When Al met Tipper

So this is kind of old news. But I’ve been thinking about it for awhile.

Because if you value marriage (your own, or in general) it’s important to think about why a 40 year marriage would end. I look at my wife and I know I want to be with her rockin’ on the front porch, or wheelin’ around an old folks home, or doing whatever it is that the elderly will do when we’re old. Which is in…um….a few years. Unless you count our recent date to Cracker Barrel and Hobby Lobby, in which case the future is now.

After examining family history and current trends, I’m pretty sure she’ll be in some sort of scooter and I’ll have completely lost my mind. Hopefully her scooter will be the levitating kind and I’ll have a genetically engineered cyborg service monkey to remember things for me. If not, then we’re going to need each other. If so, then holy crap…I want her to be there when I say “I told you so!”

Either way, it’s us until the end.

This might be something specific to my generation or just folks I know, but many of us have seen that careers, money, politics, houses, cars, etc. are really dumb things to get married to. And yes, people try to do that. Over-commitments to these are temporary and in the meantime they enslave you.

When the proverbial stuff hits the fan (or just ends up in a pair of Depends), you have your relationships–with God and with each other–and whether or not you believe there’s anything after that, those are far more rewarding.

So why do long term marriages end? We’ve all seen short relationships fueled by emotion and feeling that dissipate pretty quickly in vague I-don’t-love-you-anymore’s. But what can terminate a relationship that was by appearances based on commitment and by fact endured for decades?

I have no idea about any of the specifics regarding our former VP and his wife. But I do know that whatever happened is probably the result of decisions and behaviors over those years and decades. These things don’t just suddenly happen.

As you start to examine the lives of yourself and others, it’s amazing how decisions early on can drastically affect the years to come. Often decisions with negative consequences are made when things are going really well. Song of Songs 2 speaks of the “little foxes” that attack a garden when things are in bloom.

Proverbs 5 contains a pretty heavy set of warnings about consequences. These warnings are generally regarding the disasters from infidelity (loose cars, fast women in particular). These are big things, and obviously when you take a hammer to commitment it can fail suddenly. But what about little day-to-day things?

Proverbs 5, does say one thing that I have taken to heart in regard to this. When the Verse 18 says “may you rejoice in the wife of your youth.” I think it’s saying something regarding consequences of day to day behaviors. Early in our relationships, just about everything is about the other person. Generally we’re out to impress them, cater to them, and show them our best. We want to hang out with them. We bathe. We buy stuff and write things to them and let them know we’re thinking about them.

In short, we were youth and we were rejoicing like a Bryan Adams song. We were probably a bit cheesy and over-the-top.

Yet these are the behaviors of our youth. Why would we abandon them? Have we gotten so busy with kids, jobs, and life in general that we didn’t even realize they stopped? Have we equated maturity with a more stoic interaction? Are we avoiding problems that are much more serious than we want to admit? Have we devolved into desperate security?

There could be many reasons, but it’s a worthwhile exercise to take stock of our daily investment in our marriages. Is it rejoicing?

After consideration of these, I believe that a long term marriage doesn’t end at the end. It ends in the middle and just takes that long to ultimately wind down. The way to prepare for weeks, years and decades ahead is with decisions now. Take some time and/or money each day and week to devote it to your marriage. Make the decision to put some joy in it.

Because a cyborg service monkey is no comfort to an old man, no matter how awesomely cool!