The following excerpt, “25 YEARS,” is written by Marley Klaus. The full text can be found on her wonderful
blog The Heathen Learns. She and her husband—
film, TV, and theater director Kevin Dowling— married in 1987 and have two
sons. This was written on her 25th
wedding anniversary. I share her
thoughts especially because of her great insight into what makes a marriage, a
marriage!
There’s this idea about romantic
love, about finding your “soul mate” as that man of mine surely is, that makes
us think that our lives should be entwined, enmeshed, our happiness entrusted
to another. I think that idea does more to undermine good relationships than
almost any other.
The underbelly of that notion is:
so, if I’m not happy – and who is all the time? – it is my partner’s
responsibility to at least try to make me feel better, happier. I won’t speak
for other people but, in our determination to put how we felt about each other into
practice, we kinda got it wrong for a while.
In the misguided attempt to make the other happier, we contorted
ourselves and our lives into painful and unrecognizable pretzel shapes – or
felt guilty when we didn’t or couldn’t.
We thought we were responsible for each other instead of to each other.
The result?
We had about two years of hell
that stripped our relationship right down to its foundation.
I remember standing on a street,
looking across the top of a car at him and thinking: I am willing to lose this
but I am not willing to not be myself anymore. I was lucky. He was braver and
more determined than I was. He took the first steps to break our dynamic.
At the time, it felt like he was
retreating to his corner to work on his own issues, but it gave me the room to
do the same. I would never, ever, ever want to go through that again (have I
said “never” and “ever” enough?) however, the new relationship that was built
on what remained, that foundation, that look, is everything I ever wanted and
more.
Boy, I love you, I admire you, I
like you and I’m grateful for you and to you for our quarter century together.
. . .
What we now know is that marriage isn’t about two becoming one,
but
about learning how to be yourself in the presence of another.
That, to me, to us, is the secret
of a marriage worth having.
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