Making peace with marriage
And it's troublesome past
Next month I’ll be getting married, for the first time, at age 50.
It’s probably not entirely by accident that it has taken me so long to cross this particular threshold. The road has been paved with ambivalence.
Let’s face it, women have not always fared well within the institution of marriage.
When I first began studying psychology, back in the 1990s, and was introduced to some of the literature on gender studies and marriage, it didn’t paint a pretty picture. Research studies showed that inside every marriage there are actually two marriages, and on the whole, women’s marriages have been less satisfying than men’s1. The mental health of married women has been poorer than married men (unlike single people where the reverse was found to be true)2. And even health and longevity seemed to be worse for married women3.
The overall message seemed clear. Men have done well out of marriage. Women not so much.
After two troublesome marriages, one of my grandmothers was often heard loudly proclaiming that she would ‘never let another man get his feet under my table’. This seeped into my psyche as a young woman, and was probably one of my early feminist influences.
As I sit with all the various emotions that are stirring in the lead-up to this life event, one of the things I have noticed is grief.
It’s not unusual for threshold moments in life to contain grief. As we step through a portal, there is change, and with change inevitably comes both loss and gain. As one door opens, another closes.
But this grief I’m feeling is not for my single status. I spent many years solo before my current partnership, and lived alone for over a decade. I have fully explored the grass on that side of the fence, and no, I don’t think it’s greener. It just has a different set of challenges and rewards. There’s a lot of freedom, space, independence, silence – all of which I value a great deal. But there are also the challenges that come with having no central person in your life. No one person who follows and cares about all the different strands of your life, no central sounding board for your life decisions, and no one there to bring you tea, make you soup, or accompany you to the biopsy appointment when you’re sick. Sometimes friends step into the breach. Sometimes not. They are often consumed with their own lives and families, and I found I needed a lot of friends to fill the role that one person can take in my life.
On balance I’m happy at this stage of life to be in a solid and caring partnership, and happy to cement that more publicly by declaring our intentions in front of our nearest and dearest.
The grief is something else.
As I tune into it and listen to my body and my dreams, the sadness I feel is for the generations of women before me who didn’t have the choices I’ve had.
The women who married in their teens, to the first person who came along, and for whom marriage was their only ticket to security, status, social acceptability, and a financially viable life.
The women who didn’t get to make this choice for themselves and perhaps had parents dictate it for them.
The women who gave up their hopes and dreams to support their husband’s career.
The women who didn’t have the means to support themselves and therefore found that divorce or separation was not an option.
The women who found themselves stuck in toxic or abusive situations, and believed that their lot in life was to bear it.
Marriage has a troublesome history, steeped in patriarchy and control, where women have been treated in law as a man’s property, with ownership passed from father to husband. Required to obey their husband.
In some ways, the history of marriage is so blighted that the feminist in me wonders if I shouldn’t spurn the institution altogether.
Yet there are things I like about it.
I like the weight and gravitas it carries, the statement of the importance carried by this one person in your life. ‘Partner’ can signify anything from a casual one-night stand, to a business arrangement, and many other flavours of relationship contract. Husband/wife/spouse has a more definitive meaning.
I like the sense of grounding and settling that comes with nailing your colours to the flag and stating to yourself and the world - This is my person. This is my home.
I like the commitment to closing other doors and turning your energy towards making the relationship work.
I like the legal and contractual aspect too, that leaves no room for ambiguity. No room for an outsider or bureaucrat to dismiss the significance of this person in your life.
We’re choosing to do it, but we’re choosing to do it differently from how it was done in the past, and this intention is present from the ceremony onwards.
There’ll be no ‘giving away’, no name-changing, no ‘Mrs-anyone’ (and plenty of disobedience). I do not belong to anyone, and won’t belong to my husband either. Nor he to me. We remain two separate individuals, steering our separate ships, but we happen to choose to steer them in tandem for this stretch of the journey and to cheerlead each other in our individual journeys.
I look up at the photos of my two grandmothers on my bookshelf and I can feel the women in my ancestral line rooting for me to do this differently than how it has happened historically through the ages.
I grieve for all the lines of women who stand behind me, who didn’t have the freedom to make decisions that truly enhanced their lives. Who didn’t have the opportunities for healing or self-understanding that can allow relationships to thrive. Who didn’t have the choices that are available to me today.
I’m doing this for me, and I’m doing this for them. I’m doing this because I believe there is another way.
In spite of the many negative stories I have encountered of what marriage can be, there’s a part of me who’s an old romantic, who believes in love, and believes that people choosing to walk their life path together, working their way through the highs and the lows and the struggles, can be a beautiful thing.
I have so much more to say on the subject of marriage – and another post in progress. In the meantime, let me hand it over to you. What messages do you carry from your ancestry around marriage and relationships? If you’re feminist-leaning, how have you made peace with these dilemmas? Is marriage an outdated institution or does it still carry value for you?
I’d love to hear your thoughts and comments, as always. And please do like 🤍 and share this post if it’s been useful.
Bernard, J. (1972). The future of marriage. New York: Bantam Books.
Fowers, B.J. (1991) His and her marriage: A multivariate study of gender and marital satisfaction. Sex Roles, 24, 209–221. https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00288892
Schumm, W.R.; Jurich, A.P.; Bollman, S.R.; Bugaighis, M.A. (1985) His and her marriage revisited. Journal of Family Issues, 6, (2). https://doi.org/10.1177/019251385006002005
Gove, W. R. (1972). The relationship between sex roles, mental illness and marital status. Social Forces, 51, 34–44 https://doi.org/10.1093/sf/51.1.34
Kiecolt-Glaser, J. K., & Newton, T. L. (2001). Marriage and health: His and hers. Psychological Bulletin, 127(4), 472–503. https://doi.org/10.1037/0033-2909.127.4.472
Love your honesty about how ambiguous feelings around marriage can be. When I got married at 28 my wasband and I had already bought a home together and I was pregnant with our daughter. Getting married should have been the easiest of those choices and yet I still struggled with the decision to do so. Our lives were full and happy already so why risk changing that? To say I was ambivalent is an understatement. The night before my marriage I sat in a bath and cried until I had no tears left. At first I couldn’t put my finger on why and then I realized….it was grief.
This was one of those pivotal life moments where two things were true at once and we see the complexity of the human soul. I loved my life with this man and I loved him. He wanted to marry so much and I felt like it was what I was supposed to do. I had no reason to grieve but I did. I felt the loss of my last name and the feeling that this was the beginning of tiny steps that led to a loss of self. And yet I also wanted my daughter to have the family she deserved. It was complicated and messy but very real.
That marriage lasted 16 years and I never legally changed my name but all sorts of things did slip away. Some were replaced by new and improved pieces and others seemed to just whither under the gravitas of expectations that came with a traditional institution.
When we divorced I grieved again…and also felt an immense sense of relief… like I finally could be myself unapologetically. It turned out that my daughter truly got the family she deserved once we split. No longer distracted by our marital angst we became free to enjoy the things we had always liked about each other. We both became better parents to her and actual friends to each other.
At 52 I love the solitude and freedom that has come with being alone. I don’t yearn for the life I used to have- not even when someone tells me I should. My biggest takeaway from my marriage was coming to understand how deeply embedded the expectations of the “traditional good wife” and “good husband” are and how hard it is to not fall into their trap. Friendship and true honesty didn’t exist between my wasband and I until we divorced.
These days I often say that I’m not anti- marriage, but I am pro knowing oneself really well before choosing to yolk yourself to another, otherwise you risk being consumed.
As you said- it is indeed a complicated relationship both personally and culturally.
Loved reading about your personal journey to marriage and the way grief has a hand in the process you're in right now. It was so interesting to read about all the ways and whats you're grieving for. Thank you for sharing that and for putting language around all of it. It really resonates with me in the space I'm currently in also but from a different angle.
I was married at 22 years old, stayed married for 22 years and am now divorced. In the space I'm currently in, I'm recognizing how grief was so pervasive in and outside of marriage, how we go through loss over and over again, many times in ways that we don't stop to pay attention and recognize, or even honor. Some of the grief I'm experiencing, now divorced, is both in the present and in the past, along with the reverence and love, for the girl I was and the woman I became because of it. I'm finally taking the time to just honor the places I didn't before.
I think it's an incredible place to be - the place of awareness - of where you are with it all and just wanted to share that I appreciated your story and your take at this for yourself and women in general.