know in a matter of months just how well matched you will be for the long run. You may both love some shared activity early on, but there's no way of knowing how long either of you will stay interested in it. You may have the same religious and social values at the beginning, but there's no way of knowing whether or not one of you will have some revelation later on that will take you in different directions. One of you might discover that your faith is hollow and that you cannot believe in God. Or religion may not be important to either of you at the beginning, but then one of you wakes up one day and finds Jesus. When you first meet, you cannot know how either of you will feel about wealth, or poverty, or middle-class life or whatever financial fate awaits you later. If you're childless when you meet, you cannot know how the stresses and joys of parenthood will affect your marriage. These depend in unpredictable ways on whether you have one child or many; whether your children are healthy or not; and on the kids' personalities.

And there's no way of knowing how age itself will affect you:

I once heard a woman in her late sixties -- call her Sally -- complaining about her 90-something year old mother -- call her Nel. Sally said that, years earlier, Nel's own mother had been a very difficult old lady. Back then Nel had said, "Sally, when I get old, don't let me be like my mother!"

Now Nel is old, and just like her mother. Sally recently reminded Nel "Mother, you said you didn't want to be like Grandma when you got old." 

The old lady responded, "Yes dear. When I was 65, I was a real expert on being 90!"

So there's a lot of luck in whether you will grow apart, or stay close, or grow even closer with the passing years.

I've been very lucky on all accounts. M is my soul mate, my life companion, the person I admire and love most in all the world, the woman who loves and understands me, the woman to whom I never have to explain myself. Well, the last is a bit of an overstatement -- of course I sometimes have to explain, but she's always been understanding and completely supportive of me. To my good fortune, it's always been easy for me to also be understanding and completely supportive of her.

Advice for those considering a life-long commitment? The only suggestion I have is the one my own mother made to me when I was a young man: always be gentle to one another.

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* Shit Out of Luck