The JackB

"When you're in jail, a good friend will be trying to bail you out. A best friend will be in the cell next to you saying, 'Damn, that was fun'." Groucho Marx

marriage

Not All Marriages Are Meant To Last

by Leave a Comment

Some posts are sad by nature and some are sad by association. I am not sure if that makes sense to anyone else, but it does to me. And since this is my blog it is my vote that counts. Anyway as I grow older and presumably gain more wisdom I get to bear witness to more life experiences.

Marriage, divorce, childbirth, life and death. I have seen a little bit of everything. Can’t say, or won’t say that I consider myself to be an expert on any of it. But if there is one thing that I have learned it is that we all have separate paths to walk and that there is no one right way to live life.

Some people have accused me of trying to take a stance of being a fence sitter. I suppose that it is nice to live in a world in which everything is black and white, good or bad, etc. I wish that it were so easy. I wish that I could divide the world up in this manner, but I just can’t.

It doesn’t mean that there aren’t areas in which I draw lines or that I don’t have very clear feelings about what is right or wrong, I do. But I learned a long time ago that in some areas of life it is not so easy to make these claims.

Denise and I have been friends for many years. We met at youth group event a thousand years ago, attended the same summer camp and have a number of friends in common. I was at her wedding as she was at mine. So it is fair to say that we have been a part of each other lives and that we have grown up together.

A while back she confided in me that she and her husband were having some problems with their relationship. For a while I did nothing but listen and try to absorb it all. From an outsider’s perspective you’d never guess that they were unhappy. They are good actors, but that also comes from trying to protect the children.

Anyway, Denise told me her story and then waited for my response. I was very cautious in how I replied. I tried to go for the safe response and suggested that she consider going to counseling with him. She told me that she really didn’t see the point and that in her experience once the love was gone it never came back.

So I asked her if she wasn’t going to go to counseling why she would stay in her marriage. In response she told me that her husband was a child of divorce and that he had told her about how horribly it had affected him.

I didn’t say anything. She pressed me for a response and gave me the speech, “I won’t be angry, just tell me.” On a side note I hate that speech. It is no safer than the “does this make me look fat” talk.

Anyway, I hemmed and hawed and decided to give her my real opinion. Here is a rough outline:

1) I do not believe that all marriages are made to last.
2) Divorce doesn’t have to be a nightmare for you or for the children. Sometimes it can be the best thing.
3) Staying married solely for the children is not always smart.

Please remember that I am not a doctor, social worker or miracle man, I just play one on television.

On a serious note, Denise was surprised when I told her that I didn’t think that all marriages are meant to last and that I am not an advocate for staying married solely for the children.

I won’t rehash the entire conversation, but I’ll share this. I think that marriage is a wonderful thing that a good marriage is amazing. And I’ll say as I have many times that relationships take work. You have to take care of them or they start to suffer and bad things can happen.

But the thing is that sometimes even if you try to take care of them you find that you and your partner grow apart. As you age sometimes you just go in different directions. Sometimes you can bridge that gap. Sometimes that works and sometimes you find yourself so far apart that you don’t recognize the other anymore.

At some point you have to commit to working together to find new things in common or you have to accept that you have chosen to go a separate way. But if you do choose to take that separate path you are really sailing in uncharted waters.

Denise came right out and asked me if I thought that she should get divorced. I told her that I couldn’t answer that question. I am not a part of that marriage. I can’t say whether it is beyond repair or not. It is not my place.

All I can do is listen. I really don’t know what she’ll do. As our last conversation she was going to try and hang on until her youngest graduates high school. If I remember correctly that is around 14 or 15 years.

But if you ask me, it won’t last that long. Based upon what she told me I just can’t see it lasting that long. They don’t do much as a couple anymore. They’re more like roommates. She is a serious romantic. At some point in time she is going to miss that and she is going to begin to grow more irritated with him.

Unless something happens, I give it five years, but what do I know. I am not part of that relationship. Maybe it is better than she suggests.

Crossposted here.

A Tale of Two Widowers

by Leave a Comment

This is the sort of post that I struggle to write. I struggle because I have a story to tell and I want to convey the message in a particular way but I am not quite sure how to do it. It is a story of life and death, of the power and pain of love.

It is moments like this where I wish that I could write music because such a tale deserves an appropriate soundtrack. A full orchestra that could impart the highs and lows of this story because I am not quite sure that I can do it justice. Since that is just not possible I am going to do my best to fumble my way through this. All I can do try my best to catch the Silver man, so here we go.

Just a few short hours ago I was at a holiday dinner with my family. The table was covered in with a beautiful linen table cloth and adorned with china and silver. Several assortments of flowers were spread out throughout the table. And of course there were lots of guests surrounding the table.

Now I could tell you about the peals of laughter emanating from children like silver bells or I could share the sounds of my grandparents and relatives discussing the election and the rabbi’s sermon. It wouldn’t be hard because those are probably things that you can relate to.

But then I might miss out on sharing a tale of two widowers. Two men who lost their wives roughly a year ago. Two men who sat at the table and enjoyed the meal, but whose eyes and words revealed the depth of the pain of loss.

It seems unfair that I can’t tell you their individual stories because it is. It is unfair because they lost the light in their candle long before they ever expected to see them go dark. It is unfair because it is unfair. Sometimes evil people live much longer lives than good people. It is unfair because life is unfair.

And it bothers me that I have to teach my children that no matter what we do life will never be fair. It bothers me that I have to teach my children about death and that no matter what they or anyone else does, they will experience death. One day the people they love the most will be gone and all they will have left will be memories.

But I’ll do my best to teach my children to seek the positive side of all this. If the loss doesn’t hurt than there is a problem. I have often thought that to a certain extent you can expect the loss to be as painful as the love was joyful.

I spoke with both of these men at different times this evening and I spoke with both of these men during shiva calls. And part of what struck me is how deeply they loved their wives and how their losses wounded them.

At separate moments they both made a point of telling me to make sure that I truly live my life because the person I love most could unexpectedly be taken from me. It is a theft like no other. I can’t say that I truly understand what they are going through, but I can say that I am convinced that the hardest pain to deal with is mental pain.

You can always find a way to get around the physical pain, but mental pain is a harder nut to crack. How do you turn off your memory. How do you forget and would you really want to.

So I find myself lost in thought about the words that they shared with me and how to apply them to my life. I don’t want to wake up and say that I failed to live my dreams because I failed to try. It is one thing to have tried and failed and another to have never done so.

I can find a way to live with the failure of having tried and been unsuccessful, but I don’t think that I can live with never having tried. Someday is a great way to put off the future, but someday doesn’t always come.

And so I find myself pondering the new year with similar thoughts and questions to those I had last year. If I have any sort of resolution it is to make a greater effort to live my dreams and to do the things that I need to do to have a happier and more meaningful life because you really don’t know when it might all come crashing down upon you.

Crossposted here.

Sex And Marriage- They have It Every Day

by Leave a Comment

Believe it or not, I sometimes choose not to blog about a topic or decide that I need to rethink a post. When that happens I save it as a draft with the intention to revisit it later on. Every now and then I forget to revisit the draft and the post languishes in limbo.

Anyhoo, I just “discovered” this half finished post and from June and decided to finish it and share it with you.

The New York Times is running an article about a couple of married couples and their experience having sex every day. It generated some discussion among various people I know so I thought that I’d throw it out here. So let’s grab a couple of excerpts from the article.

“Or would you turn to your mate and say, “Honey, you know, I’ve been thinking. Why don’t we do it for the next 365 days in a row?”

That’s more or less what happened to Charla and Brad Muller. And in another example of an erotic adventure supplanting married ennui, a second couple, Annie and Douglas Brown, embarked on a similar, if abbreviated journey: 101 straight days of post-nuptial sex.

Both couples document their exploits in books published this month, the latest entries in what is almost a mini-genre of books offering advice about the “sex-starved marriage.” The couples, though, are hardly similar. The Mullers are Bible-studying steak-eating Republicans from Charlotte, N.C. The Browns are backpacking multigrain northerners who moved to Boulder, Colo.”

I suspect that for a basic need like sex we’d find more similarities among people than differences. Although I would imagine that culture plays a big role. The emphasis added in the next excerpt is my own.

“According to a 2004 study, “American Sexual Behavior,” by the National Opinion Research Center at the University of Chicago, married couples have intercourse about 66 times a year. But that number is skewed by young marrieds, as young as 18, who couple, on average, 109 times a year.

Either way, those statistics put the Mullers and Browns in Olympic-record territory. That they thought a sex marathon would reinvigorate their marriages might say as much about the American penchant for exercise and goal-setting as it does about the state of romance.

But the couples may also be on to something. “There’s a strong relationship between rating your marriage as happy and frequency of intercourse,” said Tom W. Smith, who conducted the “American Sexual Behavior” study. “What we can’t tell you is what the causal relationship is between the two. We don’t know whether people who are happy in their marriage have sex more, or whether people who have sex more become happy in their marriages, or a combination of those two.”

I can’t say that I find that last ‘graph to be particularly surprising or insightful. Not trying to be snarky, but it straddles the fence a bit too strongly for my taste.

This made sense to me:

“Charla Muller and Annie Brown both talk about how mandated physical intimacy created more emotional intimacy. “It required a daily kindness and forgiveness, and not being cranky or snarky, that I don’t think either of us had experienced before,” Charla said.

Annie said that she and her husband reached a place in their relationship that they have seldom approached since. “It was just this intense closeness,” she said. “We were so aware of wherever the other person was mentally and emotionally and physically.”

What do you think?

100 days of sex

by Leave a Comment

All done in the name of the science:

Denver Post lifestyle reporter Doug Brown and his wife, Annie, were featured on NBC’s “Today Show” this morning discussing a book about their sex lives.

Doug Brown wrote the book after Annie suggested that they have sex every day for 100 days. She said that after 14 years together, their sex life had become stale.

“Just Do It: How One Couple Turned Off the TV and Turned on their Sex Lives for 101 Days (No Excuses!),” details the journey.

“Immediately, I had second thoughts,” Annie Brown told interviewer Ann Currie in this morning’s interview.

“When I would tell my girlfriends about it, immediately, their mouths would drop open and they’d ask, ‘Are you crazy?’ ”

“You couldn’t do this for the rest of your life. … It was exhausting,” said Doug Brown.

But he recommends couples push themselves at least once a week, regardless of fatigue.

Annie Brown said there were lasting benefits after the experiment was over.

For the full story please click here.

The Story of Two Souls (Replayed)

by Leave a Comment

I wrote this post quite some time ago. It must have been picked up by someone because all of a sudden the traffic has spiked around it. Anyway, since it seems to be so popular I thought that I’d run it again.

This story has a beginning and a middle but there is yet to be an ending to it and in some ways that is most fitting because it is a story of love and not just any kind of love but one that is all consuming.

The love we speak of is the kind in which you are addicted to the other person, they are your air and your blood. They share your heart and own a piece of your soul. It is the best kind of love and the rarest to find outside of the love of a parent for their child.

Daniel and I had been friends for quite a few years when he first mentioned Anne to me. They were both married to other people and happily so, but somehow they had met online through a bulletin board they both posted upon.

At first it hadn’t been anything more than a minor flirtation that slowly matured and developed into a deep friendship and then into a raging inferno of love and lust. It was not planned and it caught the two of them by surprise as it was clear that the feelings that they had were quite deep and very strong.

In some ways it was a very different and unique kind of love. Daniel and Anne were not strangers to love as they had both had past loves and of course they were both married to people that they thought were besheret. Neither one of them had gone to the chuppah with any thought or sense that one day they would view the work week the way that they had viewed their weekends for it was only at work that they had real freedom to write and speak with each other.

Their love was different because of how they had met. They were an online match, almost a cliche in the information age but it was an accurate description. So it was when they began communicating with each other they were able to avoid the pitfalls and challenges that sexual tension in men and women brings. There was no concern about whether he should try and kiss her or if she should let him. No worries about finding the perfect dress, shirt, jeans, heels, cologne or perfume. It was very freeing.

Anne and Daniel bypassed all that and concentrated on communicating with each other because words were all they had. And something interesting and amazing happened, there was complete honesty. It was the kind of honesty that you sometimes feel when you share your life story with the stranger who sits next to you on a long flight.

I remember well the day that Daniel told me about how happy he was and how scared. Somehow he had stumbled into or onto a relationship that he knew was different. Every time he spoke with Anne his heart sang and he knew that she was someone special.

Anne felt the same way. Daniel said that he felt foolish at how fast she figured it out and how at ease he felt when she told him she loved him. There was no awkward moment and no uncomfortable silence. He smiled and repeated it back to her. He loved her too and he apologized that he had to say it over the phone and that he wasn’t able to show her in person his true feelings.

That moment changed their lives in a dramatic way because it called their current married status into question. It changed their relationship, molded it and forged it into something that had to be characterized as a torrid love affair. It was a burning love based upon friendship, respect, and believe it or not incredible desire.

When Daniel told Anne that he was going to find a way to come and see her he could feel her heart pounding and he knew that when they finally kissed he was going to have to hold her firmly because her knees would buckle. That kiss would be another defining moment.

Shortly thereafter they found a way to meet. It was only for a few hours but when they hugged each other it felt like they had always been together. Lovemaking was something that could not be described as anything but the merging of two souls in common cause and desire. They moved together as one and their goodbye was bittersweet. For though they knew that they would see each other again it felt as if a hole was being ripped out of their being. There was a huge gaping wound that bled and ached.

If there is such a thing as love at first sight they were the couple that would have experienced it. Later that week Anne received a card from Daniel that said:

“One kiss. One touch. One man and one woman and nothing will ever be the same. You know it and I know it and we live it.”

She cried tears of joy. At her desk she looked out of the window and wept because she could imagine losing this man but wasn’t sure how she could manage to get him. She had never wanted to be the other woman. It wasn’t even a passing thought.

Until she met Daniel she had thought of herself as being very happy with her marriage and her first husband. Her first husband, that is how she thought of the man she lived with. He was the father of her children and someone she cared about but not someone she wanted sharing her bed any longer.

She was a good wife and a good mother. She doted on her children and she tried to keep the first husband happy in all ways, but every time she slept with him her heart cried out as if she was being violated.

For his part Daniel was in a similar situation. He felt trapped and experienced bouts of extreme sadness at the time he had lost and would not be able to spend with Anne. She was so good to him and did so much to make him happy but he never could completely forget about his own home life.

It was also good and he was also a good husband and a good father. But Daniel knew that it was only a matter of time before it was obvious to everyone that his heart had a new flame and it made him feel guilty.

He hadn’t gone searching. He hadn’t done anything to short circuit the marriage but somehow he had found someone new and he couldn’t imagine living without her. Sometimes he would try and be practical and think logically about it. He’d think of walking away and telling her that he was sorry, that it was too late.

But every time he thought about it a dull pain in his head appeared and a sharp ache in his side. And he knew that one day they would leave their current spouses and go to each other. One day they would have to face the pain of ending one love affair and beginning a new one and though the thought of it pained him he was more upset by the guilt he felt at the excitement of starting a new life.

So there you have much of the story of of Daniel and Anne. It is tale with a beginning and a middle but the end is not yet written. Some loves can only be delayed but they can never be prevented.

I wrote a second part to this. You can find it here.

Loveless Marriage Part 2

by Leave a Comment

This part two of A Loveless Marriage. You can read the original post here. BTW, for those few people who know me and are curious who is this about, I am not going to tell you. I have intentionally adjusted things so that you won’t be sure who it is about. If he/she wants you to know, they’ll tell you.

I think that one of the most horrific events I have ever been to was to D’s funeral. If you are lucky you will never have to see parents bury their child. I remember more from that summer and that day than I mention. The look of shock and horror on his parent’s faces was something that I won’t forget.

And I won’t forget our tears either. I say our tears because there was a group of us there who were tight. We had basically grown up together and in many ways losing D was like losing a brother.

When the phone rang and you told me your story I sat and listened. I tried to be quiet so that you could get it out. I didn’t want to offer any suggestions on what to do or how to fix it, at least not until I was sure that you were ready and interested.

What I didn’t share during that first phone call was a memory from D’s funeral. If you recall we buried him. I couldn’t stand the idea that some stranger would do that. They didn’t know him. They didn’t love him. It didn’t matter how sensitive or nice they were, they would never understand the profound loss we suffered

It was the middle of summer and we were shoveling under a hot sun, in black suits. I was drenched in sweat. As I took a break from shoveling you came and stood next to me. For a moment we said nothing and then you hugged me. You buried your face in my chest and sobbed. My own tears fell on your head. It was a moment when n o t h i n g m a d e s e n s e.

I remember the shrieks of pain and sorrow. I remember holding onto his grandfather’s jacket as he stood graveside, scared that he would slip and fall into the grave, or drop dead on the spot. I felt angry. I felt sad. I empty. At times I was numb.

Fast forward to the present and listening to your recitation of how your marriage was failing. You know that I don’t have an opinion about that. I offer no judgment on whether you married the right guy. I don’ t know him well enough. He seemed nice enough, but nice enough isn’t the same as being the right one.

And when push comes to shove I believe in the right one. I don’t think that relationships last without work. I don’t believe that you and your spouse stay the same. I change. You change. We change. Sometimes we grow together and sometimes we grow apart.

My opinion about a lasting relationship hasn’t changed. Some relationships will not last. It is not always nice. It is not always fair. It is life. I hate saying things like that, they sound so trite.

You told me that you think that you have to survive within the marriage until the children go to college. I don’t think that you can plan that far in advance. Five years ago you never would have believed that you could be in this place.

He may not be a monster. He may not be an addict, a gambler or have any relationship destroying vices either, but the cracks in the dam started a long time ago. You don’t wake up and realize that you don’t love him anymore without there being more to the story. It didn’t happen overnight.

It is not an indictment of you or him. It is not a comment on what kind of wife, mother, husband, father you are. It simply is what is.

If there were no children you’d be out and you know it. The goal of protecting them is the right thing to do, but let’s be real about it. Don’t martyr yourself to an unhappy decade just to try and spare them.

I say that out of love and concern for you and them. You won’t make it. Resentment will build and things will deteriorate, or so I suspect.

The question to me is not about surviving until the kids are older. The question is what are you going to do now. What are you going to do this month, this summer, this fall, this winter, this year. What is your plan.

The angst you feel is because you haven’t got a plan. You don’t know what you are doing and you don’t do well without one.

My best advice is to figure out a short term plan and then re-evaluate later on. Break it up into chunks and then look back.

Remember that feeling we had at D’s funeral. We weren’t even 30. Things can happen. Car accidents, cancer, plane crashes, lions and tigers and bears, oh my. Don’t suffer through a decade and hope that you’ll find happiness down the road. Life is too uncertain, too fragile.

Don’t forget that your friends love you. Whatever direction you choose we’ll be there to laugh or cry with you. Try not to sing, because then we will cry. 😉 Just kidding.

And don’t forget that this post will self destruct in 30 seconds. 😉 You know how to find me.