Unless both people are ‘beautiful things’ these marriages cannot all be beautiful.  My Husband is one of the most darling people I know… on the inside.  He was raised with such issues and bad examples that he makes my life a living hell, will not stop no matter what you say to him and he feels terrible about it and about himself.

 This is not a beautiful thing.  It is sad.  The same way people cannot get a hold of their addictions, compulsions, bad habits or even overeating, they often cannot be the wonderful spouse they always meant/wanted to be.  People are not beautiful, especially if you think of the fact that you are together for the rest of your lives.  Marriages aren’t either.

Well adjusted emotionally healthy people are in the minority in this country, healthy marriages are even more rare because you would have to find two of them… and together?  Good luck.

When we're talking about the concept of marriage within the western world, we should remember that it was only relatively recently that “until death do us part” became 30, 40, or 60+ years. Previously, with mortality rates, there was a pretty decent chance that if you didn't die, your spouse would, and you'd remarry after that. And even if your spouse didn't die after a few years and neither did you, your life expectancy meant that it was unlikely you'd end up with 60 years of marriage. This was true even into the 20th century when people became more likely to marry for 'love'. There was a period before antibiotics and vaccinations became more widespread. There was also the Spanish flu, WWI, and WWII, not to mention the rigors of childbirth (which killed my great grandmother in the 1920s). Another great-grandmother was remarried several times, while a grandmother spent more years a widow than married.

My point is that maybe the idea of 'spending the rest of your life with someone' meant something rather different when there was a reasonable chance that life would be “nasty, brutish, and short” (as Hobbes might have put it). Perhaps it's fairly normal for people to switch partners every 10-20 years or so, and those people we hold up as shining examples of marriage (70 years together and still happy!) are in fact the odd ones. In the past people whose partners proved annoyingly healthy may have wanted to get a divorce, but it simply wasn't legal or acceptable then to get one. (Perhaps now we are merely seeing the effects of what people would have done all along, had it been possible.)

It's just a thought. People often cite a throw-away culture, unwillingness to work on relationships, an expectation that you can have it all, women's expectations of equality, and numerous other changes they perceive in society as an explanation for why there are more divorces now. Another massive change in society which took place at about the same time was an increase in life expectancy, so it's also worth considering if it had any impact.

I didn’t come up with a good answer when talking it over with my friend. I doubt I could come up with one now. All I know is that I have the choice to end it but, for some reason, I stay.

Perhaps the reason why has something to do with my parents’ marriage. For most of their 40-some years together, my parents cobbled together a relationship fractured by bitter fights, alcohol, financial troubles, infidelity and more. Some of those years, they barely spoke to each other. When they did, they occasionally discussed ending their marriage. But, they didn’t.

As life went on, they began to mellow. The struggles of all those years seemed to smooth their rough, unformed edges and polish their souls. In the end, they seemed to see something of the best of each other reflected back. It wasn’t passion so much as it was truth — the truth that, no matter how ugly things can get in a human life, the capacity to forgive and be forgiven will eventually bring out things far more beautiful than we imagine possible within ourselves. They were devoted to each other in those final years.

My parents passed away within 6 months of each other. My father was first to receive a diagnosis of terminal cancer. Distraught, my mother preceded him in death by dying suddenly four weeks after they were informed of his condition.

Were the last years of their life together worth the hard decades that preceded them? Could they have been happier if they had made different choices, perhaps avoiding marriage altogether? Could they have made something more of their lives? Perhaps. But the same could be said of any life. As one singer noted, “a thousand futures pass away with every choice we make.”

Instead, they stared down the stark consequences of the choice they made and the individuals they were. And, step by bitter step, they fought, forgave and forged on until, perhaps not even expecting it themselves, they became the people they aspired to be from the start — beautiful in each other’s eyes.

I don’t know if the same will happen in my marriage. The dynamic is different. We’re different people. Hanging around funky brown chicks may do wonders for me. My wife would probably see it differently.

Still, thanks for the question! And, thanks for a great blog filled with honesty and openness. I stumbled on you in a Twitter trend on as I fooling around with a new cell phone. One thing led to another…