Handle With Care

Like a big zit on the nose of the person you’re talking to, it’s been hard to ignore the news coverage in the last few weeks regarding Jon and Kate Gosselin, a couple whose celebrity is not based on any sort of talent or skill, but the mere fact that they misread the label on their fertility pills. This week they announced that they are filing for divorce, which will no doubt be chronicled on both their television series “Jon and Kate Plus 8” and also every tabloid cover on the checkout stands at our local grocery. Our culturally morbid fascination with other people’s self-destruction is never appeased.

Although many have already questioned how good it has been for their eight kids to be placed under the microscope of reality television, you also have to wonder if the additional stress of being recorded day to day affected their marriage. Would they still be together, poor but happy, if they hadn’t signed on for the show? Or did the show only amplify and speed up problems that were always there? Problems which would have led to years of misery if they did not have access to piles of showbiz money.

Connie and I have joked before that we are stuck with each other because neither one can afford a divorce, but logically speaking, it is true. With three kids I could not afford to live and pay child support. Also, I think Connie has grown quite accustomed to the “lavish” lifestyle our cohabitation has brought us. Dividing what little we have would make for a very meager half. It just doesn’t make sense for either of us.

Of course, loving and respecting each other kind of takes the divorce idea out of the equation too. Connie doesn’t boss me around and I don’t ignore her. I try to help around the house and she knows there are limits to my skills and abilities. We balance out pretty well.

I heard a comedian explain that after a few years of his own marriage he was talking to a woman who had been married for over fifty years. He asked her how she did it and if she had ever thought of divorce. She said, “No, not once in all those years did I consider divorce. Thought about murder a few times…”

In the midst of all this “Jon and Kate” mess, I recently learned that a couple that I have known for a very long time has split up. Like a lot of people we “know,” I don’t see them often. In fact, it might go a few years between casual conversations, but the two of them together…married…was always one of those absolutes in my mind. From all outer appearances they seemed made for each other, the yin for the other’s yang. Their marriage…the unity of two becoming one…took on its own identity. The ending of that marriage is essentially a death, one I will have to mourn.

Sadder still, I have been told that he did not see the end coming. He came home from work one day to find her clothes and personal items gone. No note, no explanation. A nervous cell phone call later, she told him that she was on the road, driving across the country to a new job and a new life. Twenty five years together, summed up in a five minute conversation.

I don’t know many details, and I don’t know what their marriage was like behind closed doors. All outward appearances of happiness and unity might have been a carefully staged show, a duet of a sad country song that ends in heartbreak and a bottle. If that is so, then they are both spectacular actors.

Their kids have moved on to college, and it’s possible that the house became too empty, the single face across the table too wide, too old, too plain, and too much a reminder of time gone by. I can’t help but wonder how long she had planned to leave him? Had she been biding her time since the kids were toddlers? Holding off on her dreams of freedom to fulfill her role of mother and dutiful wife? Or is it some mid-life revelation that she will soon regret but be unable to repair? Maybe there is someone else, whispering soft promises of passion and that exciting opportunity of newness.

Maybe there were signs he should have seen. Something he could have done. Was he oblivious to her needs and her feelings? Did he help to douse the spark in her eyes and her soul by dampening her spirit and holding her back? Is one guiltier than the other, or are both at fault for simply not trying hard enough?

The death of this marriage is haunting me. It could have been terminal from the day of their vows, slogging through the years to an inevitable end, or it might have been a sudden crime of passion, a murder committed by one upon the other in a moment of brazen adventure. I have no idea what the real cause might be, and I’ll likely never know. I’m not sure they fully understand themselves.

Despite what the vows say or tradition dictates, and no matter how I view some couples as one mutated being, a marriage is made up of two totally different individuals. Each has their own hopes, dreams and personalities. In a successful marriage, these things merge or complement each other.

Still, you’re living on faith. Faith that the other person is as invested in your marriage as you are. Faith that they are not hiding something in a dark basement of their mind, waiting for the day when they will open that door and shatter the fragile foundation of your life together. While so much emphasis is put on partners being “faithful” to each other, there is not so much placed on the importance of” having faith” in each other. This is the tougher thing.

I’ve heard people say that it’s not easy to have faith in a God that you cannot see, but I think it’s actually much harder to have complete faith in someone you look at every day. This has less to say about them than ourselves. Self-doubt, wavering self-esteem, and personal disappointment can make us wonder how anyone could truly love us. We look in the mirror and don’t like what we see, so we can’t imagine how anyone else could. Our defense mechanism is to pull away, which only damages the relationship further.

If I’m sounding particularly despondent about the institution of marriage, I’m not meaning to be. I love being married. I love who I’m married to. I honestly can’t imagine life without her. That may be why the news of this recent break-up is so disheartening to me. Marriage can be scary. You put your heart in the hands of another human being and hope they take care of it. You hope that after ten or twenty or twenty five years that they don’t get tired of lugging that same old heart around, trying to protect it but knowing that most of the initial bubbles of infatuation in the bubble wrap might have long ago been popped.

Although there is much more to it, this is a reminder to me that a good marriage is two people protecting each other from heartbreak. That you are responsible for the pain you cause the other person. It reminds me that I am holding Connie’s heart in my hands, and since I can’t control what she does with mine, I’m going to do my best to be extra careful with hers.