A Marriage Discussion

 The Ravishing Mrs. TB came in and sat down yesterday evening with a wine glass in her hand  as I was doing my evening round of the the InterWeb.  She sat down with the air of something to say (if you have been in any relationship long enough, you know the "air"), so I sat back and waited.  Sometimes these conversations can be something that has been anticipated, sometimes they can be out of the air.

"Do you remember X from my work" She asked.

I nodded.  X is someone I know tangentially through my wife - but then again due to the nature of my wife's work, I know a lot of her coworkers.

"Their marriage is breaking up"  she said.  "It is amicable separation, but it is sad".  A sip of wine, a sigh, then "It seems like a lot a marriages have been breaking up."

I nodded.  "It has been a rough two years"  I replied.

We chatted on a bit after that about our own marriage, but the thought stuck with me through the evening.

It has been a rough go for marriages, especially over the last two years. Note here I am not including various political and social reasons why marriages are not happening (because, of course, that is political and social and there are lovely sites that discuss those issues), but the marriages that have been in place for a while and are dissolving.

I do not write this without knowledge of the painfulness of this subject.  I have as many friends and acquaintances that have been through a marriage break up as have not and even in the recent past have walked with friends as they have been through it.  I have "caught up" with friends on Social Media only to find out that "when we last left our heroes" had changed a great deal since we last left our heroes.

I suppose on one hand every age has been a hard one to be married in, as there are some problems which are universal to the human experience throughout the ages (one wonders, for example, prior to the invention of the refrigerator, what was the ancient or medieval equivalent to "Who left a quarter cup of milk in the gallon container in the refrigerator?").  At the same time, there are specific problems to every age which are not shared by all of them. 

If I do a running list of the last two years, we had a divisive "election experience", economic disruption the likes of which I have not seen but twice or thrice in our lifetime, The Plague, and an overall general mood of "We should pretty much reconsider everything".  That is a lot, especially to pile on a relationship which may have for various reasons already been under some stress.

Spouses which had evolved relationships suddenly were having to evolve them again, from being separated for large portions of the day to being in the same place for large portions of the day.  Societal and political pressures may have strained relations; having children in the home with "school via e-mail"; and economics, which can create issues when strained at the best of times, can create a disagreement faster than almost anything.

A month of this might be endurable.  Six months, possibly.  We are now two years into this entire situation.

The odd thing - to me, at least - is that when I hit those points of stress, the first reaction that I will often have is not "I need to go back and reassess that primary relationship and see what I can do to fix it", it is too often "I need to double down on those things that are bringing me happiness and joy "- which is pretty often not the relationships I should be focusing on.

"The Great Reconsideration" (which I think is what this two year period from 2020-2022 should end up being called) has given people an opportunity - often enforced by circumstances - to look at their lives and ask hard questions.  Unfortunately, I wonder if we have become a people which asks first and foremost "what is good for me" rather than "what is good for the relationship"?

I am conscious when I comment at all about marriage that there are a standard set of statements one has to put in place:  people should not have to stay in abusive relationships, people should not have to stay in dangerous relationships, etc.  I hope (if you have been here long enough) the assumption is that I am not implying any of things by not making more of them.  And there are another set of people that have either gone through one round of marriage and said "No more for me" or have elected not to marry at all.  And there are many people who have had a "do over" which was a far better relationship than the first.  These, too, are valid ways of living - but again not what I am considering here.

I cannot speak clearly as to the long term outcomes and costs of this if it truly is a trend, other than the fact that it concerns me that creating an environment in which marriages struggle to survive has implications - and not terribly good ones - for the larger society as a whole.  If we are creating an environment in which significant relationships are harder and harder to maintain - and these the most voluntary of them - what does this imply for the larger society which ultimate benefits from stability but is creating an environment that destabilizes it?

I do not have answers to this, any more than I have answers to most of the other issues I ponder.  All I do know is that it has made me painfully conscious of my own relationships.

After all, if your wife sits down with "an air", it is usually a wise thing to listen.