The Secret of Marriage

An opinion essay

Remaining married means having the ability to lie truthfully, remain steadfast and loyal, find meaning in banality, show interest in the mundane, give a little, take even less and of course, be happy about it. No wait.  That's the secret to parenthood.

Marriage is about the time spent together doing nothing while thinking about doing something.  It's about the time between the drama.  It is about the lead up to passion that occurs every day regardless of whether one is passionate or not.  Marriage requires patience but more importantly it requires sustenance.  If you don't feed a marriage it will starve. If it starves, your marriage will start to eat you.  When your marriage is eating at you it becomes impossible to hunt for new life to bring to the marriage because your energy is spent fending off the vultures of discontent.

Some couples will try to find fresh blood.  An affair, a separation or divorce.  But fresh blood does not sustain.  It is only a plasma.  A placebo.  Like the vampire sucking the blood of a stag, it is a poor substitute for the blood within living human flesh. Without marriage there is, of course, togetherness.  But with out marriage, there can be no true oneness.

Marriage is not simply an institution ordained by God and sanctioned by mere man.  Neither of these are required to reach the essence of marriage.  To reach oneness.  Marriage is a natural state of being.  When two people love each other and make a public commitment to marriage they are transformed by their connection to each other, flowing outward to their family and friends who sit witness to their testament.  Upon marriage a couple is granted eloquence and serenity, wholeness and peace. 

But these gifts are received for only a moment or a day.  They are felt most strongly at the instant of Vow. From that moment on they are either a memory or a goal to be reclaimed.  They are never a burden although the quest for peace in a marriage may often seem so.

Eloquence, serenity, wholeness and peace.  If we are lucky, we can catch glimpses of each during the years and efforts of our marriage.

It is ironic that eloquence and serenity, wholeness and peace, gifts received on the day of a marriage are often found, sometimes unexpectedly, at the moment of death.

Author's Note

A few deep thoughts on marriage and staying married.

Reviews

[Sean Allen]

I happened to have been reading Hirschfeld's history of marriage in western civilization just yesterday. What I got from it was that Marriage down through history just involved one thing; Men taking advantage of Wonen. You said more here in less than 400 words than Hirschfeld said in more than 5,000!

[James Paulin]

There is at least one poem inside this essay and I would like to read it. Your words ring true and I like this piece. I think you have a poet inside.

[Christina May Shanaberg]

I think marriage is like pledging allegiance, along with another person, to create your own world; after that, your world is what you choose to make of it! These are lovely thoughts and far from the reality, of so many, that marriage is just a part of our "throw away" world. A preacher once told me, "You don't have to like a person, everyday, to love them!" This one goes into "Ye Ol' Library!!"