How are you defying the odds of marriage? What are your traditions that are defying tradition? Now collecting submissions.
____
I still remember the “craziest” marriage I’d ever heard about. I’d just built my private practice after working in adolescent mental health for ten years.
My client was a manager for a large business and she wanted help in improving her team’s morale. As an aside, she mentioned that she and her husband owned a two family house. She lived on one side and he lived on the other and their son had a bedroom in both.
I assumed they were divorcing and that this was their solution for co-parenting when she quickly corrected me. “Oh, no. Not at all. We’re very much together. We just can’t live together. I need a lot of alone time. He needs alone time. We love each other but when we were dating, we kept breaking up. Somehow, we were lucky enough to figure out that we were combusting from the pressure of living together.”
The rules, traditions, and expectations attached to marriage are stifling it and some couples are crushing under the weight.
|
The conversation moved on to what she’d come to me for but in the back of my mind, the questions and curiosities started ticking away. Does this woman struggle with attachment? Could her team be struggling with connecting with her and that’s why they aren’t gelling? Should I be “addressing” this?
I ultimately decided that she wasn’t experiencing an “issue” with it so it was my responsibility to move on.
♦◊♦
Eight years later, I think that may have been one of the smartest and wisest marriages I have ever witnessed. Two people knew themselves so well, knew what they needed, and were brave enough to ignore tradition to do marriage their way. They didn’t have to abandon core personality needs in order to have a family. They did life and love on their terms and were thriving.
The statistics on marriage aren’t pretty. 50-60% of marriages end in divorce these days. People are writing articles wondering if marriage is dead and are decrying the institution.
It’s time to turn this conversation around. Want in?
It’s not the institution of marriage that is the problem. The rules, traditions, and expectations attached to marriage are stifling it and some couples are crushing under the weight. There are so many cultural expectations and judgments about what is “healthy” in a relationship versus dysfunctional.
Now collecting submissions that share “untraditional” marriage stories. Email [email protected]
|
If people threw out the rule book, would more marriages also survive and thrive? How many more relationships could survive if more couples were brave enough to live and love on their own terms rather than trying to fit themselves into a mold of others’ expectations for what marriage has to look like?
How are you defying the odds of marriage?
What are your traditions that are defying tradition? What’s your secret to making it work? How’d you figure it out and how do you manage the fall out and criticism from people who don’t get it? What have you learned that others haven’t?
I am now collecting submissions that share untraditional marriage stories. Share your story, your history, and your love.
Some couples are simply brave enough to chart their own course and do it their own way. Others need the example and encouragement to take a turn where everyone else colors inside the lines. Your story could inspire hope for other couples who might be wondering why they can’t get it right and why their relationship feels so fragmented and fragile.
____
My husband and I are childless by choice and I don’t consider that wholly untraditional. Many couples make that choice. I have been asked why we got married if we didn’t want kids. My answer: Because kids or not, I know I want to belong to a family. Marriage, to me, is about having a person. The union connects us in a way that I need to feel secure in the relationship. Not everyone needs that. I did.
Why did you get married? How are you making it work? What’s your story? I look forward to learning from you.
Share your story. Email me at [email protected]
—
This post is republished on Medium.
—
Photo credit: iStock
A wonderful piece! Bravo!
I’m going to disagree with you Heather. First off, I don’t think you can so easily separate the institution from its rules and traditions – labeling one “not the problem” and the other stifling. In standard parlance, the institution is its rules and traditions. That semantic aside, and in easy to grasp contract terms, long term marriage is enabled by societal constraints, and given this, it’s more probable that failure rates are increasing because the constraints are giving way to wider choices for individuals. We know people tend to marry young. We also know that people evolve/change over time. We… Read more »
“The statistics on marriage aren’t pretty. 50-60% of marriages end in divorce these days.” I think using the oft sited 50% of marriages end in divorce statistic is a bit misleading and really doesn’t tell the whole story. Just because a marriage ends in divorce it doesn’t necessarily mean it wasn’t a successful one. It would be naive to believe the any marriage that doesn’t end with the death of a spouse constitutes as a ‘failed’ marriage. Sometimes relationships just run their course and come to a natural end. The Happily Ever After notion of a life long marriage may… Read more »
I’d like to add something with respect to the % of divorces. The numbers are off in that they take into account 2nd, 3rd+ marriages. Say we take 10 people who have been married. 5 have had two divorces and 5 have not been divorced. That’s going to show 10 people, 10 divorces.
Wrong. The 20 year divorce rate for first marriages in the US is 50%.
http://tinyurl.com/qxpjfg4
That oesnt include CA, LA and OK. Given that omission and the higher divorce rates for second and third marriages, the aggregate divorce rate is likely 55-60%.
Another terrific gem from you Heather. “Some couples are simply brave enough to chart their own course and do it their own way.” I have always been a guy who challenged the conventional wisdom. Never had a problem with thinking outside the box. Most of my success in life is due precisely to my decisions to take risks and take the road less traveled. When it comes to marriage, I think the big problem is not that we lack the courage to chart our own course. Rather, we have no idea in what direction to proceed! We need ideas and… Read more »