Do you remember seeing that special on television a few weeks ago, the one with the couple who had been married for 75 years? Do you remember what they said the secret was? The husband said, "We must have just been lucky," and the wife, cute as she was from her little rocking chair said, "Well, you know, things just used to be easier." Do you remember that?
No, of course you don't. It never happened. It never will happen. In my entire life, I don't recall ever hearing a single person celebrating an anniversary saying, "Whew! We must have gotten an easy one to get this far!" No. Never has, and never will.
Before I go further, there are currently at least three of my facebook friends who are in the process of, or contemplating divorce--numerous more are divorced, divorced and remarried, or never married and completely disenfranchised on the thought of relationships. I'm not talking about any of you, (or maybe I'm talking about all of you) but no one in particular. If your feelings are easily hurt, or you're going to get all wadded up, you probably better stop reading now. That said, I have very few friends who expect anything less than both barrels when The Things Scott Thinks About start bubbling to the surface.
I don't have it all figured out, and I'm not trying to approach this from any kind of a self-righteous, "Bessie Better Than You," perspective, I'm just thinking, and you're reading. Maybe you'll start thinking too.
Since I got out of the way and started letting God put my nearly derailed marriage back on track, I've had a lot of people come to me for advice. Everyone wants to know, "the thing". They want to know how Heidi and I made it work, when we were so close to it all being over. (Remember, it was four or five days before our divorce would have been final that Heidi signed the motion to dismiss) I've been quizzed so much on this in the last year, that I've got the format of my response down pretty well.
First, I tell EVERYONE that I'm the last person qualified to give advice. Then, I offer to give specifics on my circumstances, and let them draw conclusions. I tend to spend a lot of time on the revelations I had, which basically were: 1.) I couldn't have a proper and healthy relationship with anyone else until I had a proper and healthy relationship with God. 2.) I am pretty much a selfish, self-absorbed, judgmental, jerk, and 3.) I had to decide if I wanted to be "right", or if I wanted to be married. Fact is, I ate a lot of crap sandwiches in putting our marriage back together. In the beginning, I took the blame for about everything. Was it all my fault? No, of course not, but at the time, reminding the person who was completely done with me of her faults was probably not going to win me any favor.
That's about it. That's my three things. I usually get some mixed reaction of admiration and disbelief, followed by, "yeah, that's cool things worked out for you guys, but our situation is way different." It turns out, most people who ask me for advice don't really want advice anyway--so I don't get a lot of objections when I refuse to offer it. The reality is, they generally want validation--they want to be right.
I spent a few months in that spot myself--whining to many of you who are reading this. Telling all who would listen about how much I'd changed and how unfairly I was being treated. Yup, I've been there.
Takes one to know one? Yeah, I know it when I see it.
You know what I wish someone had told me, I wish they had beat into my head, I wish they were there through it all to remind me??
Marriage is damn hard. It takes a crap ton of work, and a whole lot of give a damn. It's hard, it's sometimes not fun, and, between me and you, sometimes it SUCKS!
You think YOUR situation is special? You think YOU are that different? Well, that's a selfish, self-absorbed view. You know what? I bet if you asked Mr. and Mrs. 75th anniversary, they'd tell you they had some days like that. Maybe some years. Maybe some infidelity. Maybe some ugly fights. Maybe some pain in the ass relatives who seemed determined to drive a wedge between them. Mr. and Mrs. 75th anniversary dealt with all the same things you did. I find it really disrespectful to those who've worked hard to get there to assume anything different. They WORKED for it, they dealt with what you're dealing with. They valued it enough to work hard enough to make it work.
I thought everything about my situation was special too. Guess what. I'm not all that special, and neither are you. Work for it. I have been to 12 step meetings all across the front range, and listened to people from 18 to 78 tell their story. You know what? Their story is my story. Change a few details, but it's all the same.
I've read at least 10 books on marriage, relationships, divorce, separation, all in the last year. You know what? The advice varies, but the stories are all the same. I'm not special. You're not special. Marriage is damn hard. You get to choose if you want to work for it or not.
Nobody told me that, not that way. I don't think anyone ever told Heidi either. I know that many of those standing behind me, even many of those praying for me, those feeling bad for me, those supporting Heidi in her decision to leave...lots of well intentioned, good Christian folks--not many told me what I needed to hear, and I don't think anyone in Heidi's circle of influence was telling her either--Marriage is hard. Damn hard. Suck it up, go deal with it, go be married.
The most common thing I hear is how much someone, or something, changed, so they are gonna just move on. "We've just grown apart". "We just want different things". Even, "We don't want to fight in front of the kids anymore".
In the last year, I think I've heard them all. This week, I heard the cake-taker--"Eh, we gave it a good go, but we're just gonna split up and try to be friends for the kids' sake." What?? That's really what we've relegated commitment to in our society--marriage is about as sacred as an elementary school kickball game that didn't go the way someone wanted. "We tried."
Wow.
Heidi and I used to watch the show, "Parenthood" on tv. It was kinda cute, hit on some tough issues, but was fairly wholesome at first. Then, it got a little too real for me, and somewhere along the line I didn't watch it anymore.
For some reason, in the last couple of weeks, I've caught a few episodes, and it's been very close to home. I generally get into tv shows to knowing character's names, but the hot lawyer girl and her husband have been split up for a season or two. Now, their divorce is becoming final. Her husband goes to his father-in-law (Craig T. Nelson's character), to tell him goodbye, and I guess thank him for all the good times. F-I-L was having none of that. In what I wish I could find online so I could link it and quote it, Craig T. Nelson gives the advice that every dad, every mom, every friend, every ANYONE who cares about marriage should give, "Don't give up, FIGHT for your marriage!" "FIGHT!" Probably the best 10 seconds of network tv in the last decade. FIGHT! FIGHT! FIGHT!
For 10 seconds, instead of portraying the idiot husband drinking with his friends, talking about how she's taking him for all his stuff; the idiot husband with his new 10 year younger girlfriend; the husband who gives up and never sees his kids because he has to deal with "her". For 10 seconds, there was a brief revival of the ultimate family value. FIGHT for your marriage. Stop fighting WITH her and fight FOR her!
Why are we coddling our friends? Why are we validating our loved ones? Why do we stand up in people's weddings, vowing along with them to support their marriage and their commitment, and then turn around and say, "Yeah, he's a real bum," or "I'm sure she's tough to live with". Tell them to FIGHT!
You know, there are times, and I think it was Dr. Laura I heard years ago who had her three A's. Addiction, Abuse, Adultery. Three legitimate reasons to end a marriage. Maybe. Safety first, always, don't be stupid. After that, I guess it depends. Maybe? Maybe it depends if one is committed to changing those things, maybe.
Thankfully, I know of only a few relationships close to me that ended due to physical abuse, so leave them out of this discussion, but I also know this: 100% of marriages that I've seen fail have failed because at least one of the two parties in the marriage didn't want to work hard enough to make it work.
PERIOD. Sometimes one person fighting hard enough can bring the other around. Sometimes not. 100% of the time, if you don't try, you fail.
Many of you know that I finally accepted the fact that I was getting divorced, but I did not stop fighting. I knew that if I stopped, I was guaranteed to be divorced. If I didn't stop, there was some chance that I might not be. Given my seemingly impossibly unavoidable outcome, there were a lot of times I wanted to give up, just let go. But then God would reach down and nudge me, FIGHT!
Thank GOD that I had a few AWESOME people behind me--people I would never have thought would become my champions, who told me, FIGHT!
Maybe our generation is too burned up and burned out. Maybe we're all too cynical and jaded. But I know what I'm going to tell my kids, and anyone else who will ever listen: Marriage is hard, and you have to WORK and FIGHT to make it work. Do it!
When the day comes that some dude with a bad haircut who dresses funny tells me he wants to marry my daughter, we're gonna have a talk. We're gonna have a talk about work. I'm gonna tell him the truth. I'm gonna tell him marriage is HARD. I'm going to video tape it, and I'm going to share it with him and my daughter when things get hard. I'm going to tell them to FIGHT! I'm going to tell them to FIGHT for each other, not with each other.
FIGHT!
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