Someone recently asked me my thoughts on “what’s normal” in a marriage… Quite amusingly, she intimated that, despite having been hitched for 7 years, she’s not at all sure that she knows “how the hell to marriage”, with marriage as a verb.

I liked that; I thought it was quite funny.

How does one “marriage”, and what is “normal”?

She went on to say that she suffers quite a lot of anxiety around this, especially when she compares her relationship to that of other people. She shared that she and her husband have quite unusual (and creative) careers, and that the bulk of their work happens on weekends and evenings. This results in them often passing each other like ships in the night, using their home as somewhat of a hotel room - sleep, shower, change, GO, and repeat.

She knows that she is very independent, but wonders about the fact that she and her husband don’t seem to have shared goals, and mutual ambitions for the future. She mentioned that he is wired quite differently to her, and so, where she may be feverishly in pursuit of success and purpose, he’s more chilled, and less driven.

And tucked away, between these lines, are the whispers, “Is this OK..?”.  “Is this enough..?”.  “Will we survive..?”.  “Should we survive..?”. “Is there something we’ve missed along the way; some formula other married people know that we don’t..?”

 Now I obviously do not know the answer to these questions, on this person’s behalf. But I do know the process of how she can get to these answers.

On this point, in my years and years of working with individuals in psychotherapy, I’ve had a mental image emerge, of what we’re often doing together in the room. I imagine that a person has sought out my counsel, and dragged into my consulting office a big, heavy, cumbersome trunk… And they pull it onto the carpet between our chairs and remove the lid, revealing a whole host of sometimes random and haphazard items - “the contents of their life”. As we meander through the sessions, what we seem to be doing is removing each item, piece by piece - inspecting it, auditing it, wondering about the purpose it fulfills and the function it serves, and then placing it neatly on the carpet, outside of the trunk. And then we move on to the next item.  At some point, as the sessions progress, the trunk is empty, clear and clean, and we revisit the individual contents, laid out on my floor. With greater order and clarity, we decide together what to return to the box, and what to discard. The difference, once the box is re-packed, is that the ‘traveller’ is now well aware, and really confident, about each item therein. They know why it’s there, what it’s for, accept its strengths and limitations, and are comfortable that it’s been correctly allocated. That it’s better IN the box, than OUT, if indeed that’s what they’ve decided.

And then, off they go, back on their way, with better insight, and more at peace.

My point, in sharing the above analogy, is actually to provide comfort. Not everything that ‘niggles’ and creates discomfort is necessarily wrong. But the fact that it ‘niggles’ may well be a call to pause, examine, explore, reflect, and understand. The niggle may be that this item has acquired dirt and sediment build-up, or has shifted in the trunk, or has become encumbered by a different item. And so, I suspect that, 7 years in, the person I’m referring to has become aware of the weight of her trunk, and is needing to open it up and do some due diligence about what’s in there, and what this means for her. She may, very well, at the end of her process, come to understand that her marriage is very special and sacred to her. She may learn that she has attracted her equal opposite. That, due to her stark independence, she has found a partner who allows her that, and that even though that independence might be lonely, and confusing, at times, that it actually remains her choice, for the freedom it affords. She may, however, connect with a truth that her relationship has run its course for her… That it’s offered to her all that it’s going to, and that she needs not be be in it any longer.

(These things are never simple, because every benefit comes at a cost, and so life is a constant tallying of this cost/benefit ratio. Sadly, sometimes a ratio that was well-balanced at some point, historically, shifts, and no longer yields the wins that it did before). By way of example, I call to mind some of the ladies I have worked with over the years, who have felt very lonely, due to being single. But then find themselves quite claustrophobic and constrained when actually in a romantic relationship. They may eventually conclude that orthodox coupledom is surprisingly not for them. Or they may tolerate the claustrophobia, for the other other joys that the union brings.

I also sometimes think of marriage as being this “ECOSYSTEM” that descends from the sky, on a wedding day, and envelops the couple, bringing with it a whole host of flora and fauna farmed in the collective unconscious of the known (married) world. The role of a “husband” is somehow so much more pre-cast than that of a “boyfriend” or “partner”. The unspoken rules upon which MARRIAGE is based travel with my ecosystem. Suddenly the union between a girl who loves and a boy who loves (or girl/girl-boy/boy; I do try to challenge hetero-normality) becomes clouded and challenged by a whole new set of external principles. Some they may naturally attain. Others may seem completely foreign and anathema to them, and, if anxious and self-critical, become yardsticks against which to measure the relationship never before thus measured. And then the yardstick becomes a rod with which to beat themselves up, and ultimately damage what was perhaps always a really good thing. Before it was exposed to and clouded by this descendant ecosystem.

To illustrate: my husband and I battle terribly with festivities. Birthdays. Mothers's Day. Fathers' Day. Valentines. We find them awkward. We find them uncomfortable and contrived. We find them unnecessary. And we actually find them to be energy-sapping drains that we ultimately resent (because if we’re busy or forget, this comes to mean something, but that meaning is patently untrue. If he forgot my birthday -and he did early on! - he honestly isn’t uncaring, or indifferent. It’s just such a bizarre external reality, not part of his frame of reference until it’s imposed upon him).

So, in the passage of time, as this became more clear, we removed such festivities from our lives. And with that removal came the eradication of ‘the expectations society teaches us to have of each other’. And this has been so very liberating. So he’ll no longer buy me the stupid gaudy over-priced heart-tin full of chocolates because it’s Valentines’ Day. Or scurry around a supermarket just before closing time, trying to find something suitable to gift me with on the imminent anniversary of my birth. And because we’re not religious, Christmas becomes solely for the kids, and even then, a bit of a stretch. So he’ll buy me a perfume because he noticed mine was nearly finished. He’ll buy me a pair of jeans because he saw a pair he thought would look good. I’ll cook him a 3-course meal in his native tradition, on any given day of the week, when I feel like it or feel particularly fond of him. But we don’t stand on our heads and light up the sky in a society-ordained bid to be normal, when such days roll by.

I think some friends and family wonder about this… Are uncomfortable about it… Try to configure an explanation that ‘fits’. But we don’t really care. And this has provided great freedom to us. (Caveat: we DO stand on our heads and light up the sky for the KIDS, on their special days... Because for them, this is a great JOY).

So to the poser of the original question, who has inspired this blog… What is normal..? ANYTHING that has become the culture of YOUR relationship… YOUR normal is a collection of what is true for you and your husband. ESPECIALLY if you AGREE on those truths… If you can say them… If you can hold them as dear. If you can even laugh about them... If you can acknowledge how they are different to those of the general population. And if you can love each other harder and more authentically because of them.

And, to the poser of the original questions… HOW THE HELL DO I “marriage”..? Well, you DON’T ‘marriage’… You live your life, you love your life, and you look after your life… And you do the same for your partner. You talk, you touch, you serve, you gift and you spend time… And you occasionally audit the contents of your ‘trunk’, and check that all is still in working order, that all still serves a purpose, that all still comfortably fits in there. And you embrace the idea that things may not be perfect, but they may well be perfect for you.

And if you audit that trunk, and find that the marriage piece really is quite broken and damaged… That it’s not what you wanted and not what you want, and that you’ve possibly been holding on too long, clinging to denial…Then you sit with that truth for a while, and journey towards deciding whether to repair or relinquish.

But audit according to what is written on your own heart, and your communal heart. Not on what is written on some societal ideal of what a particular institution should look like. Because even the institutions with the good marketing and branding - the “Jones’s”, if you will” - don’t look like that on the inside.

Much love,

Debbie.