Marriage as a Container

Years ago a therapist suggested to me that a relationship, or a marriage, is a container. She was helping me to see that I needed to get in that container with my partner and be held by the relationship itself even when I could not be held by the other person. I loved the idea immediately.

I later began to think of my marriage as a bowl. I collect old yelloware bowls of all sizes and I especially like the big ones used for mixing. Bowls are containers, relationships require mixing, and sometimes relationships require kneading, time to rise, punching down and rising again.

A container. Or a mixing bowl. That’s what commitment gives to a relationship. It holds the space. Not having a commitment means you can drift and slip and slide. It’s similar I think to the constraints of poetry. A villanelle or a sonnet is a container and by being forced to stay in the container creativity is unleashed.

David Richo, in his book, “How to Be an Adult” writes about relationships in a similar way. He says, “A working relationship is a crucible in which the human tasks of holding on and letting go can be fulfilled.” We have to hold on and let go at the same time. Marriage creates the container, the bowl, the crucible, which allows two adults to hold on and let go over and over.

...and the hair grows in

One of my favorite novels--which we now know is kind of a memoir--is the fabulously funny book, "Heartburn" by Nora Ephron. She nails so many things about men and women and marriage and couples and well, human beings. The book also has amazing recipes including the best Key Lime Pie ever. One passage that I copied and keep in my tickle file to keep me on my toes is this:

"One thing I have never understood is how to work it so that when you’re married things keep happening to you. Things happen to you when you are single. You meet new men, you travel alone, you learn new tricks, you read Trollope, you try sushi, you buy nightgowns, you shave your legs. Then you get married and the hair grows in."

---Nora Ephron, “Heartburn”.

How Much Together? How Much Apart?

I was talking to a friend this week about marriage. In recovery many of us have the opportunity to do relationships and marriage differently. We also know that many of us do different marriages—some more than once—or twice.  For this reason many of us in long-term recovery also read about relationships and we try counseling and workshops and “couples work.”

I was saying to my friend that I wished for more time alone at home. My husband is a teacher and he is off in the summer so I miss my mornings alone in the house. My friend’s husband travels for work and so she has lots of alone time but she misses those daily dinners they shared when his previous job brought him home every night.

It is true that the grass is always greener, but its also true that we each have a preference for how much autonomy and how much dependency we like. It’s almost as if we each have a set point. That’s also why many of us couldn’t be married to someone else’s spouse.

I remember in early recovery a therapist explaining to me that the hardest work a couple has to do is learn their preferences and negotiate the middle. I know that I was a “distancer”—always pushing away, making space and when I was in the midst of addiction I was the one who left. But I also learned that being a distancer gets challenged when I meet another person who likes a lot of space too. What I learned over time was that my distancing simply hid my own need for dependence. When a new guy stayed away, or walked away first, then I got to feel that yucky, dependent, needy, caring feeling.

That’s part of what we get when we are sober a long time. We learn about ourselves and what is underneath our first or presumed reactions. I was a distancer until a man took more distance, then I would I tip toe back toward coupledom and closeness. It’s similar for my sober friend who says she likes to be very close and have lots of time together. When her husband was laid off for eight months and was waiting at the door each night she took longer and longer to get home from work each day.

We contain all of it.

I have come to believe that when we say of any other person’s behavior, “Can you imagine!” that in fact we actually can. And that’s what upsets us. We all have it in us to be dependent and to run away. Psychologists talk about “reaction formation” where we do the very opposite of what we want or fear. My fear of being dependent, or having someone dependent on me, is very likely some of the fuel in my “independence” and distancing.

The gift of long recovery is all this learning about ourselves. And then, if we have the courage to face what we learn, we can create or re-create great relationships with our partners.

If My Husband Ever...

“If my husband ever…”. Yes, with each round of celebrity infidelity we engage in the age-old game of, “If my husband ever…”. At 56, I’ve played this many times at lunch tables and water coolers and sitting on the floor in a girl friend’s living room. But at 56 I’ve also taken enough early morning phone calls from friends and sponsees to know that even if you think you know what you’d do if you discovered a partner’s infidelity, you don’t.

Some leave at once, some never leave, some forgive, some don’t. Sometimes the ones that forgive stay but sometimes leaving is the route to forgiveness. Most chilling, I think, are those that never leave, never separate and never forgive. They keep up appearances—maybe are even envied by others for their perfect marriages which are glued together with hatred and spite.

The agony of infidelity does not discriminate. There is enough to go around. I’ve played all the parts: scorned wife, secret lover, other woman—and the friend who knew. There are no winners. No one has more or less pain.

Now, a new novel comes pretty close to accurately depicting each of those points of view. It’s a great read and even better as a book on CD to listen to in the car or at the beach.

If you have ever said, “I’d never” to any part of the extramarital triangle take a look at: “Heart of the Matter” by Emily Giffen.

Bad Marriages in Books

I’m reading “Shadow Tag” the new novel by Louise Erdrich. She’s been writing a long time and I’ve loved her novels, “Love Medicine” and “The Beet Queen”. Now, the new book has me stunned and dismayed. Great writing still—I think. But oh my, “Shadow Tag” is the story of a horrific marriage—one of the worst I think for the sheer meanness and emotional cruelty between husband and wife. It’s been rumored, hinted at and suggested that this book is “about” Erdrich’s own marriage to Michael Dorris. God help them both if there is any truth to that.

For our purposes we need to know that “Shadow Tag” is also the story of a woman alcoholic—and the slow, semi-hidden progression of the disease. One scene in the story describes how the disastrous couple’s youngest child loves to draw pictures of his mother—and the mom notices that he always puts a sparkly globe in her hand –“Look”, she says, showing the child’s drawings to her husband, “He’s giving me a sacred symbol.” And the husband says, pointing to the object the kid has drawn on his mother, “That’s a wine glass; he thinks it’s part of your body.”

This book got me thinking about bad marriages—real and fictional. I know there are some great readers reading this blog so help me out: What are the worst marriages in literature? Is it Tolstoy’s “Anna Karenina”? Albee’s “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Wolfe?

I can’t say you’ll love Louise Erdrich’s new book. But if you want to see—again—what a permanent wine glass on the end of your arm can do to a woman and a marriage take a look at Shadow Tag.

All of It

A friend of mine told me what a wise friend of hers told her when she was contemplating marriage to the man she had been living with.

The friend told her to get very quiet and “make a list of all the things that upset you, annoy you and that you don’t like about him”. Then very carefully look at that list and ask yourself: “Can you accept each item on that list?”

If you can, then you can marry him because those things will not change.

Marriage and Weddings

I loved Elizabeth Gilbert, “Eat. Pray. Love” Read it, listened to it: God and pleasure and faith and fear and overcoming fear. Yes it helped that she had a big house to sell and a huge book advance. But Ok that does not counter the humor and good grace of her book. I especially loved when she had everyone in the universe co-sign her prayer to have her divorce end and to have peace with her ex. And that water tower scene in India. Again turning that ex over to God—higher selves meeting and releasing.

In this week’s New Yorker magazine a review of Gilbert’s second memoir, “Committed” about marriage and reluctantly marrying the man she fell in love with at the end of book one. At the end of the book review this great line:

“There is good reason to end such stories with weddings, buoyant celebrations of love. Because what follows a wedding is a marriage. And marriage is an institution, not a party.”

And the hair grows in...

A wonderful quote from Nora Ephron from her novel, "Heartburn":


"One thing I have never understood is how to work it so that when you’re married things keep happening to you. Things happen to you when you are single. You meet new men, you travel alone, you learn new tricks, you read Trollope, you try sushi, you buy nightgowns, you shave your legs. Then you get married and the hair grows in."