A “Successful Marriage”?

The announcement about the Gores’ separation has come and gone.  I have now had a little time to think about it.  I am not sure why this piece of information has been rolling around in my mind, but now I will try to get it out of the brain and on to the blog. 

These people have been married for 40 years.  That means that they have been married twice as long as their ages when they married.  Two-thirds of their lives in a marriage.  Does this meet the definition of a lifetime?  Is this a successful marriage if it ends at this point?

Back when we started the institution of marriage, the lifespan for humans was much shorter than it is now.  The goal, I imagine, was to stay together long enough to have children and raise them to adulthood.  That would encompass the lifespan of most adults.  A few extra years to enjoy seeing some grandchildren, if you were lucky. That would be a success.

Life has changed.  I am not sure everyone would agree that it has changed for the better, but the fact is, we are different now than we were even a generation ago.  My parents were married for nearly 25 years.  They were happily married for perhaps half of those.  I can only guess by my childhood memories.  Kids aren’t paying all that much attention to their parents’ relationship unless it impacts their own lives. Three of their four children were adults by the time they separated.  Was that a successful marriage?  Should they have stayed together until the youngest child was an adult?  Should they have stayed together until the death of my father three years ago? 

Does the vow “till death do us part” mean until the physical death of the parties involved, or the death of the marriage?

I’m with the Gores on this.  Forty years are a long time.  They made it.  They did it.  They stayed together through very difficult times, including the lost election, the vice presidency, and whatever personal issues they have gone through in their private lives.  No one should expect them to continue if the marriage is done.  It is done.  For whatever reason, for any reason, for no reason. 

My husband and I have been married thirty years now.  Are we happy?  I can’t say we are.  Are we unhappy? I can’t say that, either.  We are together.  We care for each other.  We spend a lot of time together.  Our children are adults.  We didn’t go into this life together totally by choice.  We’ve made a go of it.  Our children would be devastated if we ever split up, especially our daughter. 

I deal with a lot of people going through divorces.  It would take a lot for me to put myself through that.  I think most divorce attorneys will tell you that the things we see make it unlikely that we take separation and divorce lightly. I see a lot of people at our age, after many years of marriage get divorced after the children are raised and out of the house. I’d also say that many, if not most, of them do not involve affairs by either party.  The Gores are just more famous than most.  The other thing that any divorce attorney will tell you is that only the two people in the marriage know what that marriage is really like.  No one else has a clue.  Not the children, not the friends, certainly not the media.  Those who maintain a facade of perfection are often those who are the most unhappy.  So don’t think you can tell if they were happy unless your name is Tipper or Al Gore. 

When people vow to stick it out, for better or worse, they have no idea how bad the worse can be.   The lifetime of marriage that we sign up for is longer than anyone ever anticipated.  Things change.  People change.  The world changes.  Forty years of doing any one thing is a success. 

The Gores deserve to be congratulated for their forty years of a successful marriage.  And best wishes to them for the future.

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