Love, Marriage More Than Hearts, Flowers
After a long day in real life I sat with my wife and ate a piece of Valentine’s Day candy at midnight.
This sweet celebration at home marked 25 years of Valentine’s Days spent together.
The quiet while kids were sleeping was the best gift we had.
In the living room, we took the opportunity to simply talk and reflect on the years and the tears and the triumphs.
After 25 years we’re savvy to the hype and sugar high wrapped up in pop culture’s cellophane packaging of love.
We’ve been there, done that: beautiful places, romantic dinners, and all the rest.
When time, money and a babysitter allow, we still get away.
But we know it’s not room service or red wine that has held us together.
As any couple who has stuck with it will attest, only the heavy lifting of a relationship keeps it fit.
This isn’t the message most people pick up about love and marriage.
From Boyz II Men to the various versions of “The Bridges of Madison County,” the boy-meets-girl story line generally begins with a passionate kiss and ends on a bended knee and a diamond.
Wonderful and essential as these moments are, they don’t reflect reality or even the greatest rewards of a marriage.
That’s why a bill being promoted by Washington state Sen. Lorraine Wojahn this session appeals to me. In her bill, Sen. Wojahn attempts to write something of a reality check on marriage licenses.
“Marriage is not easy,” Wojahn explained from her home in Tacoma a few days ago. “To succeed you have to work at it and many people don’t want to do that. They think if it doesn’t work out they can just get out.”
Sen. Wojahn has asked the Legislature to pass a bill that would add these words to every marriage license issued in the state:
“The laws of the state of Washington affirm your right to enter into this marriage and at the same time to live within the marriage free from violence or abuse. Neither you nor your spouse is the property of the other.
“The laws against physical abuse, emotional or psychological abuse, sexual abuse and battery and assault as well as other provisions of the criminal law of this state are applicable to spouses or other family members.”
Married herself for nearly 50 years before her husband died two years ago, Sen. Wojahn acknowledges her bill is primarily designed to alert women to the dangers of domestic violence.
She hopes the sober wording on marriage licenses will cause prospective newlyweds to consider a full range of responsibilities and expectations.
“When you marry someone, it’s serious business,” she said. “When things get tough, and they will, you have to learn to listen to the other person, to see the other person’s side.”
Many people who get married forget these components.
They seem to approach their relationships much the way my seventh-grade daughter does: through what Paul McCartney called all the silly love songs.
Boyz II Men, Melissa Etheridge and Bon Jovi sing them these days. The themes remain as eternally shallow as a first heart throb.
One true love will make life wonderful and romantic forever.
A kiss and a full moon are all we need.
Right. But as Sen. Wojahn noted, “shouting has its purpose, too.”
Shouting, fighting, orneriness, vexation, frustration, giving in, not giving in, being told to sit down, pipe down, grow up, shut up, all these are part of a vital, enduring marriage.
For some, these struggles do lead to a loss of affection that propels people separate ways.
For others, the struggles build a foundation for an enduring and deepening partnership.
No question, some couples should be divorced and try again.
But in his best-selling book, “Care of the Soul,” Thomas Moore describes the difference between trying to fix, change, or adjust life to perfection, versus remaining patiently in the present, close to life as it presents itself imperfectly day by day.
The first course, I’m convinced, can lead couples rather quickly to conclude they cannot stand their partners or their lives.
The second option leads, in time, to a soulfulness in a marriage, a Valentine’s chocolate at midnight.
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