Memorable Reads: On the Complexities of Marriage

Some thoughts on my recent reads dealing with the complexities of marriage in all its messiness and beauty.
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"Never before have our expectations of marriage taken on such epic proportions. We still want everything the traditional family was meant to provide - security, children, property, and respectability - but now we also want our partner to love us, desire us, to be interested in us. We should be best friends, trusted confidants, and passionate lovers to boot. The human imagination has conjured up a new Olympus: that love will remain unconditional, intimacy enthralling, and sex oh-so exciting, for the long haul, with one person. And the long haul keeps getting longer.", Esther Perel

What marriage means to us has indeed ballooned into an idealized version of the old and the new, the fairy-tale and the mundane. The endless demands and entitlement towards happiness, acceptance, and romantic love have creeped into our implicit ways of thinking and living. It's now easier to feel dissatisfied and want more - the flip side of healthy self-worth. Everyone is worthy of the type of love that unconditionally and unfailingly fulfills them through decades, right? Why settle? It's becoming increasingly common for us to understand someone when they say - "I love my spouse, but I'm no longer in love".  Ah, the problems plaguing the first world!

It's an interesting state of affairs, indeed. 

Esther Perel is a renowned marriage counselor. Her recent book, The State of Affairs is a deep dive into infidelity - the various types, causes, the motivations, the perspectives of all the different people involved, its impacts (both positive and negative), and what all of this means for the future of the institution of marriage / monogamy. I loved the book - most specifically, Perel's open-minded, empathetic, judgment-free discussion. It might seem like a depressing book with its numerous case studies of infidelity (and their frequency/prevalence in marriages these days), but the surprising aspect is how the treatment of the topic doesn't weigh down the reader. My takeaways were hope and optimism. Infidelity need not be the end of the world (or a marriage). As with everything in life, it is what you make of it. We have perhaps attributed too much significance to it as  the most important pillar to bolster a marriage. Detaching the moral and social conditioning/connotations, Perel urges us to reevaluate our expectations towards marriage, and some ways to handle the underlying issues that result in infidelity. The institution of marriage has always evolved - its relevance, the roles of the people, the expectations/values, structure etc. Now it's perhaps teetering at another turning point - burdened with too much idealism and expectations. Something has to give, and it's up to the individuals involved to prioritize and collaborate on the revision. It fosters great food for thought and meaningful discussions. 

A quote that spoke to me - "Collaborate in transgression, rather than transgressing against each other". The book requires an open mind to consider aspects of human nature that are difficult digest, but that only worsen if ignored and brushed under the metaphorical rug.

Her older book, Mating in Captivity, starts to address the strains of marriage that eventually lead people to drift apart and loose their "eros" - the erotic vitality - the spark that purportedly keeps marriages alive. Perel has an expanded definition of this vital energy. It is the zest for life, the feeling of "aliveness" and excitement that individuals cultivate (yes, one needs to keep nurturing it), and that is then shared by the couple. It's a very interesting discussion. This book, as with all her books and speeches, does not have a list of techniques or strategies. It is a discussion of the many circumstances and the reasons why the vital energy drops. It's up to the individual to figure out where they fall, and how to address the issue. 

My main takeaway was the importance of maintaining your sense of self, your identity and individual interests within a marriage. Merging into one entity is not the goal. This has always intuitively made sense to me. It's easy to fall into a co-dependent relationship where you want to share everything with each other, do everything with each other, spend as much time as possible with each other, and keep closing the gap between the two until there is this fairy-tale merging of souls or whatever. As paradoxical as it sounds, this is sometimes the issue. We are innately attracted to mystery; we are drawn towards that which we don't know enough of, that which sustains our interests and keeps beckoning to learn more. Once the mystery is solved, the interest begins to wane. There is nothing morally wrong about this - this is just the way we are built. 

When you maintain your identity and keep exploring yourself, investing in your interests, and taking care of some of your varied needs independent of your spouse, you empower yourself, gain confidence and awareness of yourself (recognize what you want vs. don't want), and thus nurture your vital "eros". You might even find yourself "evolving" into a newer version of yourself. There is always something more to you than just your role in the marriage. Most importantly, do not depend on your spouse for every one of your emotional needs. Expand your horizons and your community - we have friends, family, colleagues, and neighbors for a reason. 

The old saying, "A hedge between keeps friendship green" applies to all relationships. We are often fearful that this is contrary to the objective of marriage and paves the way for people to drift apart. I guess it's all about the balance. It's not about neglecting your spouse or their needs, but about relieving some expectations and burdens off them so you both have room to breathe and grow.

Casual conversations with happily married couples who've been together for decades despite rough storms have the same words of wisdom - "Spend time away from each other! Give space, so when you come together, you appreciate each other much more."

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Do not judge a book by its cover. Do not judge a marriage by its external appearance either. No marriage/relationship is as it appears on the outside. The tangled webs are often not even visible to the people in the relationship. You can spend decades with a person and still not know them well enough. And what an irony that many successful marriages owe more to the buried secrets than honest revelations.

In this absorbing book, Groff writes about a marriage - successful by all external standards - from the dual perspectives of the husband, and then the wife. It's natural for each of us to have different perspectives of the same thing, but what is interesting is how our perception of ourselves shapes the choices and perceptions of our reality. This was most interesting to me. 

If you believe your are good, if people around you love and admire you, your immense self-worth shades how you view your life, the choices, and outcomes. If you believe you are "bad", that you are undeserving and of little worth, everything is accordingly colored. But looking from an objective standpoint (as the reader), the illusions on both sides are brought to focus, and the notions of "good" and "bad" cease to apply. The bad seems to be the good, and vice versa. The full story emerges, and Groff forces us to recognize the common misapprehensions and illusions within our own lives. 

I liked the book for its writing, the layered themes, and characters. Many reviews find this book negative or depressing, but I felt it was "uplifting" because of its insights.