The Marriage Book (78 page)

Authors: Lisa Grunwald,Stephen Adler

Tags: #Family & Relationships, #Marriage & Long Term Relationships, #General, #Literary Collections

W. B. YEATS

“THE YOUNG MAN’S SONG,” 1910

William Butler Yeats (see
Encouragement
) was famously and futilely in love with the actress and activist Maud Gonne. By the time he wrote this poem, it had been more than a decade since she had rejected the last of his several marriage proposals.

In 1916, at the age of fifty-one, Yeats proposed to Gonne one last hopeless time, then swiftly, if creepily, proposed to her twenty-two-year-old daughter, Iseult, who also turned him down. In the same year, he married the twenty-five-year-old Georgie Hyde Lees, with whom he eventually had two children.

I whispered, “I am too young,”

And then, “I am old enough,”

Wherefore I threw a penny

To find out if I might love;

“Go and love, go and love, young man, If the lady be young and fair,”

Ah, penny, brown penny, brown penny, I am looped in the loops of her hair.

Oh love is the crooked thing,

There is nobody wise enough

To find out all that is in it,

For he would be thinking of love Till the stars had run away,

And the shadows eaten the moon; Ah, penny, brown penny, brown penny, One cannot begin it too soon.

PHILIP LEVINE

“FOR FRAN,” 1961

Philip Levine (1928–2015) once selected this poem for an anthology of poets’ favorites, explaining, “it says in an acceptable form what no man has a right to say to his wife.” Acknowledging the toll that marriage, time, and the work of raising three sons were taking on his wife, Levine spent months working on this poem. When he finally read it to her, he wrote, “She wept with gratitude. She who never cried in pain wept real tears for these twenty inept lines that celebrate the curse of being a wife.”

Levine won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 1994 and was named the United States Poet Laureate in 2011.

She packs the flower beds with leaves, Rags, dampened paper, ties with twine The lemon tree, but winter carves Its features on the uprooted stem.

I see the true vein in her neck And where the smaller ones have broken Blueing the skin, and where the dark Cold lines of weariness have eaten Out through the winding of the bone.

On the hard ground where Adam strayed, Where nothing but his wants remain, What do we do to those we need, To those whose need of us endures Even the knowledge of what we are?

I turn to her whose future bears The promise of December air— My living wife, Frances Levine, Mother of Theodore, John, and Mark, Out of whatever we have been

We will make something for the dark.

ELOISE SALHOLZ

“TOO LATE FOR PRINCE CHARMING?,”
NEWSWEEK
, 1986

One hundred fifty years and several intense waves of women’s rights movements after “E.B.B.” wrote to “his ward Sarah” (see
this page
),
Newsweek
took its readers through what was essentially the same exercise. “Too Late for Prince Charming?” was one of the magazine’s most controversial stories, inspiring reactions that
Newsweek
itself later described as “fury, anxiety, and skepticism.” Revisiting the piece in 2006, the magazine reported: “Those odds-she’ll-marry statistics turned out to be too pessimistic: today it appears that about ninety percent of baby-boomer men and women either have married or will marry.” Of the eleven single women in the original story whom
Newsweek
was able to find, eight had married.

The traumatic news came buried in an arid demographic study titled, innocently enough, “Marriage Patterns in the United States.” But the dire statistics confirmed what everybody suspected all along: that many women who seem to have it all—good looks and good jobs, advanced degrees and high salaries—will never have mates. According to the report, white, college-educated women born in the mid-’50s who are still single at 30 have only a 20 percent chance of marrying. By the age of 35 the odds drop to 5 percent. Forty-year-olds are more likely to be killed by a terrorist: they have a minuscule 2.6 percent probability of tying the knot.

ZOLOFT

DANIEL AMEN

IMAGES OF HUMAN BEHAVIOR
, 2004

Selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors, best known by brand names including Zoloft, Prozac, and Paxil, became the go-to antidepressants when they were introduced in the 1990s. Effective for many in easing symptoms of depression, obsessive-compulsive behavior, and social phobias, they also came, for many, at the cost of decreased sexual desire. Their wide use in the last two decades has thus rendered them either hero or villain in countless marriages.

Dr. Daniel Amen (1954–) is a psychiatrist and bestselling author whose application of brain imaging to psychiatry has been highly controversial. His scan technique, SPECT, stands for single proton emission computer tomography. The cingulate cortex is a part of the brain involved with emotion and learning.

On the outside, Gail was normal. She went to work every day, she was married to her high school sweetheart, and she had two small children. On the inside, Gail felt like a mess. Her husband was ready to leave her[,] and her children were often withdrawn and upset. Gail was distant from her family and locked into the private hell of obsessive-compulsive disorder. She cleaned her house for hours every night after work. She screamed at her husband and children when anything was out of place. She would become especially hysterical if she saw a piece of hair on the floor, and she was often at the sink washing her hands. She also made her husband
and children wash their hands more than ten times a day. She stopped making love to her husband because she couldn’t stand the feeling of being messy.

On the verge of divorce, Gail and her husband came to see me. At first, her husband was very skeptical about the biological nature of her illness. Gail’s brain SPECT study showed marked increased activity in the anterior cingulate system, demonstrating that she really did have trouble shifting her attention.

With this information, I placed Gail on Zoloft. Within six weeks, she had significantly relaxed, her ritualistic behavior had diminished and she stopped making her kids wash their hands every time they turned around. Her husband couldn’t believe the change. Gail was more like the woman he married.

MESSAGE BOARD USER

“ANYONE TAKING ANXIETY DRUGS?,” 2005

As is often the case online, a message board devoted to one subject created a community of users who felt trusting enough to delve into other areas. In this case, the message board was about rubber stamps; the topic, however, was antidepressants.

Zoloft saved my marriage!

I was waaaay anxious, always too careful, obsessed about cleanliness, and worried about EVERYTHING! I would cry at the drop of a hat if my husband (or anyone for that matter) did not agree with me. I could not sleep at night—I would get up multiple times throughout the night just to check if the doors in my house were still locked (knowing that they really were!). I would check on my children in their beds CONSTANTLY making sure they were still breathing!!!

Since on Zoloft, I no longer worry about the small stuff. This can be bad in some cases especially where money is concerned. While I am still “concerned” about cleanliness, it does not consume me. If the children have a toy mess it does not just drive me crazy. While I still have crying spell (mostly pre-menstrual) I do not cry near as often.

Pre-Zoloft, my husband and I fought—a lot!

Post-Zoloft we are more in love with each other than when we first met.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

For his gracious, gifted eye and mind, we would like to thank Darrel Frost, who helped wrestle this project down, proving once again that he can do absolutely anything. We are grateful also to Michael Solomon, whose few weeks of research provided some of the most memorable entries in this anthology. We are indebted as well to Colin Kinniburgh, who came late to the game to assist us in tracking down sources and information; his efforts made us wish we’d had him with us all along. Sophia Jimenez kept the wheels turning, Fred Courtright secured rights, Michael Bierut gave inspiration, and Chris Jerome and her magic pencil answered our prayers. In addition to them, we are grateful to our children, Elizabeth and Jonathan; our friends Susie Bolotin, Betsy Carter, Cathy Cramer, Lee Eisenberg, and Dan Okrent for various suggestions and contributions; and our late beloved friend and advisor, Barb Burg. As in the past, agents Liz Darhansoff and Kathy Robbins represented us with faith and forethought. We will always be grateful.

This book could not have been written without the many people who have helped to keep the machines and machinery of our lives running, especially Donna Ash, Valerie Barber, Dr. Richard Cohen, Marcus Forman, Dr. Alexandra Heerdt, Milena Jelic, Dr. Jon LaPook, Eden Maningas, Isabel Pickett, Danny Radakovic, Dr. Saud Sadiq, and Dr. Paresh Shah.

Above all, we owe our thanks to Simon & Schuster’s Priscilla Painton, lasting proof that great friends can be great editors, and great editors great friends. Her patience, skill, and insight throughout this long process have been a blessing, and her marriage along the way to the wonderful Andrew Heyward has provided yet more evidence that hope and love spring eternal.

ABOUT THE AUTHORS

LISA GRUNWALD
and
STEPHEN ADLER
collaborated on two bestselling anthologies:
Women’s Letters: America from the Revolutionary War to the Present
and
Letters of the Century: America 1900–1999
. Grunwald is the author of the novels
The Irresistible Henry House
,
Whatever Makes You Happy
,
New Year’s Eve
,
The Theory of Everything
, and
Summer
. Adler is president and editor in chief of Reuters and author of
The Jury: Trial and Error in the American Courtroom
. Grunwald and Adler have two children and live in New York City. The authors have been married to each other since 1988 and plan to stay that way. Visit them at
TheMarriageBook.com
.