Married with Children

I wrote this essay some years ago.

My wife and I keep wondering why everything we touch together, our children, our house, and our social friendships, keep coming out so good while she and I struggle so hard to retain a feeling of endearment to one another. Maybe it’s because our personalities are so different. It’s probably the synthesis of our differences however, that creates such a nice outcome. But the lack of timing between our own internal gears sure does cause some friction. Opposites attract, but they repel as well. Maybe it’s the institution of marriage itself that is so challenging.

Why didn’t someone or something—parents, friends, siblings, Hollywood movies, books or magazine articles—tell us the truth about what marriage is and what it isn’t. It would have saved us and maybe our generation a whole lot of pain, self-doubt and frustration.

Courtship and the dating life before marriage are about romance. Before marriage, when the romance leaves the relationship ends. Marriage, on the other hand, is most often not about romance, nor about sex. It’s about partnership: based more on deep mutual appreciation than physical, emotional, or intellectual stimulation.

I suppose a few fortunate couples consistently experience romance throughout their marriage; either because they are “made for each other” or because the couple has committed to give romance a very high priority. For the rest of us, the married majority—especially those of us rearing children—marriage is much more about partnership and managing each day to retain a feeling of mutual appreciation, instead of resentment, while hoping and waiting for the moments of spiritual connectedness and romance to return.

I remember my wife and I realizing around the same time, (although it took us about a year before we had the courage to talk about it together), that this is all that married life is for us. We grew to understand and accept that the “magic” was in how much we both love our children and in the deep enduring beauty of the family we are constantly creating. We also seemed to replace the lack of passion towards each other with a feeling of deep and enduring respect and appreciation for one another. We grew to understand that our commitment and energy went to the family as a whole, which usually meant to the children.

There were some stressful years during which the only time my wife and I remembered that we loved, or even really liked, each other was when we went away on vacation together—just she and I. We were almost amazed to find that away from all the pressure and stress that was our life we still enjoyed hanging out with each other. It was these few weeks or extended weekends each year that reminded us that we still felt something closer to love than dependence. Besides vacations, the next thing we found that really helped us were friends with whom we could let our hair down and really enjoy ourselves instead of worrying about impressing each other or commiserating with about how hard life is. These friendships and the adventure of just going out and having fun partying together led us to again see each other as carefree and young, far away from the
responsibility to build security and strength that we take so seriously virtually all the time.

My wife and I view ourselves like a railroad track, moving along in the same direction, in parallel, held together by our children who are the wooden planks beneath us. We wish we came together more often, but we are mostly satisfied with what we have, happy that the children we are helping to shape are developing well. Yet, we await the time when they require less attention. We hope that we will then grow closer together again.

So in the midst of the child rearing part of our lives, we find in each other mutual support much more often than we find romance. We accept that our primary responsibility and priority is raising good children and having a nice family. We both hope that the next phase of our life together will be filled with the spiritual and physical intimacy we once had, miss and yearn for.