I almost never write about my marriage. That’s not because I don’t have a lot to say about it, I do. But mostly it’s because my marriage is not just mine—it is also my husband’s—and I feel like I should respect his privacy by not writing about it. (You can kiss this blog goodbye the day my kids are old enough and have enough awareness to say, “Mom, stop writing about me.”)
So I’m not going to write about my husband. I’m going to write about me in marriage. But mostly, I’m going to write about the Fantastic Mr. Fox.
For those of you who haven’t seen the movie (which I highly recommend) or read the book (which I would probably also recommend had I read it, but I haven’t), it’s about, you guessed it, Mr. Fox. At the beginning of the movie, he and his wife are stealing birds, because this is something Mr. Fox loves to do. But they get caught in a fox trap, at which time Mrs. Fox tells her husband she’s pregnant, and asks him to promise her that if they get out of the trap alive, he’ll never again steal birds. It’s too dangerous.
Flash forward a couple years and Mr. Fox is now writing a newspaper column that no one reads and saddled with a mortgage he can’t afford and has a teenage son he doesn’t understand. Soon he gets the itch to start stealing birds again—so he does, sneaking behind his wife’s back to do it. Eventually, of course, she finds out, gets really pissed, and says, “Twelve fox-years ago, you made a promise to me when we were caged inside that fox trap that, if we survived, you would never steal another chicken, goose, turkey, duck, or squab, whatever they are. I believed you. Why did you lie to me?”
And he replies, “Because I’m a wild animal.”
I was telling my friend about this a few days ago and how much I identified with Mr. Fox—which is bizarre because, well, he’s a cartoon animal in a kids’ movie, not to mention a man. But of course he’s a man, right? Because in books and movies, it’s almost always the man who has the innate desire to be free and it is the woman who has the innate desire to be tethered (and do the tethering).
But the thing is, I’m not too keen on being tethered. Neither is my friend. What neither of us understands is: why it is unacceptable for women to have that wild animal instinct that wants to dig out of the trap and go steal chickens?
Let me stop for a moment and clarify something: I love my husband and kids. And, for the most part, I love being married. As much as I like to rage against convention, I’m actually pretty traditional when it comes down to it. After all, I married at the age of 25 and had two kids by the age of 33. That’s about as traditional as it gets. Dave and I were talking the other day about why we married so young. We had met at the age of 22 and moved in together a year later. By all measures, we were already married. So why had we rushed to the altar so soon?
Part of our decision was financial. It might sound silly now, but when you’re young and have little money, the idea of saving a couple hundred bucks on car insurance is pretty alluring.
But more than that, we were both certain beyond a doubt that we’d met the person we wanted to spend the rest of our lives with. Dave and I both say now that we didn’t really have a concept of what “for the rest of our lives” meant when we were 25—when things were still new and aging seemed like something that happened to other people. But at the time it felt absolutely right.
Then there’s the other reason I got married when I did: I wanted to be tethered. My life in my early 20s was shadowed by so much uncertainty: What would my career be? Where would I live? Should I go to graduate school? Of course, looking back now, I want to tell myself, “It will all work out. Don’t worry so much.” But when you’re in the throes of upheaval, it’s hard to be all Zen about it. Rather, I wanted some stability in what felt like an otherwise very unstable life.
So the reality is, in those early years, I probably was like Mrs. Fox…wanting to feel permanently connected to something.
Flash forward 14 years and here we are. Those 14 years have been filled with a lot: births and deaths and cross-country moves and career changes. I remember when a friend of mine, whose husband died after nearly 30 years of marriage, described her relationship with her husband, whom she met when she was in graduate school. “We grew up together,” she told me. And so have Dave and I. Every bit of our adult lives has been experienced in lock-step with the other.
And—what do you know?—sometimes I resent that. Sometimes I look at our marriage and say, “But I don’t want to live in lock-step with someone else for the rest of my life! I want to be free to make my own decisions! I want to do what I want and not have you tell me I can’t!” I want to look at Dave and say, “I’m a wild animal,” and demand that he set me free. Because the fact is, I can love him and my children and yet not love the confines of marriage and motherhood.
Some would argue that there are alternatives. There’s no shortage of nontraditional marriages out there—open marriages, spouses who live separately yet stay married and co-parent, polyamorous relationships (although frankly that kind of grosses me out), etc. I was reading an online review of the book Mating in Captivity by Ethel Perel, who (from what I can tell, but disclaimer: I haven’t read the book) prescribes distance between couples in order to keep the marriage alive. As one reviewer wrote: “To love is to merge. Wrong. Merging is what happens when you see the Other as your security. That’s death to sex. Good sex requires a spark. A spark requires a gap. Cross the gap, feel the sizzle. No gap? The best you can hope for is a cuddle.” While I get what they’re saying (as anyone who has been in a long-term relationship knows, there aren’t many surprises in the bedroom after the two-year mark), reading this makes me want to ask, “Then what’s the point of being married?” Because to me, the best part of marriage is the comfort and security that comes along with knowing the other person completely—and that other person knowing me.
Yet as I write that, I know it’s not entirely true. I think all of us have a red velvet rope across our hearts and no one other than ourselves has an all-access pass. For some, that rope is far out at the curb; for others, it’s right at the door—so you can peak in, but not walk through and wander about.
My rope is probably midway between the curb and the door. I know that’s hard to believe given that I pour most of my life out on this blog each week, but in fact, I keep a safe distance from the core of things. Even writing this, I’m telling you very little. I won’t tell you what Dave’s thoughts are on all of this (about me or our marriage), and I won’t tell you any details about the issues we face. And even in my intimate relationships (with people I know beyond their IP addresses, as I know most of you) I tend to keep one arm out and another over my heart. So, in that sense, one could argue that I already do what Perel suggests; that we all do. Because no one can completely know another human being. Not really.
But I take comfort in knowing that Dave knows me better than anyone else, and still loves me. I take comfort in knowing that I don’t have to try with Dave. And I mean that in both the most superficial way possible (I don’t have to shave my legs every day) and the deepest (I don’t have to pretend to be someone I’m not to gain his love and approval). The idea of being in an open marriage or a marriage where I had to work to maintain some sort of mystery sounds, frankly, exhausting. I don’t want to be mysterious to my husband. I want him to see those dark corners of my heart and mind (and my stubbly legs), and love me in spite of—if not because of—them.
I came across the toast I wrote to Dave for our wedding the other day. As I read it (cringing at my really over-the-top writing…which is no doubt how I’ll someday feel when I read these blog posts), I found myself struck by this one part: “When I’m with Dave, I feel safe…With Dave, I don’t worry that I’m doing something wrong or saying something wrong or just being wrong…I don’t have to feign distance and indifference. I can love him with the intensity I feel and not worry that it will be received with punishing dismissal. With Dave, I feel loved.”
Dave and I have talked a lot recently about what first drew us together. And there it was, in black and white: the feelings of a 25-year-old me (in desperate need of a good editor) telling me why I wanted to get married: because Dave made me feel safe.
But there’s that other side of me that I didn’t write about in that toast—maybe because I didn’t fully understand it yet—the side of me that says, “I’m a wild animal,” and gnaws at the rope tethering me to the front porch.
The better part of my marriage I’ve found myself struggling to balance these two halves—sometimes successfully, sometimes miserably. And I imagine that struggle will continue forever. I doubt I’ll ever be able to claim victory—awaking one day to say, “Wow! I love being domesticated! Everything I want is right here in front of me!” But slowly I’m realizing that I can live peacefully with both parts. It might be an uneasy peace sometimes, but it’s a peace nonetheless. I’m learning that I can live in this state of tension and still be a good wife and mother. I can love my husband and kids even though I sometimes tug at the rope they hold. I’m learning that I can look skyward, see the moon, and howl to greet it, even if I can’t run away to find it.