Weathering bumps of marriage takes
dedication, compromise.
submitted by Jane Glenn Haas
Bob needed to get his mother's permission to marry Nancy 50 years ago. He was 20, and New
Jersey wanted to make sure the union was OK with his parent. Nancy was 19, one year beyond
the state's parental-permission rule for young women.
In a half century, they raised their five children, moved 23 times to satisfy Bob's career
advancements, and finally retired to Dover, Del., to play bridge, visit grandchildren and
take an occasional trip.
Reads like a golden Valentine? Well, it wasn't. My friends have had their ups and downs,
their moments when they couldn't stand one another.
"Marriage is work,'' Nancy told me 30 years ago when we met in Oak Park, Ill. I was a
stay-at-home mom then. Everything I know about how to turn a leather cut of beef into a
gourmet pot roast I learned from Nancy. She helped me cope with mumps and chicken pox. And
potty training.
But she couldn't teach me to stick with a marriage that fell far short of my expectations.
The gap in our ages and education meant I had goals outside the home.
I don't regret my divorce. I do wish I had not fallen out of love, however.
Nancy and Bob stuck through the speed bumps. Two-thirds of today's newlyweds probably will
not, says Peter D. Kramer, author of "Should You Leave? A Psychiatrist Explores
Intimacy and Autonomy _ and the Nature of Advice.''
"Who you are determines whom you encounter,'' Kramer says in a telephone interview
from his Providence, R.I., home. People have some sense of their own limitations and find
that reflected in another person, he says.
In his new book, the Brown University professor encourages people to try to stick it out.
Second and third marriages often seem to work, he says, because people are making efforts
they didn't make the first time around. In other words, they are learning to compromise.
He quotes author Peter DeVries, who once wrote: "Why do people expect to be happily
married when they're not individually happy?''
Kramer ties the divorce rate to social progress, to the economic emancipation of American
women, which he salutes with honesty.
Marriage, he says, is easier to pull off when one person is dedicated to family.
That dedication is physically and emotionally healthy, according to a report from Families
Worldwide, a Washington, D.C.-based values group.
Quoting various sources, the think tank says there is evidence that divorced people are
more likely to have terminal cancer, commit suicide or die from heart attacks.
Nancy and Bob have learned to live with each other. Their compromises have allowed them to
live long and prosper.
Kramer urges couples to look before they leap apart. Like Dorothy in the"Wizard of
Oz,'' he urges people to remember that old song: "You'll find that happiness lies
right under your eyes, back in your own back yard.''
(Jane Glenn Haas writes for The Orange County Register. Write to her at: The Register,
P.O. Box 11626, Santa Ana, Calif. 92711.)
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