Category: True Love

On Being and Having a Wife–Bonnie Clark Guest Blog

On Being and Having a Wife
Bonnie J. Clark
July 13, 2013

On the eve of Independence Day, I woke up next to a woman who was not just my beloved, but also my wife. That I, too, was hers was evident by my new wedding ring and our two bouquets, slightly bruised from being tossed the previous day. My many emotions that morning—joy, love, victory, relief—were joined by a bit of the uncanny. Could we, after nearly 19 years as a couple, really be legally married? Did I really have a wife? Was I really someone else’s?

The short timeline to that morning began five days earlier in a magazine shop on Market Street in San Francisco. We were freshly off the plane from Colorado for a short trip to visit friends in California. As we browsed the periodicals, the radio crackled the news: they had resumed gay marriages at City Hall. We couldn’t quite believe what we heard. California’s Proposition 8 (along with the Defense of Marriage Act) had been overturned only two days earlier. Most everyone had predicted a 25 day wait, typical procedure for a Supreme Court ruling. But sometimes the wheels of justice turn quickly, greased by the work of many motivated individuals. Later that evening, a friend who had himself worked on the case filled us in on some of the legal details. These marriages, he reassured us over a celebratory cocktail, were going to stick.

The next morning I woke up at first light, too excited to go back to sleep. Why not turn our vacation into a wedding?, I asked my sleepy, defenseless partner. We had everything we needed: each other, a good friend to marry us and others to witness, and most importantly an open door for full, legal marriage. So, despite the fact that we had spent much of the flight the day before sketching out plans for an elopement to New York, we decided to wed on the Berkeley campus. It was a place that we, as Ph.D. students, had come to love and feel at home. The next three days’ whirlwind of planning, shopping, and logistics only added to the romance. But it wasn’t ours alone. Everywhere we went we encountered palpable excitement. Scores of couples and their supporters filled the Sonoma County Clerk’s Office the day we obtained our marriage license. A gallery of photographs from the Santa Rosa Press Democrat captures the spirit of that day, a historic moment when love and civil liberties were together victorious (http://www.pressdemocrat.com/gallery/gallery/701009998.html.)

But the longer timeline, as is likely true for many other couples who married that week, is significantly more complicated. When marriage equality nudged its way to the front of “the gay agenda,” I was ambivalent to say the least. Girls who grow up in Utah, as I did, feel the pressure to marry early. By my senior year of high school, bridal magazines were passed around the back of classrooms like pornography. My dreams were of college, not of hope chests or bridesmaids. Quite frankly I came out as a feminist long before I did as a lesbian. Add in that I am an anthropologist, and you can imagine my failure to see marriage as a clearly beneficent institution. The Titanic seemed to me a proper metaphor for marriage: Queers clamored to be let on board, somehow blind to the fact the vessel was visibly foundering.

An important turning point in my attitude came at a Denver rally in 2003. While celebrating a new city ordinance recognizing domestic partnerships, the crowd was reminded of the work ahead. The speaker, a straight ally and an African-American woman, told us to listen closely as she read from the majority decision in Loving v. Virginia, the 1967 Supreme Court decision that overturned anti-miscegenation laws. These are the lines she read:
The freedom to marry has long been recognized as one of the vital personal rights essential to the orderly pursuit of happiness by free men. Marriage is one of the “basic civil rights of man,” fundamental to our very existence and survival.

At that moment I knew she was right. A full citizen, a “free man,” gets to marry whom they choose. Until I had that freedom, my full personhood was denied. A more quotidian turning point came when my partner and I were struggling to keep up our household on my junior professor salary while she completed her dissertation. At tax time I compared my actual tax bill to what I would have paid had we been able to file jointly. Putting a dollar figure on discrimination only made it just that much more obvious.

So by the time DOMA and Prop 8 fell, I was ready. My commitment to my partner has never been in doubt, but coming to terms with the social meaning of marriage and especially expectations around “wifedom” has only begun. Will I use the term in conversation? It avoids the ambiguity of “partner” and the juvenile connotations of “girlfriend.” I like its political punch, but the few times I’ve tried it out in serious conversation, it’s tripped me up. Among friends its utterance is typically followed by something like, “Holy Shit! I have a wife.” When my partner calls me her wife, it doesn’t carry the baggage I expected, at least so far. It feels sweet, a term I am lucky to claim.

And I will continue to claim it although, technically speaking, in Colorado I don’t have a wife. Our California marriage will here, at least for now, be recognized as a civil union. But as my sister told me, “No, you are married. More married than those idiots on the Bachelorette.”

Bonnie J. Clark received her Ph.D. in Anthropology at the University of California, Berkeley with a Designated Emphasis in Women, Gender, and Sexuality in 2003. She remains wary of the wedding industry.

Finding Sugar Man

The astonishingly true story in the documentary, Searching for Sugar Man, has a lesson for each of us. The film is about Rodriguez, a pleasant Detroit home remodeler and sometime musician who cut a couple of albums decades ago. The albums never sold, but that was okay, because he wasn’t all about success anyway. Without his knowing, bootlegged versions of his music made him a huge star in South Africa, where it was rumored he was dead. In South Africa, he was bigger than the Stones. Only recently did South African music buffs track him down to Detroit, where he still lives and works, and tell him that on the other side of the world, he is a celebrated star of the first order. Since then, he has gone on tour and become wildly successful wherever he goes. It couldn’t happen to a nicer guy.

Each of us deserves some unexpected, special country where we are celebrated, where they wait at the airport for our plane to land, where they line the streets to hail our motorcade, where they scream with passionate appreciation for what we do. And every country deserves its own special musician, appreciated there more than anywhere else.

You can become someone else’s special country only if you are capable of adoration and gratitude. Maslow memorably acknowledged that you see your lover differently from the way other people do, but his delicious spin was that we see our lovers as they really are. You can become someone else’s Rodriguez only if you are capable of revealing yourself (the analogy to recording his albums in the first place); otherwise, other people’s appreciation is unlikely to be activated and, if it is, it will never soak through your social masks to soothe you where it hurts.

Psychotherapy can be one path to celebration. The patient discovers he can adore without being exploited and that he can reveal himself and still be embraced. In my view of psychotherapy, it’s just as important for the patient to get an opportunity to love safely as it is for the patient to feel safely loved. Another path is to grow up in a family that gets you and cherishes you. Another is to fall in love with someone who falls in love with you. But if you want to be Rodriguez without also being someone’s special country, their adoration of you will be hollow, and you will eventually look at them with contempt. And if you want to be someone’s special country without taking the risks of also being their Rodriguez, your love will turn to resentment and drain you dry.

Janna Goodwin is my South Africa (though without that country’s inequity, racism, and crime). She is also my Rodriguez.

Love Yourself First?

Dear Dr. Reality,

There’s a phrase I hear so often, and I’m not sure if it’s true. “You can’t love someone else if you don’t love yourself.” Do you think this is true? I’ve been grappling with this one for a while, and haven’t been able to decide whether it’s just annoying psychobabble, or if there’s validity to it. Being more compassionate toward myself has enhanced my intimate relationships immeasurably, but I’m not willing to accept that I’ve been unloving during periods of self-loathing.

Signed, Skeptical

Dear Skeptical,

Love is an emotion and a definition of a relationship. As an emotion, you can love your partner, the Red Sox, or chocolate; as the definition of a relationship, it means that the other person’s happiness or well-being is a reinforcer of your own behavior. Abusive parents are always going on about how much they love their children, and if they mean how they feel about them, then I have no dispute (or basis of disagreement), but if they mean the definition of the relationship, I have to point out sometimes that their behavior more closely aligns with the idea that they hate their children.

It takes a tremendous amount of vulnerability to allow someone else’s well-being to be a reward. There’s a risk that the other person will decide that their happiness doesn’t include you as much as you want to be included—this is almost bound to happen if the other person is your own child. There’s a risk that we all adjust to the love we think we deserve, so if you love someone else, the other person might start to think better of herself and conclude that she can do better than us. There’s a risk that the other person will screw things up and wreck our source of reinforcement. These are just some of the risks, as I’m sure you know. Think city of Cleveland and LeBron James: they felt the emotion of love, but they didn’t really want what was best for him.

It seems pretty obvious that you can feel the emotion of love regardless of how healthy you are. The emotion of love is what we feel about an intermittent reinforcer. (Do Hawaiians love a nice day as much as New Englanders? I doubt it.) No doubt Hitler loved his dog—and the German Army until Stalingrad.

What relation to ourselves is necessary to support a loving relationship with another person? We’d have to be resilient and generally optimistic about our potential, or else the risks and vulnerabilities would be too powerful. We’d have to have an array of available social reinforcers and skills to obtain them, because we would respond to our lover by trying to control her if she was the only important source of reinforcement. In fact, if she were our only source of reinforcement and she had any autonomy at all, we would hate her. And how do we become people who are resilient, generally optimistic, open, and socially skilled? We get this way if we have been the object of other people’s love.

So the answer to your question is not, yes, “You can’t love someone else if you don’t love yourself.” The answer is yes, “You can’t love someone else if you haven’t been loved.”

Holiday Stress

Dear Dr. Reality,

My husband never does enough for the holidays. It’s like he doesn’t care. He knows how upset this makes me, but for Valentine’s Day, he’ll just pick up flowers and candy on the way home. Last V-Day, he didn’t even do that! Halloween is approaching and he hasn’t said a word about our costumes (we’re going to a party). It seems like we always have a fight, but he never changes.

Signed, All Dressed Up and No One to Go With

 

Dear All Dressed Up,

When you try to control your spouse by exploding with anger or tears when he disappoints you, you become like a valley filled with landmines. In a landscape like that, expect cautious, small steps, and a lot of anxiety that interferes with thinking about other people (that is, about you). When you try to control your spouse by acting like a drill sergeant, you will get a mask of compliance (“Yes, dear”) and find that he is reserving his joy for other situations. It’s fine to want to control your spouse; it’s monstrous to attempt it. One of the few things we know for certain in psychology is that aversive control never produces actual control but only the mask of obedience; it also produces anxiety and stress. My advice is to dig up all your landmines and replant them around the perimeter—only get angry if your partner violates a basic boundary of the relationship. Otherwise, enjoy the fact that he is not a slave to other people’s expectations, even yours. Try to make coming home, even on a holiday, something he looks forward to doing. If you’re feeling unappreciated or uncelebrated, talk about it with him. But don’t turn into Nero, singing for people who were afraid of him and demanding applause. And don’t turn into my grandmother, who responded to occasional letters with remonstrations about not having written longer and more frequent letters. Instead, find out what he likes about you and do more of that. And if he is moved to reciprocate, don’t become one of those nieces who ignores Uncle Harry and just wants to know what he brought her.

Dr. Reality

 

Can’t he spend his own money?

Dear Dr. Reality,

I loaned my brother $500 and asked him not to tell my wife. My wife found out and got mad at me. Shouldn’t I be able to lend my brother some money?

Signed, Confused

Dear Confused,

Your wife wasn’t mad about the money. She was mad about your having a secret with your brother that put her in the position of the person from whom the secret was kept.

You don’t have to tell your spouse everything to sustain true love, but you can’t have an understanding with anyone else that leaves your spouse in the dark.

Conversely, true love needs some secrets between the spouses that leave other people in the dark.

[I’m going to use spouse to refer to the person you’re committed to in love, whether married or not, gay or straight. It’s a good word because it’s gender neutral and it doesn’t mean any other kind of relationship. Lover applies to any encounter, partner applies to business and card games, and so on. Not all spouses seek true love, but I’m assuming you do.]

The implicit rules of any relationship define the relationship and protect its functions. The functions of true love include romantic bonding (the feeling of being loved and in love), sexual intimacy, and friendship; typically, living as housemates; financial partnership or at least interdependence; and, often, co-parenting. Owning pets jointly can go under housemates or co-parenting, depending on how you feel about the pets (fish versus dogs).

The intimacy required for true love (as opposed to friends and housemates, which is where many relationships end up—or just housemates) demands openness by both spouses, and this in turn demands intense trust that your intimacy will not be betrayed. Without the trust, you won’t reveal yourself. But what exactly are you trusting your spouse to do or not do?

Whenever a third party is involved, true love requires the third party to be treated as the third party, and the lovers as a dyad. A spouse can be in a dyad with another person, but not if the spouse is cast in the role of the third party. You can be in multiple dyads, and you can even be in several intimate dyads, but you can’t be in multiple dyads that turn your spouse into a third party and expect to reap the benefits that come from spouses putting each other first.

Also, you need to make sure you both agree on the rules about spending money without consulting each other. Generally, you should each keep some discretionary money as your own, even if it’s only a few dollars, and you should agree on some amount above which you will not spend joint funds without consulting each other. If you are rich, you could easily have amassed $500 of your own money to spend as you wish (if only you don’t alienate your spouse in the process). “Rich” is the term for couples who, when bills come in, just pay them. (“Middle class” is the term for people who have to get up and work; “wealthy,” “unemployed,” “artistic,” and “poor” are some of the terms for people who don’t.)

Dr. Reality

Ioannis and Emily’s Wedding Ceremony

[I officiated at the wedding of two amazing people. Here’s the text.]

Emily and Ioannis are in love. I’m glad you love each other. That’s nice. But what really warms my heart is the fact that you like each other. This is a good foundation.

Dear Friends, we are here today to celebrate the marriage of Emily and Ioannis. Emily, Ioannis, and I know each other from psychology, and that’s the lens we use for understanding the challenges and rewards of marriage.

As psychologists, we recognize that each of you has become an important source of reinforcement for the other—you’re like a lever and the other person is a pigeon (I almost said rat, but it’s your wedding). And we also recognize that it is natural and unavoidable that each of you should try to control such an important source of reinforcement. If the best thing in the world were the last pint of ice cream, you’d keep that ice cream under lock and key, and you might get upset if the ice cream told you that it thought the freezer was too cold. You might want to keep in mind that your efforts to control each other, should they succeed, would actually wreck the reinforcers you receive, and this thought might help you check your efforts to control your beloved. Because neither of you wants to get a kiss or a wink or a smile if it comes to you from someone you control. Whereas with ice cream, who cares whether the ice cream is a willing participant? So when you are frustrated with each other, keep in mind that whatever the other person is doing to frustrate you is a good thing. It is the basis for enjoying what they do that doesn’t frustrate you—your frustration is your proof that you don’t control your spouse.

From systems theory we recognize that the form and tone of speech, the relationship implied between speaker and listener, are at least as important as its content. So talk to each other as if the other person is someone you are in love with, someone who is in love with you, someone you like. You could jointly monitor your speech and behavior so that you are speaking as a friend speaks to a friend, as a spouse speaks to a spouse. Keep sounding the right notes and you’ll keep playing the right tune.

Cognitive science also offers some assistance. If you start to think you’re a better spouse than your other half, keep in mind that you are aware of every little thing you do around the house, for your partner, and for the relationship—and you are also aware of every little thing you refrained from doing that would have burdened your spouse or the relationship—whereas you have direct evidence of maybe a tenth of your spouse’s good deeds. Adjust your perception accordingly.

We also recognize that human beings get into trouble sometimes when they interpret the behavior of their beloved with old maps. Each of you is unique, and not a manifestation of some figure from the other person’s past. When Ioannis offers to help, he isn’t thinking that you’re incompetent, he just likes to help you. When Emily decides to rearrange the furniture, it doesn’t mean she wants to rearrange YOU.

It’s important that you should be not just marital partners, but also teammates. That means you put on performances together, and when you perform for each other, you let the other in on what’s going on backstage. In other words, don’t get in a huff—you get in a huff with your spouse, whom are you performing for? And don’t act angrier than you are to make points on a non-existent scoreboard. Give up status for relatedness and you will be happy.

When people are dating, they look after their appearance, get in shape, engage in interesting activities, and try to be witty: why not keeping doing that while married? I mean, marriage should be a place to loosen your belt and kick off your shoes, but you can also gear up for a good conversation. Don’t tell stories your spouse has already heard. Get gussied up once in a while. This will be easier if you don’t have to spend every minute with each other. In other words, don’t get used to each other. Remind yourselves—and sure, why not—remind each other how lucky you are.

Let’s be grownups and talk about – indoor sports – you know, Scrabble. When you first get married, Scrabble is all 7-letter words and triple letter scores. After a while, the board gets filled up and it’s hard to find a space to make an exciting move. What you need to do at this point is to start making up words. The thrill you’ll feel is not the same as placing your Z next to your partner’s X, but it will still be a thrill. You’ll be atwitter about whether your partner will accept your invention or challenge it. And if you really want my advice, don’t play Scrabble with anyone else. In fact, I would advise against any kind of word games with other people. Every couple needs a few activities they do only with each other. Some couples get into trouble when one person wants to play Scrabble and the other one doesn’t. I’m sure you’ll come up with your own solutions when this happens, but you might want to consider the “rain check” idea, where the person who doesn’t want to play promises to play within the next two days. Or, the person who doesn’t want to play can suggest a shorter, less involving word game. Hangman.

Existential crises and periods of low self-esteem can be ridden out much more easily if you have faith in your marriage. As you know from being such good clinicians, it’s easier for people to have faith in a relationship if the other person is steadfast, affectionate, and honest. Remove the log from your own eye (yes, I’m quoting the Bible, but after all I am a minister)—remove the log from your own eye before helping your partner with the speck in theirs. In other words, instead of questioning the other person, ask yourself if you are being steadfast, affectionate, and honest.

Love the flaws. When you are frustrated, judge the whole package: because you’re both wonderful people, this should be easier than for some couples.

You asked for some Janna stories—Janna is my wife—so I’ll tell you one. I bought us– and by us I mean me—a set of nonstick pots and pans, explaining to Janna, who has a genius for vitality but a mild learning disorder regarding the dishwasher, that the new cookware would be ruined unless washed by hand. Whenever I see the nonstick cookware in the dishwasher, I not only refrain from getting annoyed, I get a mild charge of gratitude. Love each other’s faults. I feel gratitude because I know that the view of the world that keeps her from taking care of these objects is the same view of the world that has never, not once, led to her putting pressure on me to buy her something. In Janna’s world, objects are worth only what meaning their interpersonal histories acquire. Nonstick cookware in the dishwasher means that I never have to worry about whether I am making enough money to make her happy.

Last year on Mother’s Day, I wrote a card to Janna’s mother that said, “If you’re such a good mother, why doesn’t she check her pockets before putting her pants in the laundry?” Janna’s mom wrote back (and this is a lesson for the in-laws)—Janna’s mom wrote back, “She was perfect when I handed her over to you.” I don’t know yet what terrific quality of Janna’s is manifested in the tiny shreds of Kleenex I have to pick off my clothes, but I’ll figure it out.

We know that culture affects relationships. Ioannis believes that knowledge is pain. It’s a Greek thing. Emily believes that knowledge is power. It’s an American thing. This is the kind of conflict you don’t need to resolve—just find a practice that meets both people’s needs. In this case, for example, the solution is simple: Emily shouldn’t share information with Ioannis. You can learn from each other’s cultures. Call it Dionysian revelry instead of getting wasted, and you’ll feel better about yourself tomorrow morning.

There are a lot of happy lives you could lead. There are adventure films, and documentaries about changing the world or making other people’s lives better, and dramas of growth and discovery. Consider, both of you, the possibility of living a love story, of making your lives into one long love story—or better still, a romantic comedy.

In closing, I would offer you a benediction, in all seriousness. What you are doing today is the most ordinary thing in the world. Two people meet, fall in love, make a commitment before their families and friends. Really, commonplace. It happens every day. May you always find magic in the ordinary.