He's pretty angry right now. We've known for a long time that it was only a matter of time that his parents would stay together. Now it seems that they're finally splitting up. This doesn't really bother him so much in itself, but he rails against the unfairness of it, and the treachery involved.
Now that I think of it after a few hours sleep, though, I don't think there have been many completely fair or loyal split-ups in the history of the institution of marriage. There's almost always a betrayal of loyalty, or an unfair side. People get bitter, angry, feel like failures, and resent each other.
I know Forest very very well, and one of the things he hates most in the world is injustice. He wants everything to be fair. Close on the heels of that is his hatred of disloyalty. So even though he's not suprised by the breakup, I think he's rather shaken by these elements in it. I don't pretend to understand everything he's feeling, but I have a pretty good sense of where it's coming from, perhaps.
Everyone hopes his or her family will rise above those emotions that we perceive as petty, senseless, needless worries. I always wished my mom would just acknowlege that a marriage doesn't work when only one party is into it, accept it, and move on. Instead I think she was angry, bitter, and resentful of my dad for a solid decade. It made every one of my life's special events from that day forward into an awkward one. I had to try to arrange for my dad to see my shows and ballet recitals when my mom wasn't going, so she wouldn't be upset. I had seperate birthday celebrations, seperate Christmasses. The first event they were willing to attend together was my graduation, and if I remember right, she still wouldn't look at him. That was 6 years after the divorce. She made an effort of cool civility on my wedding day, but at least didn't say anything that I know of. It's gotten better since then. They've at least gotten used to the fact that they will have to be in the same room sometimes, and though my dad will generally avoid my mom, they've exchanged some words that weren't so nasty. I don't feel that hideous tension anymore, though. Well, I shouldn't, it's been almost 15 years since they split up, and they've both been remarried, my dad for 14 years and my mom for almost 6.
In response to our parents' nasty, bitter, spiteful divorces, Bill and I have never once raised anger against each other since we broke up. We've both grown a lot. From day one of our new lives as single people, we accepted the change together, and moved on. I don't think we've ever given the 'cold pricklies' to each other just from being in a room together. We're amiable and stay focused on Kirstin and her half-brother on special events, which is as it should be.
I digress. I guess I am starting to feel that some of the bitterness and anger that couples feel at the end of a marriage is the result of disrespect. I think if couples still have any remaining respect for each other, that it's possible to have an amiable divorce. You don't even have to love your ex-spouse, or like him very much if you can just muster some respect of him as a person with his own life to lead. If you do that, it's not so hard to see that whoever is initializing the divorce doesn't want to be married anymore, and marriage isn't a one-sided thing. I can understand trying to talk it out, trying to make it work... but once you've lost, I think you have to accept that you can't have what you want, and try to have some dignity about it. It's like losing a football game. You didn't get the trophy. You still ought to shake hands and be a good sport about it.
I think too often people lose sight of the fact that their spouse is a person, seperate from them in every way. They think of their husband or their wife as part of themselves, or an extension of themselves, and I think as an accidental side-effect, they eventually lose respect for that person as an individual. It's sad.
Then again, maybe I think all of this because of my long-standing yet newly-discovered knack for being emotionally detached from people who aren't my significant other. When they split up and start doing unfair things to each other, I'm very rarely moved to become impassioned and take sides. It's not that I don't care about them as people, but they honestly don't inspire any personal feelings from me whatsoever. I might be sorry that they are upset, but I'm not going to get upset with them. There I go, being a coldhearted bitch again. I'm sorry, but it's just the way I am.
I don't cry when people tell me their sad stories. I don't ride their emotional rollercoasters with them. Maybe I should try to learn how. It seems it would make me a better friend.
Forest rides people's emotional rollercoasters all too readily, and he doesn't wear the required restraints. When his friends are down, he goes down with them. He worries about their lives almost as much as (if not more than) they do. Last night he was really fretting about his dad, because he knows how terribly his dad feels about this whole mess. It's partially on his dad's behalf that he is feeling so much anger.
I love my sweety so much. He has such a good heart.
As he was finally falling asleep last night, he rather sadly said, "I don't know any married people who stayed together."
It sounded rather like despair. I gently pointed out that I knew of some, and trying to be helpful, I started to name them. His grandma and grandpa were on the list. My grandma Ruth and grandpa Merrill (requiescat in pace.) Bill's grandparents are still adorably in love with each other after 57 years together. Some of my parents friends have lasted past the 25-year mark. Shelly's parents have been at it for a long time, and so have Andy's. Yeffy's parents, too. I'm not sure how happy any of these people are, or if they would consider their marriages a success. But really it's an astounding number of people that I know who are still trying, many years later. Andy and Shelly have been married since 1996. They are still adorable, too. Check out their Wedding pictures.
I know, a lot of folks will say that it's only almost 4 years that they've been married, that isn't such a big accomplishment.
If you're saying that, I bet you've never been married. It's not an easy thing, and I have it on good authority that the first 5 years are the hardest. According to a recent study I read, in a sampling of young women ages 20-35, the median length of their marriages was 3.4 years. That's MEDIAN. That means that there were about as many shorter than that as there were longer. Andy and Shelly are already over the hump, and I think they will be fine. Matter of fact, from talking to Shelly over the years, I get the feeling that they've both managed to grow a lot, and find out more about themselves and people, and still stayed together. That's pretty cool.
I'm gathering up these examples of success to build myself up on the idea. Is this something I could do? I've recently wondered if I might ever get married again. I don't want to be old and alone. Matter of fact, I didn't like being young and alone. I like the idea of having someone to depend on. No matter what happens during the day, there's someone to come home to, in a figurative sense, as well as a literal one. For instance, I've pointed out many times that being close to Forest, in any environment, feels like home to me. I'm warm, safe, and loved as long as he's nearby. I take part of that with me when we're apart, but I'm always glad to come home to him later. I want to have that opportunity for myself in future parts of my life -- to feel I belong with someone, and they belong with me.
Deep down, though, I'm afraid that I'm somehow not qualified to be married. I did it the first time mainly with the idea of giving it a shot. I was arrogant, and thought that if all these other people could do it, so could I. It didn't matter who I was married to, as long as I tried hard enough, it ought to work out. Of course I didn't know what I was talking about. I was 18 years old, and didn't realize until recently that you can't always get what you want by wrestling the world to its knees, particularly in affairs of the heart. Of course the marriage didn't work. Happily the divorce was amiable, and we're still good friends. I have since come to believe that at that time I wasn't qualified to be a wife. I didn't have the right motivations, didn't know enough about love and what it meant. I didn't know myself well enough to know what I wanted, or to share what I thought or felt accurately. I didn't understand that I had nothing to prove, and that it wasn't a competition. There weren't any grades; I wasn't being judged; but I still felt like a failure, and it confused me.
I didn't cry when we split up because I knew it was absolutely the right thing to do.
But I swore to myself that I wouldn't get married again. I felt like it was an over-glamorized institution which I would never fit in to. People's expectations were so bizarre when dealing with marriage! I didn't understand them. I didn't think marriage allowed for change or growth, and I was rapidly discovering the importance of those things in my life.
So I rejected it out of hand. Almost 5 years later, I'm inclined to think that I was wrong about this. Marriage isn't an institution set in stone. When I think of all the people who have succeeded in it, I see that in some sense, their flexibility has seen them through. Granted, they keep their vows, for the most part. (Maybe not the honor and obey one, but you know what I mean.) Mostly, though, they love each other dearly, and want to stay together. That's all that matters. It isn't about a set of promises made, a ring, or a legally binding certificate. Like most things in life, it appears that you get out of it what you put into it.
It's about wanting to be with that other person enough that you exchange forgivenesses. You exchange respect. You move good and bad emotions back and forth between you. You and your mate give yourselves to each other as much as you can. It's about making room in your hearts for each other.
It's about love.
I didn't believe that before. Now I do.
So I don't need to be afraid that I won't be able to be a married person, just because my parents failed at it. I don't have some great handicap because I come from a classic 1980's 'broken home'.
Marriage is not something I can or can't do; it's not a task to be accomplished. It's a state of being. It's being myself, allowing another person to be himself, and wanting to stay with him through thick and thin.
Then as long as we agree we want to stay together, and we try to stay true to ourselves, it shouldn't be anything strange or out of the ordinary to be man and wife. It might just naturally follow.
So my new opinion is that marriage is the state of being together in a natural consequence of loving each other in the right spirit. Hmm.
Of course a lot of people would probably look at these theories and see just as little merit in them as I now see in my 18-year-old opinions. For me, though, this is the truth as far as I can see it.
On a seperate note, my poor secretary is now past her due date, miserable, but still working. I admire her patience... but if I were she I think I would be at home walking around a lot. That's supposed to encourage labor. It's really more than time for baby G to show up!
Today it's thunderstorming. It's beautifully dark and angry-looking out there. I'd like to sit in front of my window with a nice mug of cocoa and just watch it happen. Hopefully this will help my newly-planted grass to grow, and not just wash it away.
I also have a great heap of bulbs at home waiting to be planted. They just arrived yesterday, and I carefully unpacked them, and stored them in a cool dry cupboard. I think I'll put them in the ground on Saturday morning, when I'll have plenty of time for it. I already have tulips coming up in the backyard. Soon there will be the following additions:
Gladiolus
Dahlias
Asiatic Lilies
I'm sure they won't look that pretty once I get ahold of them, but I'll try, darn it.
Tonight I have no idea what I'm doing. Forest has judo, and then he usually hangs out with his friends, but he saw them last night, so I'm not sure what he's up to. He's spending the day with his dad today, so it likely depends on how things are going there. I also don't know whether I will need to pick Tiff up tonight or not.
So once again, I'm hanging loose I guess. Last night I went to the mall bargain-hunting during my down-time. I needed a couple of shirts for work. That mission, however, has been accomplished. Tonight remains to be seen. I may park my van somewhere and read a good book until it's time to pick up Tiff, and then drive home. I'm listening to Ender's Game on tape right now, and that's really quite entertaining. Thank heaven for books on tape.
I might run some errands for BCTG, but that depends on what Jeff says about that. To help Fred (th producer) out, I'm about to offer to pick up his black carpet padding for him. I have no idea what he wants it for, but I know that Fred is frustrated because he arranged for it to be donated and no one has had time to pick it up yet. There's a good possibility, though, that there is miscommunication between Fred and Jeff. It's happened before; when we were rehearsing another show, and Jeff would talk of his brainstorms to Fred, and then forget about them. Weeks later when Fred would show up with some obscure item, Jeff would long since have abandoned that notion for another one. I'm out of the loop, so I don't know if there is tension between Jeff and Fred... and I certainly don't want to show up with a roll of carpet padding if Jeff doesn't want it anymore.
Wow, I'm starving. Much as I love the feeling of a grumbly tummy (it tickles) I think I'll head out to lunch while the rain has temporarily subsided.
PS:
I almost forgot to tell you. I have a new domain name that is being referred to this address. If you have trouble remembering the address of this journal (Tiff), you can now use the following address:
http://www.grokking.com
You can also email me at anyname@grokking.com . Just don't call me any names I don't like! Hee hee.
