A Marriage

50 years is a long time

This is a true story. A story that has baffled me for a very long time.

I have a close male friend I've known for over 4 decades. He's been married 50 years and at least 45 of those years have been miserable - for both of them. Neither of them have been faithful, they cannot communicate at all, they agree on very little, they constantly sabotage each other, hold each other in contempt, and the wife has turned their 3 daughters into clones of herself, mostly by example, encouraging them to use their father like she uses him.

A reasonable question to ask is why they stay together. In the early years of their marriage, after they had their 3 children, her reason was that in addition to being taught by her religion that divorce is a sin, she couldn't support 3 children on her own, evidently believing that he would contribute nothing. His response to their incompatibility has been to engage in sequential affairs, and staying away from home as much as possible. Which, due to the nature of his work, is quite a lot. This has been his modus operandi for nearly 4 decades. Later, after building a successful business, and keeping his wife and daughters, even once they became married adults, in an upper-middle class lifestyle, he claims he can't leave the marriage because he would have to give up half of what he's worked all his life to attain.

This is an example of a terrible marriage in which the couple have managed, by virtue of both finding ways to stomach their dislike, if not hatred, of one another, by compromise: she puts up with his philandering and absence by constantly harassing him while spending egregiously on herself and the 3 adult daughters and their kids, and he soothes himself with a life of traveling for his business 300 days out of the year and sequential affairs to make up for years of being deprived of sex in his marriage and some semblance of companionship.

My friend and his wife have forfeited their chance of marital happiness on the altar of self-serving compromises. Her: A comfortable lifestyle. Him: Not having to give up any of his business in a divorce settlement. I shake my head in disbelief. While I commend them keeping the marriage intact until their children were grown, clearly the 3 daughters didn't have the security of a mother and father devoted to each other and knew that mom and dad were not happy. The 3 daughters have gone on to have marriages very much like their mom and dad's. The legacy abides.

In essence, they are both materialists and rationalists, who choose to pay a high price for comfort and success. To give my friend’s wife credit, in the early years of building his business, she contributed hard physical labor, and to his credit he recognizes and feels a certain sense of obligation to her for that. On the other hand, she does not seem to recognize in any way the contribution he’s made, largely on his own merit, to the comfort to which she has grown accustomed. In fact, she is resentful of the hardships they endured in the process of building the business that has long provided her a very comfortable life, at least materially. To his credit, though limited, he puts in herculean effort to keep the peace between them. When he’s available, he’s at her beck and call. He is the quintessentially henpecked husband to all outward appearances. But he’s no martyr. He keeps the peace for his own comfort, and the cost for doing so only exacerbates his need to punish her, if only on the sly. But she’s not fooled. She expects fidelity and sacrifice from him, but gives little in return. So becomes a vicious cycle of revenge punishment.

Could this couple, miserably married, love each other? Difficult to believe, given how little love, or evidence of it, is shown, yet how does one explain the longevity of their marriage? They’ve both made serious compromises long after the point at which they should need to. Would they not seek relief at least after their children became adults? Is holding onto a comfortable existence, all material needs more than met on her part, and on his part refusing half of what he’s built for the partner that helped him build it, while paying a price higher than the cost of sharing it? Possibly they both take their marital vows literally. That to break their promise to have and hold in sickness and in health and every vicissitude every marriage endures, is unthinkable. They make a mockery of their vows, though. There is no honor in the way they keep their promise. None at all.

I can’t wrap my head around understanding their marriage. Admittedly, most of what I know about it is filtered through the lens of what my friend has told me, though I also have had years in which to observe their relationship together as well as the way their children have turned out. He isn’t physically abusive. She could be said to be abusive because she deprives him of sex and punishes him for seeking sexual fulfillment outside their marriage. He is scornful and disrespectful toward her in retaliation. There is no peace between them.

He seems to genuinely believe that a divorce would result in the loss of any relationship with his daughters and their families. Given that they raised their daughters to be dependent upon them, not on themselves, I find his belief unlikely.

He claims he would generously provide for his wife in a divorce settlement, providing it didn’t include a share of his business, nor would she incur a loss of living standard. He’s already legally bequeathed his business to be equally divided between his 3 daughters upon his death, so she would be provided for through them in addition to all assets acquired through their marriage. Can it be spite that she is unwilling to accept these conditions and free herself and him from the stress, anxiety and loneliness of their marriage?

I suppose what it comes down to is they’ve long ago made peace with or at least accepted the fact that their needs will not be met within the marriage so they each find ways to meet those needs outside of it. They preserve the outward appearance of a stable marriage, but it is only a shell of what they each might have found with someone else had they chosen to break the bonds of matrimony. She seethes with resentment and anger, ever in a state of insecurity that someday, however unlikely at this point, he will eventually find a woman who can give him everything she will not: love, sex, understanding, acceptance, respect. He escapes through his work and lives as a semi-itinerant because being home is too fraught with an atmosphere of mutual contempt. But, at some point, unless he dies on the job, he may reach a state of ill-health or age so that working will no longer be possible. What will happen when they no longer have relief from frequent separations?

Both of them are self-sacrificial, but to what aim? I keep circling around to the question of why they are willing to do this? I don’t see the pay-off. Nor are they masochists, unless it is possible to be masochistic in one area, and not any other.

Probably a good psychologist could shed some light. Or possibly my point of view is skewed toward happiness being a condition of staying married, if it is at all feasible to attain it. Sure, this couple finds little if any happiness or contentment with each other, but for them, maybe it isn’t about that. Maybe they have a level of stoicism unfamiliar to me and probably most of us. They made their vows before God 50 years ago, and in spite of betrayals, disrespect, loneliness, unfulfilled needs, they’ve managed to tolerate foregoing what they can’t provide for one another without resorting to physical violence or abandonment. At various times throughout their marriage they have helped each other when necessity called for it in spite of their differences. Is their commitment to their marriage (in name only) derived from something deeper, unknown to anyone, perhaps even to themselves?

Perhaps instead of lamentations for the state of their relationship, it is more appropriate to applaud them and offer admiration.

What do you think? Is it reasonable for a couple to maintain a marital partnership that is no longer sustained on grounds of mutual respect and agreement? In a marriage that has passed its sell-by date? Have the classic terms of marriage become outmoded for the simple fact that we live so much longer than ever before?

I know several couples whose marriages are destined to reach a happy ending no matter how many years they have accumulated. It happens, fortunately, and I am happy to know them. I don’t think they are an anomaly. Nor do I think my friend’s marriage is an anomaly. Both types exist, but the bad ones are hard to figure out.