Do we create our own reality? Certainly not. There is abundant evidence that Things Are the Way They Are. We cannot wish away or ignore certain pain points, nor should we forget a primal need for gratitude when we come into the world and discover that we exist.
Within that inescapable paradigm of What Is, however, there is a surprising degree of interpretation possible. There are stories we tell ourselves about the people and the world around us. “Stories that we tell ourselves” is a special interest of Laura Vanderkam, an interest that has leant great depth and practicality to her writing on time management. It can be disorienting when we start to interrogate those ideas about the people and events of our lives. “I’m always so busy.” “I can never get on top of things.” “My husband never helps me.” “My children are so lazy.” “I never have time to myself.” These comprise the greatest hits of unhappy housewives.
Added to this list is one of the most pervasive and, I’m starting to think, perhaps, pernicious statements about family life: “Marriage is so difficult.”
I, like many, was charmed by the yarns spun by a witty divorce attorney to the ultra-wealthy. He has some insights into the nature of human relationships, but, like anyone, he has some notable blind spots. Predictably, the vampiric lawyer extracting a fat paycheck from the unhappy dissolution of hundreds of marriages and then selling the stories of those sad lives is himself divorced. And he has a story to justify it. They just couldn’t make it work. I listened to a few interviews he did and found repeated in several the story of how he and his wife were different from happy people. You see, once when they were at an amusement park, their happily married friends decided to go for a walk holding hands. He and his wife exchanged knowing glances; they would never do such a sappy and romantic act spontaneously. It would never occur to them. In that moment, he claims, they realized they were destined for divorce.
What about an alternative story? What if, in the look the wife gave her husband she communicated not a doleful recognition that her marriage would never be like that but a hopeful spark, a desire to become that kind of couple? Changing habits is tricky; we are, after all, the sum of our habits; they are an expression of who we are, how we think, and what we love. However, we have all seen people successfully change. Often slowly, modestly, but, nonetheless, really change.
After seeing how happily married people treat each other, we can decide to try it their ways instead of insisting on disdain and ingratitude. It is astonishing to notice how little everyday, simple affection exists in most marriages. The urge to grab a spouse’s hand and enjoy a walk? That is outside the vocabulary of action for most people. But it does not have to be.
Back to question: Is marriage “difficult”? When we repeat often to ourselves and to those around us that marriage is “so difficult” and describe in great detail, as many people do, the experience of waking up next to someone you feel loathing for and feel with great conviction that you have certainly married the wrong person—when we fester in these ideas, what are we likely to notice? It’s not the moment we could reach lovingly for a spouse’s hand or offer a reassuring smile that will grab our attention. No, when we are convinced that marriage is difficult, we will notice all the uncomfortable moments and the friction—how we are different, what isn’t getting done, how hard it is to build a life together. Arguments might stand out more. For example, we might think we fought yet again, which makes sense to us in this frame of mind because it is further proof of what we already know: Marriage is so difficult.
Is that a necessary frame of reference? What if we view marriage as the easy part? A comfortable place in a harsh world to know and to be known? The place of safety in which we can find reprieve in a sea of people who do not know us or care about us? A private sphere away from the prying eyes of the general public? You can find evidence for all of these views.
The gall of people who say “monogamy doesn’t work” when we all know people for whom it has worked splendidly! I recently read an explanation from someone of “survivorship bias,” the fact that we tend to focus on stories of success and ignore failure. Maybe that tendency is not some crime against all the outcast losers of the world but rather the way that we encourage success in ourselves and others.
Maybe it is helpful to explain that marriage can be difficult, but it seems a great many people who find bliss and ease in their closest relationships, truly a foretaste of heaven, do so in part because they are not always looking for what is left to be unhappy about. With practice, marriage can be the easy part and everything outside it can be what is difficult.
