marriage – *the gratitude-a-thon

gratitude-a-thon day 2079: what i know about marriage

September 5, 2022Uncategorized2 Comments

We got married on Labor Day. We joked it would remind us that marriage is work!

That was 35 years ago today.

And although we thought it was funny all those years ago, we were perfectly right. Marriage is work. A lot of work.

Here are the top 10 things I’ve learned while I’ve been on this rollercoaster ride:

Love is the foundation. We fell in love at first sight. Yup, it really happens. We were both smitten immediately. I told a friend the next day, “I just met the guy I’m gonna marry.” The beginning was a long-distance Boston/New York romance. We walked every square inch of both cities. Everything felt like when The Wizard of Oz goes from black and white to color. As time wore on, the magical newness love became genuine caring love. As we, early on, faced things like my mom’s illness and death, and infertility, it was the basic, deep-down love we had for one another that sustained us. It will change and go in and out and up and down, but it must remain. Love is not all you need in a marriage, but a marriage won’t last without it.
Respect yourself and each other. Sing it Aretha. A marriage without respect is going to crash and burn faster than you can say “Do you know a good divorce attorney.” This is the part where you both have to make sure you’re independently doing and being what gives your lives meaning and giving one another the encouragement of like, a Dallas Cowboys Cheerleader. I don’t mean you have to want to do or feel what the other does, you just have to believe in them enough to be cool with whatever it is. ALSO, you have to both respect the third party–the marriage. Treat it as its own entity. There’s you and there’s your partner and there’s your marriage and all three need their due.
Trust me. If you don’t feel safe in a marriage, trouble is coming for you. If you think your partner isn’t doing what’s best for both you and your relationship, things aren’t going to last long. If either of you is in a constant state of curiosity about the other’s commitment, it’s dooms day.
Honestly. Lies aren’t welcome here. Be truthful with your partner. Whether it’s something you don’t like that they’re doing, or someone you see that you fall in love with, don’t go sneaking around behind their back. If you had enough respect and love to marry your spouse in front of all the people who mean the most to you in the world, then have that same respect and love to be honest with your partner. The end.
I do and I will. Commitment means that barring a major natural disaster that renders you helpless or dead, you will be there for one another and the marriage. No questions asked, no considering otherwise, no kidding. This is not for the faint of heart. We’ve faced some tough stuff during our more than three decades. And every marriage will. But this is where you show one another what you’re made of and that you and your marriage are as important to one another as you are to yourselves.
Laugh. Life is amazing and horrible and fun and mean and miraculous and cruel and incredible. And so is marriage. If you’re not laughing at yourselves and your marriage, you’d better get packing and look for a new place to live on another planet.
Make time for one another and have some fun for crying out loud. Having a good time together is always important, but especially after you have kids, who can easily demand every second from you. Get a babysitter and have a once a week date night when they’re little. It feels impossible, but even if it’s a couple hours, on a walk, for lunch or dinner, at a coffee shop, do it. DEMAND IT. We need fun to fuel us. Make time to enjoy each other independently. It matters. A lot.
Make new friend, but keep the old. Have couple friends and independent friends and pay attention to each. Friends are good for marriage because their good for people. Sometimes a friend can see what you can’t and help you through a rough patch. Couple friends can make you stronger. (NOTE: Couple friends can get divorced and this will cause your marriage suffering. It’s really hard……)
Do stuff together and apart. It’s great to have shared interests, or to create some. Doing things together can give you a sense of, well, togetherness. Whether you’re both movie maniacs, music buffs, or golfers, go and do as a couple. But also, make sure to do what your spouse doesn’t, as well. Staying independent is good for staying together.
Fuck. Whether you have sex twice a day, or once a month, maintaining a physical relationship is vital. It bonds you and makes you feel connected in a way nothing else does.

I’m no expert, but I know a little something having kept this ship afloat for this long! And now I say to Peter, thank you for putting up with me. Thank you for all the times you’ve been positive when I’ve been realistic. Thank you for standing by me like a glue stick. Thank you for always loving me and our children and our dogs. Thank you for believing in me, at times, more than I believed in myself. Thank you for always being there. Thank you for making me laugh. I love you. Here’s to the next 35.

gratitude-a-thon day 1081: 30 years of marriage

September 11, 2017September 11, 2017Uncategorized2 Comments

I wrote this a few days ago, on my anniversary.

September 5, 1987, Cobb’s Mill Inn, Weston, CT.

I have been married for 30 years today. That is 360 months, 1,260 weeks, 10,950 days, 262,800 hours, 15,768,000 and 946,080,000 (but who’s counting).

I’m going to tell you two things. One: My marriage is not perfect. Two: No marriage is perfect.

Having been married all those years is kind of an accomplishment, I think. Because to do so meant not giving up or in. It meant steadying the ship when there were tsunami-like waves, digging deep when things felt worse than sand in your bathing suit bottom, and staying in it because of one thing: your commitment.

Love is dreamy, love is better than swimming in chocolate. Even a good plate of pasta pales in comparison. But it’s commitment that wins the day. It’s commitment that makes a marriage unbreakable.

I am no picnic. I can be moody, bossy, demanding and emotional. I have had back problems since I met my husband. I have migraines. I had infertility and do not ask about menopause (DO NOT).

My husband is an easier person than I am. But he has his faults too (plenty of them, by the way). But honestly, it amazes me that ANYBODY could possibly stand me for this amount of time! And that, in a nutshell, speaks to Peter’s good nature. And to how lucky I am to have found him. And a good hunk of why our marriage has endured.

We are dramatically different people. I am all out there and open– ask-me-and-I’ll-tell-you. Peter is much more private, extremely smart, intensely thoughtful and very steady. I am talkative and exuberant. He is an academic, a science nerd, a student. Ask me anything about popular culture and you’d think I got my PhD in it. He is happy anywhere. I am finicky and fussy and always like things to be pretty. He is insanely optimistic and easily overlooks the bad. I am a recovered pessimist and am able to see reality with clear vision.

BUT what we share is a commitment to one another and to our love, our life together and our kids and our dog. We are MAD for our kids. We have the same values. We have influenced one another in ways that have benefitted both of us. He’s more social because of me. I’m more grounded because of him. We both love to laugh, we adore movies, theater and good food. We cannot get enough of our children. We value good politics, good friends and good beaches. We adore travel, and just hanging out on our couch under furry blankets binge-watching a great series.

And I’ll tell you something honest, during a rough patch, I will think, “I’m done, I CANNOT,” and I want to take the potato peeler to his nose and call a divorce lawyer. But then he will do something so loving, so tender, that I fall in love with him again. We find our way back to one another, day by day. Little by little. Out of the ashes, we rise. And again we are in unison, we are in love. And this happens over and over. Because this is marriage.

I don’t know, I guess there might be people for whom marriage is easy. But for me, marriage has been a job where you must work hard to stay employed. When we are out of synch, we have to scuba through the murky waters to find one another. And each time it’s a decision to swim or flee. We have both decided we are worth it. Because we love each other deeply and our commitment to one another is total. If there is anything that can keep two people together, it’s love and commitment. And we are lucky enough to have those two things in spades.

Here’s to the next 30 years. I love you, Peter Lansbury, and damn, am I grateful for you.

September 4, 2017 on The Surrey rooftop, in NYC, where it all began.

gratitude-a-thon day 402: who could put up with ME for 27 years?

September 6, 2014September 6, 2014UncategorizedLeave a Comment

Yesterday was the 27th year of my marriage. Here’s a few things I’ve learned.

1. Marriage is hard work. No, it’s not like being on the chain gang, but there’s a lot of labor involved You can’t sit back and hope that it will survive. That’s just what a long term relationship takes. Fact.

2. You will fall in and out of love a million times. Yeah, even while you’re married, you can have rough patches where you think the thing won’t survive and you’re sure you’re no longer in love, but then the wind shifts, and you’re right back in it.

3. You gotta compromise. That’s the deal. You can’t always have your way. This is as true in a friendship as it is in a marriage.

4. You need date nights. Don’t scrimp on these. I’m telling you, you’ll pay for it.

5. Do stuff with friends. Friends are nourishing to a marriage.

6. The honeymoon does indeed end, but the sum of what you’ve seen, experienced, built and made together replaces it.

7. Compassion is essential. Your partner will hit the skids, and so will you. Stand by.

8. Note to men: Jewelry and flowers always help. Especially for absolutely no reason.

9. Fight. Some people say it’s bad to fight, but I say it’s just what happens in a long term relationship. Say your thing, get it out. Start again.

10. Laugh. Together, apart, at yourselves. This is maybe the most important thing I’ve learned.

gratitude-a-thon day 317: knowing enough not to tell all

January 14, 2014January 14, 2014UncategorizedLeave a Comment

Unknown-2 — Yes, I watched it for a few seasons. I admit it. Oh c’mon, like you’ve never seen one?

Confession. I used to watch The Real Housewives of New York. I did. The first season (or two). Yup. Go ahead, get on your Supreme Court robes and get all judge-y. I’m ok with it. I’m not particularly proud of this once upon a time weekly habit, but you know how it is when you pass a car accident on the highway, you want to look, you don’t want to look, but you do, and you keep looking until you practically cause an accident on your side of the road. That’s how it was. I just couldn’t drag myself away from such pathetically compelling characters with so much money and venom. Plus there was loads of good jewelry and clothes. I once saw the countess walking on Fifth Avenue near FAO Schwarz. She had on a killer leather coat. I considered fighting her for it (she probably would have won, she is monstrously tall).

Unknown — Pretty, insanely fit, smart, sassy, hilarious, and as open as the good book on Sunday in the Bible belt.

Anyway, the housewife, who was curiously not a housewife, but desperately wanted to be one, Bethenny Frankel was my favorite. She was a fast talking, tell all, New York chef with a seriously killer bod, and a business about to go boom, called Skinny Girl. She was funny and self-deprecating and looking for a man (so she too could one day get divorced like some of the other pathetic women on the show). She was the breakout star who met her prince, became pregnant, got married, received a spin-off show about her marriage (and pregnancy and burgeoning biz) and then another show about her first year of marriage and baby. And just when I was convinced she had actually managed to get it all, despite her difficult childhood, she announced her divorce, about the same time she announced that Ellen Degeneres was giving her a talk show (I would consider a divorce if Ellen gave me a talk show. Hey Ellen, what about me?)

real-housewives-bethenny-has-a-baby-girl-jason-hoppy — She finally finds the right guy. Good looking, with midwestern values, it seemed Bethanny had killed it in the game of life.

Anyway, I thought this was sad. See, I still really liked Bethenny. I mean, she has the kind of candor that gets me. She will tell you anything. She had a really challenging upbringing and she talked about it freely and openly, often with lots of tears and a discourse on all the ways it had crazified her life. That’s a girl after my own heart. But let me just talk about her husband Jason for a minute. What a seemingly great, grounded, hunky guy. A regular guy, if you will. He was made for the camera, but he had a Mid-west down-homeness that seemed perfect for the deeply damaged Bethenny. Our girl was getting a do-over and I was rooting for her. A good choice, it seemed. Her business got purchased for a bajillion bucks, her baby was cute.

reg_600.BethannyCloset.mh.012513 — She argued to have a closet instead of using the space for Jason’s man cave. The first sign of trouble, perhaps? Hey Peter, they converted a whole room into a closet, didn’t Jake just go to college?

They bought a killer loft downtown, with a closet for Bethenny as big as my house (not really, but it sure looked that way). Jason’s parents were kind and sweet and really supportive of the marriage and their only son’s happiness. But you could see that they were sort of leery of Bethenny. These two kids were different alright, but I thought that was a positive. I thought this was what would make it work.

1jason-hoppy-bethenny-frankel-divorce-us-weekly__oPt — Ah, but the break-up. Was it always inevitable?

Well, the whole reason for this post is that Bethenny, on her Ellen Degeneres talk show, just announced that she had “settled” for Jason, that the love of her life was someone else that she couldn’t be married to. They’re battling for custody and not even divorced yet, and she is airing this piece of particualry dirty and tainted laundry? Actually, battling or not, this is a no-no. How do you make a public statement like this when you have a child? TMI, Bethanny. You should change the name of your drink line from Skinny Girl to Naughty Girl. You don’t publicly humiliate the baby daddy. EVER. Not ok. I want to dislike her for this. What a shit thing to do. But I suppose I will continue to watch with one eye closed, because like a train wreck, it’s hard to turn away. But yech, teach me to watch reality tv and believe it. It’s just as scripted as a bad sitcom, but with real people getting hurt. For me, it’s a good lesson in knowing that you can share too much. And that’s more valuable than any amount of money Bethenny is making from her latest bout of oral diarrhea.

Alone, on her talk show set. And with the kind of bad tell all behavior she is exhibiting, she might just stay that way.