Eighteen months later, when my husband and I decided to try our marriage again, the support was subdued, often nonexistent. Except for our friends among the religious right – and not even all of them – people only asked questions or expressed shock and disbelief. “I heard you two are back together,” said one caller. “I hope to hell it isn’t true.” Another asked: “Are you sure you want to risk going through this again?” “When something is dead,” a minister told me, “you need to bury it.”
The media frequently deliver the same message: why revive a failed relationship? Leave “Mrs. Doubtfire,” no matter how he tries to get the family back. Please, Frasier, whatever you do, don’t go back to Lilith. Divorced people can make it quite nicely, thank you, one day at a time.
I haven’t heard of a talk show featuring “People Who Return to Former Spouses” or a best seller entitled “Making Marriage Work After Separation.” In spite of the recent emphasis on family values, the Clintons haven’t gotten much credit for holding their marriage together during troubled times.
A second go-round with marriage tends to be dull. It’s not as dramatic as people kidnapping their own children nor as impressive as a single parent who handles everything herself. And it’s certainly not as exciting as marrying someone new. It would probably make a boring movie: a return to the same face, the same voice, the same troubles. “You seem to be doing well now that you’re single,” I was told by well-meaning people. “Why go back?”
I had been doing well. The day my husband came back into my life, I was thinking about my freedom, the trips I planned, the projects I envisioned. I had quit wondering where I had failed and stopped obsessing about my non-nuclear family. The divorce papers were coming any day in the mail, and I was ready to sign myself into the single state.
The sky was blue; a nice breeze was blowing. It was a good day, I thought after a long pleasant walk, to clean the basement. While I was sweeping cat litter, I heard a car coming up the driveway. My husband slowly entered the basement, walked over and hugged me and asked if we could try again.
Was the cat litter a symbol? Should I sweep up 20 years of marriage and throw them into the trash? Or should we try again? Did I want to explain why I was late getting home from work? Cook regular meals? Hear complaints that I was messy?
I wasn’t sure. Once I had promised “for better or worse” and “till death do us part.” I believe that, generally, children are better off with both original parents. But I’m not sure that the reason was rational. Although I can’t precisely describe what happened, I felt a sense of completeness when I thought of trying again even though the marriage might blow up in my face. I knew I couldn’t strew my things everywhere about the bedroom without someone complaining, and I would have to make unwanted changes in my routine.
I did have to readjust. So did he. All of a sudden, we were arguing again. Not often – but the occasional tenseness sometimes made me wish for the silences. I missed a household with just me and the children. The children had to learn to check with two parents again. All of us had to get used to less freedom. Yet overall the adjustment during the past six years has been much easier than I expected.
Although things now look promising, neither of us has any guarantees that the breakup won’t happen again. But had I married someone else, I wouldn’t have been sure of that, either. And I would have missed the many advantages of remaining with a “former” spouse.
One plus is the sense of newness after a separation. When that excitement wears off – as it must in any relationship or experience – you have all the years of love and affection upon which to build. Shared holidays and vacations, car accidents, gifts, pictures taken and later laughed over, as well as grief over family deaths have all become part of an intricate structure.
We didn’t have to learn someone else’s history or explain our stories. Both of us could keep our friends. We saved money. We didn’t have to get used to another’s bad habits. He knew if he wanted an envelope opened correctly, he couldn’t count on me. I knew he’d “help” me by shrinking my favorite clothes in the dryer. He would spend too much time running races. I’d spend too much time taking school courses. We recognized the problems. We have even learned to cope with some of them.
Our separation taught us a little about what is and what isn’t important. Forgiveness, we’ve learned, is essential. And we’ve avoided (at least so far) the anger and bitterness that can come from divorce. We won’t have to go to our children’s graduations, weddings and other important occasions with an emotional cloud hanging over us. The children don’t have to worry about dividing up holidays between Mom and Dad.
Our marriage is far from perfect. We are never sure that we’ll not separate again. But the marriage is better than it was before the separation. We walk nearly every day, eat out more frequently, talk more. A few months ago, my husband surprised me with a computer. Last month he volunteered to pay for my car repairs. When I was hospitalized several times recently, he drove me to the emergency room, stayed during the bad parts and protected me from a doctor who wouldn’t listen to a sick person. As for me, I’m trying to limit outside projects, to pay attention when he analyzes a race route and to put all of his mail (insomuch as is humanly possible) on his dresser. Both of us have learned to pay more attention to each other than we did in the past.
The minister wasn’t wrong. At the time I talked to him the marriage was dead. But hasn’t he heard about resurrection?
