Marriage Benefits

In my last post, I shared stories of the bad marriage of my alcoholic parents and step-parents, and how that not only didn’t turn me off marriage, but provided me with hard-won answers to what I wanted in my own life and relationships.

I spent Christmases alone in Atlantic City. I was starved for connection and family. I wanted, needed someone to love, to love me, to care about, to make a good life with. To cure my loneliness.

I wanted someone who could be my partner, who could be honest, who I could have kids with. I wanted someone to care about, and to care about me. Who put the same emphasis on family, and on helping and wanting the best for each other and our kids.

I came to the conclusion that family is everything, and why we’re here. I reasoned that if everyone decided to not have kids, then the world stops, at least as far as humanity is concerned. So we must be here to bring the next generation in the world, raise them, love them, and hopefully leave the world a better place with the legacy our kids represent. And I wanted to give these kids the love I felt that I had missed out myself.

Not being raised with any religious instruction except my father’s contemptuous dismissal of all religions as stupid, I had had no moral or cultural basis to help me as I struggled in my hard times, at least partial answers that might have provided values of right and wrong and why we were given life at all. I struggled, and as I came through my struggles I decided that even though I was an honest agnostic, I wanted to give my kids that background, so they had a starting point should they hit their own challenges.

Once I knew what I was looking for, I found the woman I was looking for. It’s been twenty years we’ve been together, and I still remember the moment I laid eyes on her the first time. She accepted me as I was, for who I was, and we spent months talking as friends and really getting to know each other before we had our first date. We both knew when we started dating that we would eventually marry.

Marriage is on the decline nowadays. And for good reasons. I would never wish anyone into marriages like my parents had.

But I would encourage everyone to consider marriage. Consider why you’re on earth, what’s important, and what happiness is. And be realistic about where your priorities are and why you want someone to share your life with in this all-too-brief time we’ve been gifted.

I have come to believe passionately that the quality of one’s life is ultimately judged by the quality of the relationships during your life. Did you love, were you loved, did you nurture, help, and leave the world a better place than you found it? Did you leave happiness and compassion? If you did these things, then ultimately, your life was happy, and I defy anyone to say it wasn’t. My parents, in contrast, all died bitter, angry and alone.

Everyone has to find their own definition of happiness, of course. And of course life is more than just raising kids and having a good marriage: there is meaning and value in careers, education, art, conservation and endless other things. But I personally struggle to say that Titans of Industry who changed the world have lived a fully meaningful and happy life if they left behind divorced spouses and alienated children. Aristotle said that happiness is meaningful work. I can’t think of any more meaningful work than raising kids, loving them, and being loved by them. And the best way to prepare your children for the future and raising happy kids is to have two parents, united by a commitment to raise those kids well. That commitment is marriage.

If marriage isn’t for you, that’s fine. I’m not judging, and there are many understandable and valid reasons to not marry, or to divorce. But it feels like increasingly people look down upon those of who commit to marriage. My purpose here is to tell people why I think marriage is still relevant, important, and the right choice for some.

Marriage Takes Work. But It’s Worth It.

I’ve always looked forward to growing old with my wife. Living our days, raising our family, overcoming challenges, encouraging each other to grow while still being our own persons, celebrating our victories, commiserating in our setbacks, and always finding love for each other as a couple committed to each other and our family.

I am never alone. I always know that she is there for me, as I am there for her.

Some days are hard, of course. We fight. Feelings get hurt. At times I’ve been a jerk, done things that were shitty or selfish. But we’ve always worked things out, and I’ve learned to grow as a person. Her happiness is so important to me, more important than doing what I want, when I want. And that’s true in reverse as well. I sacrifice and give up my freedom for a larger purpose, as she sacrifices and gives up her own freedom for me, us and our kids, and our shared purpose and commitment to each other.

I’ve never regretted being married once.

My parents divorced when I was five, shortly after my mom threatened to shoot my dad in the head while he slept. She had playfully hidden his Browning somewhere in the house, and the cop used my bawling preschooler self to convince her to reveal where she hid the gun. My dad declined to press charges, but soon the brilliant idea of divorcing was enthusiastically embraced by all adults involved.

Both remarried, and both divorced again. I once asked my dad why he married my mom in the first place, and he explained that when they grew up, it was just expected. So they did, in 1961.

Today, they wouldn’t have married. Hell, with birth control, I wouldn’t have been born.

My mom continued to beat her depression into nightly senselessness with Gilbey’s Gin, although after my dad left she’d wait to start drinking until after she returned from her crappy secretarial job. This was an improvement over the previous model, where she’d start drinking in the morning and usually be passed out by the time my dad returned home from a long day of cheating on her with his secretary.

My mom died of slow suicide from alcoholism at 61. My dad, an angry misogynistic atheist, would trail my mom to a slow and depressing death about ten years later, fifteen years after I had married myself.

You’d think I’d be down on marriage. But I’m not.

Being Married is the Best Thing I’ve Ever Done

My parents were great examples: great examples of what not to do. From them I learned that you have to deal with your issues. You have to communicate, and talk, and admit the truth. You have to put aside your own emotions, and commit to something bigger than yourself. You have to know why you’re together, commit to each other, and be a team. And you have to make your kids a priority.

Growing up, I lived in a very small world. No community. No religious identity. No extended family. No brothers or sisters. My parents put their needs and wants ahead of mine, and mostly I was expected to stay out of the way. When my stepfather came into the equation, a terrifying but ultimately decent man who was scarred by a childhood of physical abuse and two combat tours in Vietnam, my own life went from negligence to life-threatening fear of his alcoholic rages. Beatings and then the simple threat of beatings turned me into an A student. When I left for college he told me that he’d pay my tuition, but it was his house now, and I wasn’t welcome back. That was hard. What little connection I had to anything were cut. My mom also went back to drinking hard, and the liver failures that would ultimately kill her started soon after.

I went to a good college, but had trouble opening up to people and forming relationships, romantic or otherwise. I feared the pain of rejection, particularly after my affluent college friends told me they knew I was making up stories about my family to get sympathy. For years I shut down talking about my family and the pain. I was alone, and experienced building isolation after college. I drifted, unconnected to anyone or anything, unable to find purpose and meaning in life, and I fell deeper and deeper into untreated depression.

Somehow I survived my hard times, and came to a few hard-won conclusions about life and why we’re here, and most especially the importance of honest relationships and answers to the question of, “Why marry?”

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