The Carnival Ride

Marriage requires an availability I am incapable of so I've never made that particular mistake. But I suspect, just from having been on the planet for a bit, you might have to just keep re-dedicating yourself to your partner. It seems to be successful at it, you have to keep choosing one another over and over and keeping the love an alive and active thing. Complacency seems the great killer of romance.

Alright, that's about the third or fourth time now you've gotten to the same point I made, but I found out after the fact that you got there first. I just posted this on another thread:

[IMHO, i]n a marriage (or other form of lifetime commitment), the forsaking of others is the price you're paying for the depth of a lifelong relationship with This One Person. And that one person knows it. If she does the same for you, then it's the price she's paid, and pays every day, for making you her only. That's how much she thinks you're worth, and how much you think she's worth. In other words, the high value you put on that other person, and that she (or he) puts on you, is in direct proportion to how aware you are, and he or she is, of the roads not taken (which, I guess, can be any form of alternative lives not lived, which can involve other people, other spouses, other lovers, whatever). It's like a daily sacrifice: The rest of the world isn't worth as much to me as you and this one single life together. Pretty powerful, but I don't think people tend to think of it that way. They think, "I'm more attracted to you now than anybody else, so hey, I guess we should get married," and then in five years, or seven, or ten, when the "feeling" changes, the basis for the terms changes, and it's over.

And also:

This is why I really think any discussion of marital fidelity really is a discussion of the acknowledgement of human limitedness and mortality. You're limiting your life to the life you have with this one person, and there are no do-overs. That can be a beautiful, deep, wonderful thing, but I do think people need exactly that sobering thought when they decide to make that lifetime commitment. Marriage shouldn't be just a "natural next step" for people who are dating and really like each other. It shouldn't be a matter of degree -- as in, "I love you so much now, there's just nothing to do other than to get married." If by "love" that person means a strong feeling of affection, that feeling can vary over time. It can't be the central basis of a marriage, but if it isn't, then what is the basis? Margot doesn't have an answer for that. Neither do a lot of people. Maybe most people.

So I'm observing the constant reaffirmation of "this is what you mean to me"; you mentioned "rededication."

And I'm talking about how "people need that sobering thought" when they're making that decision with lifelong impact, while you said, in a better way than I did: "[E]very one of us embarking on romance could use an older and wiser person to tell us what it may look like some days. I wonder what that would do for the divorce rates."

Is it just me?

I mean, "to tell us what it may look like some days." That phrase is going to ring in my head for a while. That is SO exactly it. If you're aware that this happens with the best marriages, then you're not desperately worried that something is "wrong" because, on three days last week, you don't match up to the latest mass-media portrayal of love as constant rapture for decades on end. You know that people have been down this path before, and they're telling you, it's OK. You're good. Don't panic. Don't do anything stupid.

(I don't absolve Lou completely, by the way, as I've said elsewhere. He certainly contributed to Margot's ability to think of her marriage as a problem that needed to be solved. When your response to the bonfire's diminishment to a more sustainable fire-in-the-fireplace kinda thing is that you can't seem to be bothered to find ways to stoke that fire at least sometimes, and so now the wife who used to have so much of your attention has become more of a roommate, it's not like your hands are completely clean. The thing is, the root of the problem is so mutual and so mundane. She urinates in front of him. In two seconds, she's pulling off her clothes and getting into the shower -- and let's just state the obvious, that this is an unusually attractive woman we're talking about, a fact that becomes only more obvious in...um...that state -- and he barely notices. Just keeps on flossing. And then his idea of attention is something you'd do to a male roommate: Cold water in the shower. Not that that's not kind of funny -- "I was gonna tell you when you were old" -- but when that's all that's going on? Particularly if she fell into the marriage because she liked being worshiped -- which is also a big deal in mass culture, as you know -- what do you do when the worship and the sexual attention turns to a buddy kind of thing? Both of them have their part in this. It's just that what she does is so much more devastating -- again, like the driver who takes her eyes off the road for two seconds and ends up killing a family. The degree of error is the same as a thousand other people on that road on that day, but the consequences are catastrophic.)

Now, I probably should've said "marriage at its best is [a reaffirmation of the worth of the other person to you, etc.]," because of course some marriages, maybe even most, are some combination of "Eh, I can't find anybody better, so you'll do" (always reversible if somebody better is found, of course) and "My presence here every day isn't really a recommitment to you, but just the banal result of my own laziness and inertia." Which is why I actually do think it's tragic when people get married and then stop being whatever they were. They stop being attractive. They get fat. They get boring. They stop trying. (I am not a fan of the dating culture, which tends to be inherently and constantly deceptive and also tyrannical, in that you have to explain yourself if you don't think that's the way to find a good relationship, a marriage, whatever.) IMHO, the best marriages are the ones where each partner continues to maintain worth and attractiveness, because it's only from that place that you can make that rededicating meaningful. Because if nobody else would have you anyway, how is the fact that you're still with this other person a statement that you find her so worthwhile? At that point it's more like glomming on than a conscious and sacrificial choice. More like inertia, and giving up.

Whoa, sorry. Went far afield there. Anyway...then you're talking about the wedding shower, how you're a "socially awkward disaster area" who hung around and read every one of the notes...let's just say we may have been separated at birth. I am 100% not kidding.

You may, however, be one of the wiser hands (you don't strike me as "older," except maybe older than 20, thankfully) who should be advising people, if you know that complacency is the killer of romance (your statement) and that the twittish, jokey notes and snickering "sex tips" written by twenty-somethings are worth nothing more than vague good wishes, next to the "true and pragmatic" things written by the few. And also if you come up with this: "[E]very one of us embarking on romance could use an older and wiser person to tell us what it may look like some days." Next time this stuff comes up in a conversation with my daughters, and it will, I'm bringing it up -- and crediting you, of course.

The irony should be obvious, of course: You -- as a never-married person -- know more about this than the first 20 or more married people who come to mind.

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