Ironically, when I was a child I used to belt out this Captain and Tennille song for the benefit of my older siblings, or for my parent's parties. I loved an audience, and thought myself very talented since I had also carefully choreographed dance moves for my performances. I was classy that way.
It may well be that enduring love keeps Captain and Tennille (and others) together, but it is children and economics that are keeping my marriage together. Not as catchy for singsong purposes. How about kids and cash? That may have a better ring to it, but is decidedly unromantic. Then again, my eyes are wide open about marriage being unromantic; I will never make that mistake again.
So the question is: when love has evaporated from a relationship, and you have children together, do you stay for the sake of the children, thereby giving up your chance at the "flower of life", as Edith Wharton refers to true love; or do you go through the dark days of divorce in the hope of achieving happiness? Hardly an original question, but one that I wonder about every day.
I should assert here, in case you are dubious, that there are no "flower of life" possibilities in my midst, and none that I am aware of in my husband's. If there were, for either of us, the answer may be more obvious. But being blissfully solo, at this point, also holds its own appeal.
The answer, I think, is simply how bearable your relationship is with your spouse. If you have managed to hold on to a level of friendship and respect for each other, then it probably makes sense to keep working hard to stay together.
But if every exchange is fraught with tension and acrimony, and you disagree on both things small and large, increasingly as time goes on, there is a point where you should agree to end the marriage contract. It seems so simple in black and white.
But simple it is not.
My husband has told me he will never agree to divorce, that he made a vow to me he intends to keep, and he thinks divorce would be too hard on our children. Yet he is nasty, difficult and cranky. And I am no wilting flower: I give back what I receive. So we end up living in an almost constant state of war, albeit a quietly staged one. I dream of peace: when he goes away for business trips it is as close to heaven as I think I'll ever get here on earth.
He loves to argue("conversation", he calls it, but whenever I disagree with him he asks, "why are you arguing with me?") and thinks we should "converse" more, the caveat being that I agree with everything he says. It boggles my mind. The key to a successful relationship is communication, but such a huge divide has grown between us that it is almost impossible to bridge. Most days, I simply am not up for it. Silence is so much easier.
He is, and my therapist agreed with me, a tricky one, and getting trickier as time ticks slowly by. My best case scenario if we stay married is to coexist, continue to share parenting responsibilities and speak little.
But as I write this, that sounds more like a blueprint of a divorced relationship than a marriage.
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