6/7/09
By Jan Hoffman
THEIRS is a seasoned marriage, 16 years and counting. They are middle-aged. Life is that modern-crazy haze: two girls in the windstorm of year-end school activities, the puppy that must be walked twice daily, the live-in mother-in-law. They both work long hours. Standard recipe for a drive-by relationship.
And yet.
At the gala celebrating the crowning achievement of his career, he showed her off to cheering throngs: "How good-looking is my wife?"
In his lock-step schedule, he sets aside daily "Michelle time."
And last weekend, he fulfilled a promise to her. They got all gussied up and flew to New York, took a limo to dinner and a Broadway show, then flew home. Date night, just the two of them. Michelle and Barack. And their security detail.
From longtime marrieds-with-kids, the sounds of romance envy: Groan. Growl. Whimper. Sigh.
"I’m jealous," said Emily Giffin, the Atlanta-based writer of "Love the One You’re With" and other chick-lit novels. Home stats: married seven years to a corporate executive, three children under 6.
Last date with husband? She’s thinking, she mutters. "We don’t have a date night, I have to say," Ms. Giffin said. A lame excuse? Her husband’s beloved Pittsburgh Penguins are in the Stanley Cup finals. "But I flew to New York alone and went out with my friends while he stayed home with the kids," she said. "Does that count?"
While some commentators were grousing about the presidential date’s undisclosed cost to the taxpayers, news of the romantic evening prompted many wives to glare across the breakfast table, trying to remember the last time their husbands made a fuss over them.
Elbowed sharply in the side, husbands felt betrayed by the commander in chief. On "The Daily Show," Jon Stewart reviewed the Obamas’ glamorous foray and screeched, "How do you compete with that?" He warned Mr. Obama, "Take it down a notch, dude!"
But relationship experts are applauding the first couple for giving life to the modern fantasy that longtime spouses can still be passionate about each other. Intentionally or not, the Obamas have become ambassadors for date night, a term that is a creature of these times. A generation ago, when Saturday night rolled around, parents simply went out. Now parents need to be prodded to date each other, as if they’re singles: take a break from the children, already!
"The Obamas really are products of the culture," said Christine B. Whelan, a sociologist at the University of Iowa who studies the American family. The Obamas exemplify what sociologists call the "individualized marriage," she added, where a thriving relationship is marked by love and mutual attraction, not just duty to family and social roles.
"As a society, we want to think a husband might still have his hand on his wife’s knee under the table after 15 years of marriage," said Dr. Whelan, author of "Why Smart Men Marry Smart Women." "That’s not necessarily bad, but it adds extra pressure."
Joy Behar, a host on "The View," whose marriage ended after 17 years, said nothing killed their sex drive like talking politics. So she said she understood the constraints on the first couple’s chemistry.
"And with a mother-in-law in the house?" she said. "Now that’s a real lust-corrector!" The president’s schedule posed unique marital challenges, she noted. Every day Mr. Obama has to weigh competing demands, Ms. Behar said: "Musharraf or Michelle? That’s a tougher thing for him than the average Joe. So it’s really meaningful when you watch them together." She added, in a tone of wonderment, "He actually looks like he desires her."
Some wives said, wistfully, that the White House also gave the Obamas restorative marital powers not available to average Joes and Josephines. Rita Rudner, the comedian, who met Mr. Obama last month at a fund-raiser for Senator Harry Reid, carped, "He just uses Air Force One to impress her. Because they usually fly Delta."
Lisa Wolfe, a writer in New York, married for 17 years to a man named Joe, said of Mr. Obama: "He comes in like an action hero to save the country, and that’s hot. Plus, she’s got stylists and always looks great and is doing important work, too. So they’re getting each other at their best. I’d have a lot more pizzazz left for my husband, too, if we moved into the White House and my mother was on hand to baby-sit 24-7."
Some husbands had their story and were sticking to it: emphatic cluelessness. Mark Hyman, a conservative television commentator, said his first reaction to the Obamas’ date night wasn’t envy, but bewilderment over how they managed to schedule one. He and his wife, he said, could scarcely keep up with coordinating weekend activities, scattered across Baltimore, of their three children, ages 7, 10 and 13.
"We’ve had family date nights," offered Mr. Hyman, doing the math to figure out he has been married 15 - no, 14 - years. "A Jonas Brothers concert?"
Husband. Wife. Together. Alone? "Sometimes we talk about going to a film together," he said, "but by the time we agree on one, it’s out on DVD."
In some households, attention to the Obamas’ example was being paid. Eileen O’Connor, a Washington lawyer with five daughters, believes the "Yes We Can" message, marital version, is penetrating even her 19-year marriage. "Every time my husband hears about them on the news," she said, "he looks at me out of the corner of his eye."
So, first-class seats for two on a flight to New York? Not exactly.
"But late at night as he’s about to walk the dog, he’ll say, ‘Why don’t you come with me?’ " Ms. O’Connor said. "That’s our Michelle time. Or maybe once a month we’ll walk to the local bistro for a glass of wine and hors d’oeuvres."
After an hour, she said, "We look at each other and say, ‘O.K. We’re done!’ "
She and other married friends have discussed the Obamas’ efforts to keep their marriage a priority. Ms. O’Connor’s husband, John Bilotta, seems to be taking the hint: Since Mother’s Day, he has been sending her flowers weekly.
As he was running family errands, Mr. Bilotta, a corporate media consultant, said in a phone interview: "It pops up on my BlackBerry on Tuesdays: ‘Send flowers to wife.’ "
Although most spouses cannot create fairy-tale evenings on the order of Mr. Obama, couples could learn from his model, said Arthur Aron, a social psychologist who studies long-term relationships. Studies show that "couples who do things that are novel, challenging and exciting do a lot better," said Dr. Aron, a professor at the State University of New York at Stony Brook. Even a picnic could suffice, he said.
Other couples cautioned against reading too much into what could be a staging of matrimonial contentment. "You never know what couples are really like," said Ms. Rudner, who has been married 21 years. "I used to be jealous of Brad Pitt and Jennifer Aniston."
And then there are those longtime couples who, prompted by the Obamas’ date night, looked across their breakfast tables last week and liked what they saw. Tracey Ullman, who stars in the Showtime series "State of the Union," recalled that in December, her husband took her to Paris for their 25th anniversary and gave her a special ring.
"He wanted to get me a necklace," Ms. Ullman recalled, "but my daughter, Mabel, said, ‘You’ve been married to her for 25 years, Dad! Haven’t you noticed, she doesn’t have a neck?’ "
True, Ms. Ullman said: "I really don’t. But Allan has never noticed. He just said to Mabel, ‘But she has a lovely neck!’ "
By Brett R. Williams, MFT
“Fear, hurt, and frustration seems to consume my thoughts. I want to love and be loved by my spouse but I am afraid my love is not returned, I am hurt that they don’t love me the way I love them, and I am frustrated because everything I do to create change does not work.
Love is my deepest desire, but over time I wonder if it is going to work out, if we can ever stop fighting. Love is what I want but doubt and despair is all I feel. “
This is the familiar experience of most struggling couples. These are the experiences of a relationship that is dying. It is not what they want, it is not what any of us want, but we all know that it is going to be just a matter of time. But…it does not have to be this way.
Couples that find themselves stuck in such pain are there because they are living an impossible dream. The relationship is not hopeless, love is not impossible; it is the strategic plan we make to save our relationship that is never going to work.
Love is the only thing that will create more love. Fear, hurt, and frustration will only produce more fear, hurt, and frustration. Any actions we take to restore our relationships when they are taken in the mood of fear, hurt, or frustration will only generate fear, hurt, and frustration. It is the principle of reaping what we sow.
Our relationships were formed as love grew into deeper and deeper experiences of love. The more time we spent with each other, the more positive experience we had together, the more our love multiplied. This is how all relationships work. Love creates more love. Therefore we should not do anything to try and fill all the problems in our relationship; instead we should find ways to bring love back to our lives and the experience of our significant other.
In order to create this new relationship, we need to understand what to do differently; we need to understand what is love. Love is simply the free gift of our attention. Love and attention for all practical purposes are the same. The way to create love is to shift our attention off ourselves and on to our partner. Enter into their world, feel their pain, experience their fears, connect to their frustration.
And when you have experienced all that they are feelings and created a bond, not in spite of pain, but through the pain your partner feels, create a safe place for your partner to bring attention to your pain. Share your self as you would with your dearest and most intimate friend. “Fear, hurt, and frustration seems to consume my thoughts. I want to love and be loved by you but I am afraid my love is not returned, I am hurt that I sometimes feel that you don’t love me the way I love you, and I am frustrated because everything I do to create change does not work. Love is my deepest desire, but over time I wonder if it is going to work out, if we can ever stop fighting. Love is what I want but doubt and despair is all I feel. Thank you so much for hearing my feelings. I really feel loved and supported when you listen to my feelings, both the bad and the good. I appreciate this time to connect with you.”
It is impossible to turn fear, hurt and frustration into a loving connection, unless you start with a loving connection. Only those who love are lovable. So instead of trying to express your pain as a way to change your partner, connect with your partner by connecting with their pain and then sharing your pain. By doing these two things you complete the law of love, to your neighbor as you love yourself. When the law is fulfilled, more love will fill your heart. To find love, always practice love.
3/23/09
By Kristin Celello
Ms. Celello is the author of Making Marriage Work: A History of Marriage and Divorce in the Twentieth-Century United States (UNC Press, 2009). She is assistant professor of history at Queens College, CUNY.
In a recent issue of People magazine, Michelle Obama does her best to dispel any notions that she and the President have a "perfect" marriage. Rather, she insists: "I don’t want anybody to think that it’s easy. It works because we really work at it."
With this revelation, the First Lady invoked a truism that has been a staple of American marriages for close to a hundred years: in order for a marriage to be successful or "to work," you have to make a concerted effort or "work at it." What she might not know, however, is that this idea has a long history, one that is more complicated than most Americans realize.
Prior to the twentieth century, Americans generally thought of marriage as a duty. Most husbands and wives certainly hoped to love and to find companionship with their spouses. But if this love disintegrated over time, they had little choice but to stay married. While divorce was technically legal throughout most of the country, the cost and social stigma associated with it prevented most Americans from opting out of their marriages.
By the 1920s, the situation had changed. Divorce had grown increasingly common and being divorced became more socially acceptable. Not surprisingly, religious authorities and social scientists were concerned about this turn of public opinion. They believed that a strong nation needed strong marriages. They also thought that Americans were placing overly high expectations on marriage, which only led to more divorces when those expectations proved out of reach.
But how could experts solve this problem? Most of them acknowledged that divorce was now a reality in the United States. Still, they felt that they could convince American husbands and wives to pay more attention to their relationships. They thus formulated a plan to convince the public that "good" marriages required a healthy amount of investment and effort.
Experts found a myriad of ways to accomplish their task. For instance, they introduced marriage education courses into high school and college classrooms. They also invented the practice of marriage counseling, which became more and more popular over the decades. While experts did not necessarily succeed in slowing the divorce rate, they were exceptionally good at bringing the "marriage as work" formula to the American public. Michelle Obama, then, is one of tens of millions of Americans who reflexively pair "marriage" and "work" when they discuss their relationships.
What isn’t clear from this story, however, is the question of whoexperts expected to perform marital work. Most popular marriage advice, in the past and today, calls for "couples" to work on their marriages together. But if one considers the places in which this advice is dispensed-in women’s magazines, on daytime television, and in self-help books-it is clear that experts expected, and continue to expect, wives to be their audience and thus primarily responsible for making their marriages work.
Such advice was commonplace and unremarkable in the 1950s, but it became more controversial and complicated with the rise of feminism, changes in dating and courtship, and women entering the workforce in ever greater numbers. For the past three decades, debates have raged over the distribution of marital work, both of the menial (housework, childcare) and of the emotional variety. Many Americans have strived for a more equitable distribution of labor. Others, particularly social and religious conservatives, have argued that wives alone need to rededicate themselves to their marriages, particularly given the rate of divorce in this country.
It is impossible to know, of course, how the Obamas have resolved these thorny issues. Michelle Obama’s use of the word "we," rather than "I" suggests that, at least in her estimation, both she and the President are dedicated equally to making their marriage work. At the same time, it is not surprising that we are learning about their marriage from the First Lady and not from her husband-proof that old habits disappear slowly. But if the First Couple truly makes working on their relationship together a priority, they may well serve as role models for a new generation of American marriages.
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