On making love stay....

Finally, my response to the Bronson/Merryman article on predicting marital longevity.

My first thought out of the gate here is: what makes us think that relationships are supposed to last? Why, as a society, do we hope for love to stay? Maybe love is something that happens now and then and passes, sort of like food poisoning? One of the things my friends and I like to remind ourselves of is to stop beating ourselves up for things we just aren’t.

Biologically, the t-shirt study (Wedekind, 1995) indicated that women are programmed to go out into the world and get ourselves knocked up by men who we are genetically different from, and, then, have men who are genetically similar to us care for us thru delivery until, presumably, we’re ready to get knocked up again. (I extrapolate wildly.) So, this provides scientific evidence towards cynicism? I believe the lifelong partner concept may be some kind of perverse sociological infliction, like sleeping at night or the right to parking, but that doesn’t mean I don’t want one.

There was one night in Paris, Christian and I were on our 3rd bottle of wine, and I talked how surprised I am every time a relationship ends. He said (I paraphrase) “You always think they’re going to last forever at the beginning. You have to, or you wouldn’t be able fall in love.” It’s that suspension of disbelief that they talk about in the theater; you forget that your feet are on the ground in a world where the only things you can count on are death and taxes. On the other hand, I also believe that there are times when you just know the future of a relationship, either way.

More recently, Jared was telling me about this book he read on primates. He claimed it explains in detail why primates couple, and why, from a biological stand point, that works best. He didn’t remember all the details of the argument, but he did say that the book argued, from a biological standpoint, that coupling is more advantageous for women (and female primates), and that’s the reason male infidelity is more common. I found this last statement somewhat shocking. Sure, it’s the stereotype that male infidelity is more common, but I think that’s mythology. In the mainstream, women are just better at keeping secrets than men, and men are more likely to brag about their conquests. In my social universe, male infidelity definitely isn’t more common.

Life is long and complicated, and nearly everything is transient. Some humans have a greater need for the feeling of permanence than others. Some, even, thrive in an environment of impermanence and stability makes them nervous. So, yeah, nothing lasts forever and we are born to die, but the real question we need to address is “how are we going to live?” I want to live like all my dreams will come true. I want to believe in unicorns and fairy god mothers. The power of positive thinking can’t be underestimated.

It’s like Alison said “getting married is the most optimistic act I have ever committed.” She also said: “It’s practical, you get rights and recognition instantly, and telling people you are committed does strengthen your commitment. It is also an optimistic act (like having a child), and we all need more optimistic acts. When else can you get people to celebrate you, what you are doing in your life?”

But there is sometimes some confusion. Some people seem to think that getting married is a rite of passage. You graduate; you get married; you have a family, each at a certain stage in your life. It’s what you do. This offends my idealistic vision of Love. Kevin used to point out that the bible recommends staying single; that marriage is something you do only in the rare case that you fall in love. That makes sense to me. I’m sure you’ve heard my tirade against the music industry for brain washing us into believing that the only time we’ll feel anything strongly is thru falling in love. It’s this type of message that creates a society of complacents. The world contains so many other things we should feel passionately about, and we certainly can’t expect that to come from another person very often.

Yet, some of us are love-prone. I’m not going to try to find the citation, but I remember my mother reading years ago that if you have fallen in love more than 6 times in your lifetime, you are “love prone” and you present a small percentage of the population. My mother, of course, is love-prone. I’m, of course, wondering how we’re defining “in love”.

So, when the Bronson/Merryman article discusses these couples who move in together because it’s convenient and then get married to “solve” a problem in their relationship (I’ve heard this so many times!), I feel …insulted. The housework indicator they mention is a little like the “yes, dear” indicator of about 10 years ago (Gottman of UW found this was the single indicator of a lasting marriage). Of course, reading thru this, I can’t help but wonder how to predict a *happy* LTR (not the same as a lasting one. Of course, that involves defining a lot of terms, which scares me off right now). Like with happiness, a relatively little amt of money helps a whole lot say Bronson and Merryman. Is it, again, 15K? No, the article says “If this couple will earn a modest $50,000 as a family, their odds of seeing their 15th anniversary jump to 68%.”

There are a lot of ways to commit to another person. Sam’s parents bought a house together and had him. Nearly 30 years later, they decided to have a wedding (last year). The same story with my friends in London, Linda and David, although I think the house might have been hers at first. (Linda and David said they wanted to wait to have a wedding until their son could enjoy it.) I like Bronson and Merryman’s observation that “Homeowners aren't happier in marriage than renters, but there's a permanence to their life — a connection to a community.” Maybe Alison would say that homeownership is an act of optimism.

We can’t control our relationships with our parents; I mean, not really. But I do like Bronson/Merryman’s statistic about children of divorced parents who didn’t fight openly not trusting their relationships. Jared is always trying to get me to talk about stuff; on the other hand, he completely disagreed with me when I called myself conflict-avoidant the other day. While I saw my mother fight with her exes, I can tell you with absolute certainty that she doesn’t know how to resolve conflict constructively (sorry, mom). I’m really trying to learn.

I’m convinced there’s something in the water. The vast majority of my friends are getting married and pregnant, buying houses, relocating together. It’s partially bc many of my friends I met in grad school and we finished 5ish years ago. Their careers are settled. It’s time for the next step. No surprise there. But true love doesn’t follow a convenient time pattern, or at least that makes me question its presence. Maybe falling in love *is* a rite of passage. Maybe when your heart is open and you know who you are, you’re able to be amazed by another person, and it’s completely natural to want to celebrate that. In a world where people are killing each other for reasons that don’t make any sense and our lifestyle is destroying the planet, we need something to believe in, and maybe that can be each other.