The Marriage Book (6 page)

When two young people are engaged to be married, their sole purpose is to be happy in the love of each other, and their marriage can only be said to be successful if they are held together by this love, comradeship and mutual respect for each other. If on the other hand these qualities are missing, and it is only a matter of honourably playing the game for the sake of their children, then there is very likely much secret unhappiness and discontent between the two. . . .

Children are certainly an added joy to marriage if both parents are healthy[,] happy and
mutually long for them. If they can be brought up decently and will be an honour to the race they can be a blessing to marriage, but in no way are they the sole object of the marriage, they are simply an added blessing to what would still have been a perfectly happy marriage.

DAVID LEVY

MATERNAL OVERPROTECTION
, 1943

Decades before talk of the overinvolved “helicopter mom,” Dr. David M. Levy (1892–1977) focused his research on the questionable effect of extremely protective mothers, offering numerous examples of children who were unusually aggressive, rebellious, demanding, and/or socially inept. Levy postulated that some of these problems might be mitigated if mothers gave less to their children—and got more from their husbands.

When husband and wife are sexually compatible and have social interests in common they thereby set up a number of conditions that operate against a mother-child monopoly. The fact that they have a life of their own as husband and wife withdraws certain time and energy from the parental relationship. A wife devoted to her husband cannot be exclusively a mother. In a more fundamental sense, the release of libido through satisfactory sexual relationship shunts off energy that must otherwise flow in other directions. . . . The child must bear the brunt of the unsatisfied love life of the mother. One might theoretically infer that a woman sexually well adjusted could not become overprotective to an extreme degree. Certainly she would not make the relationship to the child her exclusive social life.

DAVID GOODMAN

A PARENTS’ GUIDE TO THE EMOTIONAL NEEDS OF CHILDREN
, 1959

Sixteen years after Dr. Levy (see previous item) linked good sex and good mothering, Dr. David Goodman (1894–1971) was perfectly clear about what that link implied for husbands.

If you asked Mrs. Farnham where she found the energy to keep her home so clean, cook three good meals a day, and also romp and play with her three children, she would give you a merry smile and say: “That’s my secret.”

What was her secret?

Her secret was—well, her secret was greathearted Mr. Farnham, who knew how to make love to a woman.

A man who is a good lover to his wife is his children’s best friend. His love upholds her spirit, gives her joy and enthusiasm. Child care is play to a woman who is happy. And only a man can make a woman happy. In deepest truth, a father’s first duty to his children is to make their mother feel fulfilled as a woman.

ROBERT BENTON

KRAMER VS. KRAMER
, 1979

The courtroom scene in the Oscar-winning film directed and written by Robert Benton (1932–) and based on Avery Corman’s novel is one of its most wrenching. As portrayed by Meryl Streep and Dustin Hoffman, Joanna and Ted Kramer show the scars not only of their own marital break but also of a legal process that forces them to painful extremes. But in fighting for custody of his son—a battle rarely considered, let alone waged, in 1979—Ted Kramer also shows that a couple’s passion to protect their children is sometimes the one part of a failed marriage that survives.

You know when you were talking, uh, I mean my wi—, my ex-wife, when she was talking before about how unhappy she was during our marriage, like, I guess most of what she said was probably true. There’s a lot of things I didn’t understand, a lot of things I’d do different if I could, just like I think there’s a lot of things you wish you could change, but we can’t. Some—things once they’re done can’t be undone. My, my wife, my—ex-wife, says that she loves Billy, and I
believe she does, but I don’t think that’s the issue here; if I understand it correctly, what means the most here is what’s best for our son, what’s best for Billy. My wife used to always say to me, “Why can’t a woman have the same ambitions as a man?” I think you’re right, and maybe I’ve learned that much. But by the same token, I’d like to know what law is it that says that a woman is a better
parent
, simply by virtue of her sex? You know, I’ve had a lot of time to think about what it is that makes somebody a good parent. You know, it has to do with constancy, it has to do with, with, with patience, it has to do with listening to him, it has to do with pretending to listen to him when you can’t even listen any more. It has to do with love, like, like, like, like she was saying. And I don’t know where it’s written that says that a woman has, has a corner on that market, that a, that a man has any less of those emotions than, than, than a woman does. Billy has a home with me. I’ve made it the best I could. It’s not perfect, I’m not a perfect parent. Uh, sometimes I don’t have enough patience and I forget that he’s, uh, he’s a little kid. But I’m there—I get up in the morning, and then we eat breakfast, and he talks to me and then we go to school, and at night we have dinner together and—and we talk then, and I read to him, and, and we’ve built a life together, and we love each other. If you destroy that, it may be irreparable. Joanna, don’t do that, please. Don’t do it twice to him.

JOSEPH CAMPBELL

THE POWER OF MYTH
, CIRCA 1986

When television interviewer Bill Moyers sat down with scholar Joseph Campbell (1904–1987) for a series of one-on-one interviews in the last two years of Campbell’s life, few could have predicted the extent to which the PBS series (and its companion volume) would become cultural touchstones. Enthusiastically expounding on his lifelong study of myth, Campbell urged audiences to follow their “bliss” and, more generally, to embrace mythic themes such as heroism, sacrifice, and transformation.

There are two completely different stages of marriage. First is the youthful marriage following the wonderful impulse that nature has given us in the interplay of the sexes biologically in order to produce children. But there comes a time when the child graduates from the family and the couple is left. I’ve been amazed at the number of my friends who in their forties or fifties go apart. They have had a perfectly decent life together with the child, but they interpreted their union in terms of their relationship through the child. They did not interpret it in terms of their own personal relationship to each other. Marriage is a relationship. When you make the sacrifice in marriage, you’re sacrificing
not to each other but to unity in a relationship. . . . Marriage is not a simple love affair, it’s an ordeal, and the ordeal is the sacrifice of ego to a relationship in which two have become one.

LOUIS C.K.

SHAMELESS
, 2007

Louis C.K. (né Szekely, in 1967) has managed in his comic persona to combine anger, abjection, profanity, and scatology with winsome, often self-deprecating insight. Launched amid the stand-up comedy boom of the 1980s, his career included writing for David Letterman, Chris Rock, and Conan O’Brien before evolving into the series of successful one-man shows that began with
Shameless
and led the way to the television show
Louie
, of which he is star, producer, writer, and director.

Like the main character in
Louie
, the comedian has two daughters and is now divorced from their mother.

It’s really the kids that do you in as a married couple. We have two kids, that’s fucking stupid, don’t do that. Because, you just, mainly what it does to a marriage is it just changes the way that you think about your spouse. Because when you’re married, when you first get married, you have a relationship that’s so important to you, and you’re working on it together. But then you have a kid and you look at your kid and you go, holy shit, this is my child, she has my DNA, she has my name, I would
die
for her. And you look at your spouse and go, “Who the fuck are you? You’re a stranger. Why do I take shit from you?”

. . . Having kids and being married, it’s difficult, but one thing it’s made me is, it’s impossible for me to have any sympathy for single people. I just don’t give a shit about single people. . . . You can die and it actually doesn’t matter. It doesn’t. Your mother will cry, whatever, but otherwise nobody gives a shit.

I can’t die. I got two kids and my wife doesn’t fucking work. So I don’t get to die. I can’t die. . . .

But so, single people, they complain. Like, we don’t complain. When you ask a parent, “Hey, how’s the family?” we go, “Great.” That’s all we ever say. It’s never fucking great. But we say “great,” ’cause we’re never going to tell you, “Well, my wife assassinated my sexual identity and my children are eating my dreams.” We don’t fucking bother you with that. We just say, “Great.”

But if you ask a single person how’s it going, they’re like, “Well, my apartment doesn’t get enough southern light and the carpeting is getting a little moldy.”

You know what you should do? Burn it down and kill yourself because nobody fucking cares.

“My girlfriend doesn’t like the same music as me and she acts bored at parties.” Well, fucking call her and say “fuck you” and hang up and leave her.

You can end that shit with a phone call.

I need a fucking gun and a plane ticket and bleach.

CHILDFREEEEE

“THE TOP 100 REASONS NOT TO HAVE KIDS (AND REMAIN CHILDFREE),” 2009

A blog started in 2007,
Childfreedom: Musings on the Childfree Lifestyle and Our Child-Centric Society
, featured a “Top 100” list of endorsements for the non-procreative life. The question of marital happiness without children hadn’t changed since the 1932
Times of India
column (see
this page
). But the answers from blog creator “Childfreeeee” were far more numerous and considerably more strident. Here are the top dozen of her top hundred.

The blogger’s profile had been viewed more than twelve thousand times as of this book’s publication.

1. You will be happier and less likely to suffer from depression.

2. (Assuming you get married), you will have a happier marriage.

3. You will have the capacity and time for meaningful, engaged, quality adult relationships.

4. You will be able to save for a comfortable retirement.

5. You are more likely to be an engaged and involved aunt or uncle because you are not jaded and worn down by your own kids.

6. You can fully pursue and develop your career.

7. You can fully pursue your educational goals.

8. You can decorate your home as you wish with as many beautiful and/or breakable things as you wish and you will not have to child-proof your house.

9. Your house will be free of junky, plastic kindercrap.

10. Your spouse will get all the love and attention he/she deserves. You will come first in your spouse/partner’s life.

11. Your pets will get all the love and attention they deserve.

12. You can eat whatever foods you wish at whatever time of the day you wish out in the open, whether it be a gourmet exotic meal, or chocolate chip cookies.

COMMUNICATION

OLD JOKE

I haven’t spoken to my wife in years. I didn’t want to interrupt her.

ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON

“VIRGINIBUS PUERISQUE,” 1876

A celebrated Scottish author in his time, Robert Louis Stevenson (1850–1894) is today internationally known for
Treasure Island, Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, A Child’s Garden of Verses
, and for the willpower that enabled him to travel widely and write frequently despite recurring ill health. He married Fanny Van de Grift Osbourne in 1880 and became stepfather to her two children. “Virginibus Puerisque” (literally “for girls and boys”) was an essay that originally appeared in the magazine
The Cornhill
.

A certain sort of talent is almost indispensable for people who would spend years together and not bore themselves to death. . . . And it is more important that a person should be a good gossip, and talk pleasantly and smartly of common friends and the thousand and one nothings of the day and hour, than that she should speak with the tongues of men and angels; for a while together by the fire, happens more frequently in marriage than the presence of a distinguished foreigner to dinner. That people should laugh over the same sort of jests, and have many a story of “grouse in the gun-room,” many an old joke between them which time cannot wither nor custom stale, is a better preparation for life, by your leave, than many other things higher and better sounding in the world’s ears. You could read Kant by yourself, if you wanted; but you must share a joke with some one else. You can forgive people who do not follow you through a philosophical disquisition; but to find your wife laughing when you had tears in your eyes, or staring when you were in a fit of laughter, would go some way towards a dissolution of the marriage.