Category: monogamy

Netflix’s “The Crown” & Joy in Marriage

Netflix’s major release of the second season of “The Crown,” a lavish and brilliantly acted biography of England’s Queen Elizabeth II in her very first years of her reign, is worth every moment of your time. Writer Peter Morgan is creating a masterpiece of historical drama.

At it’s core are the conflicts that face a young woman whose father dies relatively young and has the British monarchy thrust upon her at 25. We’re witness to the parallel sacrifices of her husband, nuclear family members, and all those who serve the royal family. As her husband Prince Philip chafes under the demands of his marriage to the Crown, his roguish behavior brings increasing pain and anguish to Elizabeth. Despite the developing pressures, Elizabeth suggests a small party to celebrate their 10th wedding anniversary. And it is at this dinner party that Philip makes a brief speech that describes the core of marriage’s worK:

(laughter …) “Ten years has taught me,
The secret of a successful marriage is actually to have different interests.
Well, different interests, not entirely different interests. It’s a funny business.
One sees the whole of the other person. You see even that part of them that they don’t see themselves.
And presumably, they see that hidden part of you.
One ends up knowing more about one’s partner than they know about themselves.
And it can be pretty tough to keep quiet about it.
So you have to come to an accommodation, an arrangement, a deal if you like.
To take the rough with the smooth.
But the extraordinary thing is down there in the rough, in the long reeds of difficulty and pain,
that is where you find the treasure.
So I would like to propose a toast in the name of love, in the name of our beloved country, in the name of steadfastness, in the name of another ten marvelous years.
I give you mon petit chou, Lilibet, Elizabeth, The Queen.”

(The Crown, S2E4, “Beryl”; starting 19m.00s)

What brilliant insight – spoken in Philip’s voice – of the hard but joyous human work of living closely with another person, and knowing more about them than they do about themselves; and vice versa. And rather than using that knowledge as a weapon, the happiest marriages reach an accommodation, an emotional arrangement, to take both the best and worse of their partner and accept this as the wonder of what it means to be loved well by another human being. “It’s there were you find the treasure,” says Philip. Yes, indeed. This is what it really means to love another person. To know all about them, accept them, and be accepted and cherished, despite this deep knowledge, in return.

Thank you for saying it so well, Mr. Morgan. May it be so for all of us.

Monogamy: It’s Not for Everybody

Back in the day when I performed weddings, starry-eyed couples would come to my church office to do premarital counseling and plan their (elaborate) wedding ceremony. I guess I never stopped to consider it much, but I assumed, as did they, that the promise to be “faithful until death parts us” was seriously considered and solemnly promised before and during the wedding service. They only had eyes for one another.

Yet, I knew that about half of all the weddings I would perform over the years would end in divorce. That statistic didn’t stop anybody, it seemed, from being certain about themselves. We can do it, the couple assumed. We can be each others’ partner for life.

I now have been in the marriage counseling field for 8 years, and practicing full-time for 6. It’s not a lot of experience, but believe me: it’s enough. Enough to feel like I have a new sense of the difficulties of pledging a life-long partnership, and the challenge of not only growing and aging in some kind of parallel line with one another, but often raising children, dealing with work demands, managing health issues, sometimes moving across town or across country, or going to war, or dealing with trauma and grief.

I now think that it’s pretty awesome that 50 percent of those marriages make it a life time. In fact, I think that is nearly close to miraculous.

I’ve been thinking about the various, very human, reasons that marriages don’t make it a lifetime. And the list keeps piling up. Now, granted, my sample of the human spectrum is rather narrow, since happy couples are generally not calling me for appointments. And I do practice in a very narrow economic and cultural range in Dakota County, MN. So, that said, here are a few thoughts on the matter. I hope to write some more about it later.

1. Monogamy, sexual exclusivity with one partner, isn’t for everyone. I used to think that monogamy was just a choice, and that adults could manage it. I now believe that some of the most devoted of husbands and wives suffer from sexual struggles around having just one partner for ever. And that sexual simplicity drives them to have affairs, or other kinds of sexual acting out. What I once thought of as a cop-out I now consider a simple fact of human sexual life. Not everyone will enjoy monogamy. Many people get around this not by having affairs, but having multiple marriages, amounting to a serial monogamy with several marital partners. Half of all marriages go this way.

2. When partner family of origin preferences are very different, whether around matters of alcohol, or vacations, or habits around conflict or gender roles, or religious practice, child rearing or politics, I see those habits beat out intention more times than not. The power of family habits is hard to resist.

3. Personalities are notoriously hard to change. We are individually shaped by our genetics, our nurturing by parenting, good, bad or indifferent, in families, and all the unique things that happen to us in our lives. Many people marry their partners, despite clear problems and pain, believing that they will change their partner for the better. While we do influence our partners all the time, I have never seen a marriage based on the belief that “marriage will change them” work. Never. EVER.

With all the things getting in the way of a successful lifelong partnership, I have become a person who sees the 50% success as a definitely glass-half-FULL issue. It’s amazing that that many people getting married stay married, and say they are happy. If you are one of them, congratulations. You are a relationship rock star.