The Issue of Marriage

Love's Transformations

I can't say for sure … at which point I decided … to ask her … for her hand in marriage. Such confessions don't come easily to me. But I think what I liked best about her was her … self will … and a certain off-the wall ...matronly manner. It spoke of common sense … and I found that refreshing after … coming to know girls … served with my brand of sensitivity … with regards love.

I was 32 years of age … and in ( forgive the macabre ) ' taking the plunge' … I was not prepared for the tumultuous changes … that brought to my personality … and the organization of the instruments of my reality. My parents had brought us up … with some measure of freedom and independence. There seldom was a … ' do this ' … or … ' don't do this ' in my family. My father's guide was always … ' understand your responsibility.'

So I had made it all up. I started with mimicry … but later found it passe` … so I dropped it. Then began a period of admiring successful personalities … and wanting to be like them. They say there's nothing wrong with that … but to come to know and to understand them may be important. So when I got older … I found the biography of Lord Lawrence Olivier … the writings of Ralph Waldo Emerson … Thoreau … Hegel … Camus and a number of others.

Its a strange thing about admiring … and devoting yourself to someone that way … and given the incredible focus of mind I experienced … it became quite an experience. So there I was … not too far from the apron strings of my mother … figuring the Queen of England was running the world … and everyone … was an honest person … when I met my ex-wife. Within the first few years … she cured me of all of that … and had me figuring anew … what I am about.

It was the beginning of my journey into the realm of individualization and you don't do that better than with a person we are in a sexual relations with. There it is again … the prick … gives new meaning to the term ' dickhead ' … but beyond the merely civil … it became the experience of a new reality in my life … and the need to cultivate a greater awareness of my sexual nature. I didn't respond well and we separated after 18 years of marriage.

Marriage … as an institution in our society … is invaluable … and I'm not just saying that. A man truly comes to know life as husband and father. But where I might have wanted our living room to resemble the hunting lodge of an African safari … she wanted her embroidery up on the walls. The meals were served with china … she chose … the bed linen … the curtains. After my daughter came … it became a little much. As the lone man … preserving my sense of an identity … I was at the beach at Dunkirk.

I re-organized myself in the computer room … and held out for as long as I could. Something in the leverage … that my ex-wife felt … in gaining ground … suddenly canceled out any simple suggestions I might have had in the house. A choice of meal … a day out at the beach … a choice of hobby … all came under the glare of scrutiny … I was starting to feel … on the basis of being alone … with two female relations. It started to affect my concentration … and I had to put in more at work … just to stay focused.

Fifteen years into the marriage … I was feeling like a soldier … coming home … to a truce-brokered relationship … that was causing flares in me. I guess I didn't understand it at first … or possibly the hallmark of civility in these times … had me on the defensive about social manners and expectations. I could have sworn however … that it felt like fighting for my survival … in an environment of civil stability and comfort.

In retrospect the experience taught me many things … it made me rethink love … family … and the extent of commitment we bring to it. There's something there to suggest that my father had an easier time managing us … than I had managing my family. I certainly borrowed my expectations from my father … not realizing that social norms and values … were taking an upward curve … for greater involvement in relationships.

However I don't think it was the ex-wife's fault of any kind. She was growing roots into the ground … in the experience of an individual lifetime … and was finding ways to do that comfortably. A matter of being at home … in the heart and mind of a person … who no longer feels the will of sharing … but would like her partner to feel … that he's part of a greater plan of the creator … that only women know about. And how that may have something to do with cultivating an environment for child-rearing and motherhood.

In any review of the adaptation of the specie … some thought must be given to saving the practice of marriage … as a social institution. For starters … I figure … moving out of the house after ten years of marriage … and managing a family relation with that … would work … if we can acclimatize our zeal for it. In a greater view of life … marriage plays a critical part … in the experience of duality and monotheism … in the life of an individual … and its necessary to account for that in our experiences. It would be a matter of making things work.