The Mystery of Marriage

I met my husband fourteen years ago on a quietly spectacular blind date. He was funny and smart and gentlemanly, and there was a stillness about him that I found calming. By the end of the evening I was pretty much a goner. At some point that night, I remember saying that even if we didn’t go out again, I wanted him in my life in some way. I felt more deeply comfortable in his company than I ever had with anyone else, so freely alive and at home in my own skin that I put on the Rolling Stones and played air guitar while he looked on with amused fascination.

And so we did what people do when they collide in that way. We fell in love and moved in together and built a life and adopted each other’s families and bought a place and raised a kid and weathered crises and had adventures and dreamed our dreams. Every year on the anniversary of our first date, we agreed to renew our option for another year. I remember standing on a dais once and toasting my husband as my mate in the grandest sense of that word.

And then it all fell apart.

I have thought long and hard about what brought our marriage to the place where it now resides, and I can’t really say that I am much closer to unravelling the mystery. I have my theories, and he has his. Who knows where the truth lies? Maybe our union was flawed from the start. Maybe we had expectations that were impossible to fulfill. Maybe we were missing some ingredient of self. Maybe our marriage just wore out, as marriages do. All I know is that we are two decent people who love each other and are living in a marriage that feels unfixable. And so here I am, staring down the barrel of my own ambivalence, wondering whether to stay or go.

If I tough it out, there is some evidence suggesting I will be happier, in the long run, than if I leave. On the other hand, the damage is mounting, and maybe it would be best to cut my losses before more damage is done. Maybe it would be wiser to join the ranks of those leaving long-term marriages later in life, unwilling to squander whatever years they have left.

Since the Sixties, roughly twice as many of us are walking away from marriages and heading down that long, dusty highway in search of personal fulfillment’s Holy Grail. We’re not just fleeing from toddler marriages made in youthful haste, the so-called starter marriage, which doesn’t even count as a marriage any more—third is the new second, haven’t you heard? We’re not just fleeing quarter-century edifices toppled by the middle-aged crazies. Now we’re hobbling away on canes and walkers. Gays and lesbians may be beating down marriage’s double oak doors, but increasingly heterosexuals are leaving in droves. And living common-law is no insurance against the odds. Although more than half of us now live together before first marriages—often hoping to hedge our bets—those who do are likelier to divorce in the end; meanwhile, those of us who share quarters but swear off marriage altogether split up more often than if we had wed.

Not that those who stay married are necessarily models of marital bliss. According to a 1999 Rutgers University Study of the National Marriage Project, only 38 percent of Americans on their first marriage described themselves as “actually happy” in their situation. This is a rather whiplash-inducing statistic because it means that two-thirds—two thirds!—of first-married American couples are leading lives of quiet desperation, camping at the office, sobbing in the bathroom, playing Leonard Cohen on an endless loop.

What’s more, the ones who do leave never seem to learn. Although North American marriages combust approximately half the time, the compulsion to marry is deeply branded into our psyches: the American wedding business is a $70-billion (US) juggernaut, glossy bridal mags entice from newsstands like high-priced hookers, and planning the perfect nuptials has become the entertainment du jour. We’ve got it bad, this soulmate for life thing, this sweet illusion that once we find The One, marriage will meet our every need.

What does it mean when so many long for lasting partnership, but so few know its secret?

For fifteen years, my parents had a brilliant marriage. It was traditional in that Fifties way, yet remarkably modern in sensibility. Even as a child, I sensed something profound and thrilling about it.