RELATIONSHIPS

The Myth of the Long Happy Marriage

Something Like Hope

I spent Thanksgiving weekend with the extended family of my new daughter-in-law, including her grandparents, married over fifty years, and her parents, married thirty-five years. Her grandmother said, in conversation, “if you want to have a long marriage, don’t die and don’t get divorced.” While technically true, a long marriage doesn’t guarantee happiness. I learned this at a young age when my Aunt Ruth said, “the first twenty-five years were the hardest.” Even as a precocious four-year-old, the question rattling around my brain was, “who wants to wait twenty-five years to be treated decently by the person who pledged to love and cherish you?” Not me.

Fifty years later, I look back with amazement at my position in life: single and likely to remain so, and separated from the ones I love by thousands of miles. It’s not what I envisioned on that day in late May in Boulder, Colorado, when we stood before our assembled friends and family and pledged to love each other forever. And even though my former partner seems confused about the past, I swear that, for a while, we did.

I remember long walks holding hands, when he and I agreed that we had a healthier relationship than many of our friends. For my part, I told him, frequently, that I’d rather be married to him than to any of my friend’s husbands — and why. We…