Good Enough? That’s Great
NYT JAN. 31, 2014
By DANIEL JONES
What’s the best way to
recalibrate a marriage as the years pass? I wish I had the answer, because
clearly millions of us would like to know.
As the editor of the
Modern Love column for nearly a decade, I have sifted through roughly 50,000
stories that have crossed my desk. I have noticed people wrestling with two
questions above all others. From the young: “How do I find love?” And from
those wallowing through marital malaise: “How do I get it back?”
Though it’s not really
love they want back as much as attention, excitement and passion. No one doubts
the enduring benefits of long-term relationships. But marriage can also get
boring, punctuated with deadening routines, cyclical arguments and repetitive
conversations.
In my own 21-year
marriage, my wife has a habit of asking me to do something and then saying:
“You’re not going to forget, are you? Just tell me now if you’re going to
forget so I’ll know to do it myself.”
I’ll say (for the
hundredth time): “I can’t know in advance if I’m going to forget. That’s not
how forgetting works.”
“Just tell me,” she’ll
say.
Among my 50,000
strangers, I’ve also heard from just a handful of couples who claimed to have
maintained sexually charged marriages throughout the decades. The one story I
published from this happier-than-thou crowd, by the writer Ayelet Waldman about
her still-sexy marriage (with four children) to the Pulitzer-winning writer
Michael Chabon, was met with jeers and hostility when she went on “Oprah” to
talk about it, mostly because she dared to confess that she puts her marriage
ahead of motherhood.
That alignment of
priorities, she said, is part of what has allowed her to keep her marriage
passionate. And she argued that doing so is also a healthier model for
children, most of whom would be better off with a little less time in their
parents’ spotlight. As she spoke, the studio audience seemed to regard her as
if she were from another planet.
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