When you’re my age you feel every that every mile could be your last.
When you’re on death row there comes a day when you know the last mile is at hand.
When you’re on a respirator and in Covid’s deadly grip, you pray that this is the day of the last mile.
But when your wife says, “We’re going to get a divorce,“ this may signal that the last mile may be just around the next bend in life’s journey.
For some reason when my ex-wife said it to me every other month for two years, I failed to consider it a conversation starter. I never asked, “Why?”
After I finally awoke from my catatonic state, the best I could do was to ask, “When?”
This was nothing new to me. By the time I was 15 I had lved through 5 divorces, 3 of my mother’s, one of my grandma’s and one of my aunt’s, and later a 2nd for my grandma and my aunt - all initiated by the women. So this was a serious threat, the outcome of which seemed inevitable.
Plus threatening wife had an unforgiving reputation. Once she crossed an offending someone off her list, they were gone forever. I knew I was on the slippery slope.
Having been bounced out of my first marriage, I already had an inkling that being a person without any alcohol or drug habits, not being prone to physical violence, being honored and successful in my work, being devoted to improving our lives materially and being a good companion - all that was not enough.
My first child was not even 6 months old when I discovered a small savings account in my wife’s name. What’s this, I asked? It’s my divorce fund, she joked. Suddenly there was a barely perceptible change down deep in the recesses of my mind where the ego becomes wary of vulnerability and rejection.
Having lived through the angst of many family divorces, I had once resolved that when a woman tells you its over, its really over and better to leave without too much ruckus. So maybe lurking beneath the facade of my first two marriages was a reservation born of separation anxiety. Could this have been a barrier to any successful relationship?
It is only human nature to limit our self examination about culpability to the passive events that shaped our lives. Highest on the list of such events sits “abandonment”. You can imagine my shock when I was wrenched from my honored position as the “first born” son and dumped with my brother into a Catholic boarding school in the 2nd grade, never to emerge until the completion of high school.
Every passing moment adds a layer to the self-protective callous that forms over the aching heart. At first I never understood why my grieving could never summon any tears upon the deaths of my father, my mother, my step fathers, my grandma, my grandpa and my aunts. A lengthy self analysis revealed that insulating myself from repetitive emotional hurts also blocked the external expression of other emotions. Not crying for the perpetrators seemed natural. But where were the happy emotions that seemed to come so easily to other people? Why did the family albums show a frowning emoji where my face should have been?
When marriages become dysfunctional, the common diagnosis is that there was a failure in “communication.” Mostly bullshit. The seeds of failure are planted deep within all of us. We are each responsible for healing ourselves, for not letting those seeds germinate to suck life out of the precious soil that nurtures our relationships.
In both of my first two marriages there were outsiders nipping at the edges, sensing the discontent, positioning themselves, hinting alternative futures. Ever the fatalist, I was never the competing type, emotionally or physically. So just letting go was far less painful.
In one marriage my paycheck wasn’t big enough and in the other my ego was bigger than my substantial salary. So there was some obvious fixing to be done. Yet no move was ever made to eliminate these accessible issues. And that’s because they were symptoms, not causes. Married life can be like a masquerade ball in which old selves become unrecognizable.
When people in my generation took seriously the vow that marriage was “until death do us part,” the average life expectancy in the US was well under 59 years old. Nowadays living into the 80’s is a realistic expectation and its the rare relationship that can survive a 60 year marriage. We live in a much more kinetic world now; we cycle though multiple careers and evolving personalities.
In countries like Italy men don’t marry until they are in their 30’s, living in the parental home until their incomes and savings can support two. Divorce rates in the US are twice those in Italy. In the US it would make sense that every marriage start later and be defined as a 15-year contract. With an end in sight, a lot of abuse could be avoided. Husbands and wives would have to plan for an ending that would leave both secure. The “forever clause” locks each into a dependent relationship that often reduces the woman to a chattel-like existence.
In my case, I wish I had been in on-going therapy from way before marriage. Maybe an early awareness of my deeper issues would have led me to function differently day to day. Could have saved a marriage or mercifully ended it earlier. Who knows?
We all have different paths to emotional health. Communication may be about bridging the differences, but more likely about reaching an understanding, a compromise. Shakey grounds for a lasting marriage.
Rather than giving up or playing the blame game, maybe we should just try to make the LAST mile of every marriage the BEST mile. Then there might be many more miles to go before you deep sleep.
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