When Are You Safe In Marriage?

Posted on by stilllearning2b

Imagine stepping onto a baseball field and up to bat. You connect with the ball and begin your run around the bases.

So when would you be safe? When could you relax a little, knowing that the umpire couldn’t declare you out? When could you be assured that the run would be completed and you would make it all the way home?

After first base? Second?

If marriage was a baseball field, first base would signal the completion of 10 years, second base would be 20, third, 30 and circling around to home plate again would represent a lifetime of wedded (hopefully) bliss.

When are you safe in your marriage? When can you breathe easy knowing that your spouse wouldn’t suddenly decide to throw you out? When could you be assured that the marriage will last a lifetime?

After ten years? Twenty?

A friend commented on a local radio personality’s somewhat public and ongoing divorce from his wife. They have been married for twenty years. My friend was shocked, having the assumption that a marriage that has lasted twenty years will last for the remaining decades.

But that’s not necessarily the case, is it?

In a marriage, you can celebrate making it to second base. But you can’t relax.

Some of the hardest years can certainly be the early ones, as negotiations are compromised and compromises are negotiated. You are still learning who your partner is in a variety of situations and learning how to be with them. It can be a time filled with complexity and flexibility as you find your stride.

And if nothing ever changes, perhaps you can relax at that point, resting easy knowing that you’ve worked through all of the kinks in the marital knot.

But something always changes.

Kids come and go. Promotions are gained and jobs are lost. Some selves are actualized and some are minimized. Someone may fall ill or someone may fall in love.

Something always changes.

And when change comes, the marriage must change with it if it is going to survive. (And especially if it is going to survive happily because what’s the point of a long marriage if you’re miserable the entire time!)

Even if it’s been twenty years.

Because in a marriage, there’s no such thing as safe at the plate.

And although that may seem a little scary, it also makes the game exciting. Because how can a marriage between two ever-changing people in a always-shifting environment ever become stagnant or boring?

You have to always keep your eye on the ball and your intention on the journey.

And if you get called out, don’t be afraid to get back in the game:)

One Marriage, Two Lives

Posted on by stilllearning2b

Brock and I watched American Sniper last weekend.

We both walked out in tears.

It’s a powerful movie.

And one that highlights many uncomfortable truths.

I’m not going to get into the story. Or the controversy.

But I do want to address one common issue the movie emphasizes.

That people who share one marriage often lead very different lives.

In one poignant scene, the sniper is riding in the back of an armored vehicle through the streets in Iraq. He’s on the phone with his new wife, who was walking out of the doctor’s office where she had just learned the sex of their new baby. On his side, shots are fired. The phone falls and is trampled as soldiers respond to the immediate threat. On her side, she wails as she hears the shots fired across the world. She screams for her husband while clutching her unborn child.

One marriage, two lives.

A military marriage with one spouse deployed is an extreme example of spouses living in different worlds. One occupies the domestic world where daily concerns are often limited to the mundane while the other is living on the edge of hell. The one left behind is desperate to connect, wanting to know about the experiences. Whereas the one who has returned has witnessed scenes that no one should ever see and works to shield his or her spouse from what they saw. It’s no wonder that military spouses often have trouble relating once they are reunited.

This phenomenon is not limited to military marriages.

Lives diverge when distance separates partners for protracted periods of time. Whenever one spouse has job that reveals the darker side of humanity, they may be more likely to erect a screen, safeguarding their partner from reality. When one partner assumes most or all of the parenting duties or when one is fully responsible for securing a living, they have to make a continued effort to maintain a connection between their worlds. And even a couple that shares much of daily life risks growing apart if they fail to check in with the other.

In every marriage, there are two distinct people with two distinct lives.

In every successful marriage, there are two people who actively work to build and maintain a bridge between those two existences.

So that rather than one marriage splitting into two lives, it’s two lives joining into one marriage.

In the Best Relationships

Posted on by stilllearning2b

In the best relationships, each partner acts as both student and teacher.

As a student, you approach each situation within your marriage with curiosity. You listen to learn rather than respond. You accept that there are areas where you are still learning and improving. You see yourself not only as you are, but as you can be. You understand that mistakes are part of learning and starting over means you’re applying the lessons. You strive to not be right, but to be better.

As a teacher, you want to challenge your partner because you see their potential and promise. You accept them as they are while encouraging them to be what they can. You share your strengths and help them develop their own. You celebrate their successes and find joy in their learning. You honor their wisdom while sharing your own.

And together you become better.

Not by completing each other.

But by supporting and challenging each other in equal measure.

Because when both partners are both student and teacher, there are no life lessons that cannot be mastered.

Permission Granted

Posted on by stilllearning2b

When I was a freshman in college, I spent a brief period in a grief support group. I was reeling from the deaths of over a dozen friends in the previous few years. There was a young man who had recently lost his mom to cancer and a woman whose brother was killed the previous year in a head-on collision. Three other women rounded out the group. They had all miscarried.

All of our losses, although different in degree and detail, had much in common. But there was one factor missing for the ones who had suffered the loss of their unborn child; they didn’t feel like they had the right to grieve. Either explicitly or implied, they had all received the message from people around them that theirs was not a “real” death and that their level and duration of grief should match that fact. Their grief, rather than being supported, was minimized.

Unlike the rest of us, who were deemed “faultless” in our losses, these three women had faced accusations and associated guilt that they were somehow at fault. That they were responsible for their loss. They had the added burden of a sense of culpability and a target for blame.

I ached for these women.

Their loss was real. Their pain was real.

And the fact that their pain was downplayed and finger-pointed made their grief all the more real.

A divorce is a death.

Not of a person.

But of a marriage.

It is loss of the possibilities of the future.

It is collapse of a partnership and a family.

It is the cleaving of lives and often self.

And part of what makes divorce so difficult is that it is the demise of a marriage and yet there is a stigma attached to grieving its loss. There are no wakes, where loved ones gather and offer support. There are no obituaries published to disburse the news and quiet the rumors. You garner uneasy looks in you mention how you miss your spouse, especially if he or she is playing full-on offense in the divorce. There are no established rituals for mourning a marriage (and I don’t count the uptick in the often-gaudy “divorce party” a grieving ritual). And there are certainly no memorials planned.

It is a complicated grief. The person is still alive, yet the memories are now tarnished perhaps beyond recognition. They become sort a walking dead.

There is always a questioning and doubt as to what you could have done to alter the marital course. And it is a tricky path to walk between responsibility and needless guilt.

You may feel confusion because you initiated the divorce and yet you don’t understand why you are so sad to see the end you hoped for finally arrive.

You hear statements from others like, “My divorce is the best thing that has ever happened to me,” while you’re still reeling from the loss and grieving in silence.

The loss is real. The pain is real.

And the fact that the pain was downplayed and finger-pointed makes the grief all the more real.

So hold a funeral for your marriage, a sign of acknowledging the end and a first step of letting go. Take some tangible piece of the marriage (no, not your ex!) and release it through burial or a funerary pyre.

Write a eulogy for your marriage, telling the whole story from hopeful beginning to bitter end.

Plant a memorial tree symbolizing your roots in the marriage and your limitless growth above.

Re-purpose a memento from the marriage to serve as both a memory of what was and a reminder that you can transform your future.

It’s okay to mourn your marriage.

It’s okay to grieve your loss.

Permission granted.

What a Thing is Not

Posted on by stilllearning2b

Sometimes you have to experience what a thing is not before you can truly appreciate it for what it is.

I wound up at the doctor’s office Tuesday night in order to rule out strep (one of the gifts middle schoolers love to give their teachers!). Apart from lethargy and a headache, my primary complaint was a sore throat and very swollen and tender glands in my neck. I knew it was time to go in when I was counting the turns (and subsequent neck pivots) that occurred on my way to work that morning.

The nurse practitioner delivered the welcome news that it was not strep (yippee!) and she inquired about any sinus congestion.

“None!,” I replied confidently, thinking back to only weeks before when the flu made me sound like an MMA fighter after an especially brutal match.

I was sent home with a pack of prednisone to counteract the inflammation along with the usual recommendations.

And four hours later, I was stunned.

That congestion I was sure I didn’t have? I had just become so acclimated to it (and the excessive swelling was holding it in place), that I was completely unaware of the pressure. At least the until the steroids started to take effect.

And once I learned what the absence of congestion was, I could appreciate the obstruction for what it was.

(And appreciate the availability of modern medicine and clinics with late hours!)

We acclimate to where we are.

We adapt to our surroundings until we are larger unaware.

Until it shifts.

And the contrast is uncomfortable.

Even painful.

But the disparity between what was and what is allows us to fully see a thing for what it is.

There is a Korean spa in town that has an amazing wet area. One of my favorite pastimes there is to spend several minutes either in the hot tub or the steam sauna followed by a dip in the arctic plunge pool. Those first few moments in the frigid water are brutal; I have to force myself to continue to breathe. After a minute, my body acclimates and the cold is invigorating. And then eventually, I do step out and enter the warmth of the tub or sauna again, the heat just as uncomfortable as the cold at first. Until it isn’t.

And after an hour of alternating extreme temperatures, my body and mind feel more alive than ever at 70º.

Because sometimes you have to experience what a thing is not before you can truly appreciate it for what it is.