Are All Good Marriages Boring?
In today's New York Times Magazine, an article about "Monogamy," the newest project by filmmaker Dana Adam Shapiro. "When Shapiro's friends started splitting up," the article explains,
he wanted to understand why. So he set about interviewing dozens of divorced people....
He originally considered doing research into happy marriages--couples celebrating 50 years, looking back over rough but eventually conquered terrain--but realized there was no real story there. He paraphrases Tolstoy: "All happy couples are the same. Which is to say they're just boring."
Wrecks, though--wrecks are fascinating.
Every happy marriage proves plenty interesting for the man and woman concerned, of course; otherwise it wouldn't be happy. But I wonder. Is it the nature of marriages--of good marriages--that they're only of private, not public, interest? That is, that they're so concerned with domestic matters that they really are quite boring to everyone outside the family circle itself?
I'm not sure. My wife and I find ourselves intensely concerned and utterly engrossed with every detail of our children's lives. But I suppose I'd have to grant that no one outside our family would care to hear how our oldest boy's football injury is coming along, what job prospects our oldest daughter will face when she graduates from college, or how our youngest daughter has finally--finally!--learned that when she sits down at the piano she must practice her scales first.
Good marriages, boring? When I read that passage, I realized that although I myself don't have a settled view of the matter I'd be fascinated to hear what others might think. Which meant, I realized, that I could happily post the item here on Ricochet...then stand back and listen.
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Dec '10
Re: Are All Good Marriages Boring?
New curse: May you have an interesting marriage.
Nov '10
Re: Are All Good Marriages Boring?
A quote whose source eludes me at the present --
"He who has loved many women has loved none. He who has loved one woman has loved all."
Edited on Mar 13, 2011 at 7:33pmMay '10
Re: Are All Good Marriages Boring?
The book project I'm working on right now is a biography of Milton Shedd, one of the founders of Sea World. Interesting as it is to hear how a few fraternity buddies in the early 1960s went about gathering up enough marine life to start an oceanarium and theme park, I find that I'm as engrossed by his personal successes as his professional ones. Upon accepting various awards and honors over the decades, he never once failed to let everyone present know that he couldn't have achieved any of it without his wife Peggie. His children tell me that as youngsters the most frequent words they heard were, "Kids, do you realize how lucky you are to have such a wonderful mother?" And perhaps most riveting were the letters he wrote back to his wife from World War II. I could go on for far more than 200 words! But suffice it to say that I find some stories about happy marriages fascinating – and instructive for the day when I get married myself.
Jul '10
Re: Are All Good Marriages Boring?
Yeah, Peter...that's BORING.
Nothing is more boring than whether or not your daughter will go to Stanford or Berkeley. Nothing. It's of course why you think it's a big deal that other people have MEGO at the thought of you describing your childrens' "problems" such as they are.
But we all have that I think.
But you know, others have to worry about their son's drug problem, their daughter's pregnancy, and their youngest getting his colors in the local Pagan motorcycle club.
But I'm sure those would be boring to you, as well.
Feb '11
Re: Are All Good Marriages Boring?
On one hand, I suppose we should take this as an encouraging sign. After all, what interests us is what's out of the ordinary. If a good marriage is boring, that makes it normal.
Of course, the idea that nothing is interesting at all about happy couples would be news to any of the writers of the Cosby Show, or The Incredibles. This strikes me as a failure of Shapiro's imagination - his inability to find the drama in everyday adventures.
Jun '10
Re: Are All Good Marriages Boring?
If hundreds of millions of people can find God's love for them too boring to attempt any kind of response, I imagine they'd find the pale imitation of that love, found in loving lifelong marriages, even more boring and unremarkable. I think it says more about them (the bored.) Lasting love is a decision honored and respect earned, as well as a feeling. If it's just a feeling, it's doomed.
Jun '10
Re: Are All Good Marriages Boring?
Emboldened to post for the first time in light of my own boring, but satisfying, union of 21 years, I am convinced that marriage is the exact wrong place to seek excitement. That is what activities such as bungee jumping and the Glastonbury rock festival are for. Marriage resembles, at its core, a limited liability partnership between true friends; a business relationship in which regular episodes of decision, fear and risk are anxiously borne by two willing partners at the same time. We take the hits and the increasingly rare successes together, and try to find a degree of dignity and a deepening of our friendship therein.
Perhaps this view comes from dealing with a litany of difficulties including a special needs child, cancer of both partners within a three-year span, and serious financial problems. Throughout, however, it is the fundamental decision to stay together, inspire trust and affection in the other partner, and delay material gratification that seem to have combined in some permutation to create the proverbial "glue."
Jul '10
Re: Are All Good Marriages Boring?
A great marriage is one in which each partner ceaselessly seeks to improve and enrich his or her partner's life. Not just on a material level, but in all things - new thoughts, new experiences, new places, new forms of beauty and delight.
Unfortunately, what I often see instead is marriages in which partners either substitute empty popular entertainment for true experience or live, vicariously, through their children.
Marriage, at its best, is a perpetual National Review cruise.
Edited on Mar 13, 2011 at 8:15pmOct '10
Re: Are All Good Marriages Boring?
After 42 years, Linda and I still covet what we have seen in the lives of those who have 50, 60, and even 75 good years together. Boring to those who have their own concerns, we have a gift that others might not have. Golden at 50 years? Perhaps. For us, every year is golden.
We are sad at so many who have not worked as hard as we. Their loss is their own, that of their children, and a loss for all they know. How can a happy and loving marriage touch the lives of those who are not close enough to see it's worth? Sadly, it appears boring to those who do not look deeply, because they do not see what is the basis of a good marriage.
It is two people, husband and wife, walking a path towards the Lord they both trust and obey. Without God as the focus and direction of our lives, we could not gain the peace that passes understanding. We could not be the truly happy couple, who take every event as an adventure.
How sad that so many couples want to play it safe. Give yourself totally, and you will be totally blessed.
Edited on Mar 13, 2011 at 8:08pmJul '10
Re: Are All Good Marriages Boring?
Topaz:
Perhaps this view comes from dealing with a litany of difficulties including a special needs child, cancer of both partners within a three-year span, and serious financial problems. Throughout, however, it is the fundamental decision to stay together, inspire trust and affection in the other partner, and delay material gratification that seem to have combined in some permutation to create the proverbial "glue." · Mar 13 at 7:58pm
Welcome, Topaz. My marriage has also gone through some very trying times. It's perhaps trite to paraphrase Nietzsche, but whatever doesn't kill your marriage makes it stronger.
Oct '10
Re: Are All Good Marriages Boring?
Not yet. And may it never be. I see a brilliant thought from raycon.
raycon...
It is two people, husband and wife, walking a path towards the Lord they both trust and obey. Without God as the focus and direction of our lives, we could not gain the peace that passes understanding. We could not be the truly happy couple, who take every event as an adventure.
How sad that so many couples want to play it safe. Give yourself totally, and you will be totally blessed.
We are at a mere 28 years. Being happy and being happily married require an intense effort.
Edited on Mar 13, 2011 at 8:44pmJun '10
Re: Are All Good Marriages Boring?
I don't know beans for relationships and even less about marriage. I do know that young people crave excitement. And they'll pursue it to the ends of stupidity to achieve it. I know I did. Quite frankly, I'm not sure how I survived my youth.
Middle age is less exciting. IMHO, if you're still pursuing excitement at 54, you're either filthy rich, or doing something very wrong. The flip side of maturity is a quiet confidence in truth, duty, and righteousness.
Peter, you're definitely on the right track. So say I.
May '10
Re: Are All Good Marriages Boring?
To third parties, yes.
Nov '10
Re: Are All Good Marriages Boring?
I have a longstanding theory about people and the way they live their lives. I call it "the soap opera phenomenon." Basically, it goes like this: people who don't know better see the life of a soap opera character, and they see in that life every possible "poignant moment" played out every day of the persons life. They then decide, unconsciously, that in order for life to mean something, to be interesting, to be rewarding, they must have these "poignant moments" in their own lives. All of us have them in our lives, but they usually are to be avoided rather than sought out. The good ones are few and far between, but the bad ones seem to come all to often. For some, it is the in-between times that are the reward. Yes, those in between times get boring sometimes. But the day-to-day-ness of a happy life is the sign of stability and success. I wouldn't trade it for the world. I'm convinced those with the less boring lives are guilty of self-sabotage. They make too much out of a wound or an insult, and so create the poignant moment.
May '10
Re: Are All Good Marriages Boring?
I, for one, love to hear stories of happy marriages. I find them endlessly charming, beautiful, touching, inspiring. Love courtship stories too.
Stories of awful marriages can fascinate me, but I don't love them.
Jun '10
Re: Are All Good Marriages Boring?
It would be interesting to know what the divorce rate is for those in the "Greatest Generation" as opposed to us "Boomers". My guess is that it is much lower for a number of reasons, generally our parents came from families that survived the Depression, WWII, were church-going, insisted on eating dinner together as a family at the same table every night, and weren't subject to the negative aspects of the counter culture, feminism (waiting for sharply worded responses on that last comment...putting on armor) and the trivialization of drug use, unwed pregnancy, divorce and even to some extent abortion...something that was and is the subject of sitcom faire.
My parents' are still happily married after 60+ years. My marriage lasted 21 years...very much like many of my friends whose marriages lasted on the average of a couple of decades...typically when kids reached high school age or a bit older.
I think it's helpful that a married couple have the same interests and outlook on life rather than arguing at the drop of a hat. Two very bright, stubborn intellects on opposing sides of most issues can be a recipe for disaster.
Re: Are All Good Marriages Boring?
I was blessed to grow up witnessing every day a deliriously happy marriage.What I have concluded is that the most important thing is that a husband and wife make fun of each other relentlessly.
Dec '10
Re: Are All Good Marriages Boring?
This topic dismally exemplifies all that’s wrong with squishiness.
First, take from a tribal media source that is horribly in disrepute, a revanchist fantasy that can’t be more exceedingly transgressive and provocateur than the aspiration for the meltdown of the nuclear family—on the basis of it’s being at its core, nothing but… a je ne sais quoi, bourgeois ennui.
And second, validate yet another subversive fifth-column attack on our way of life by the fourth-estate with the interrogation: Could he… be right?
True, after so many Mohammedan massacres in the Middle East and the price of crude exploding in unison with reactors nearly seaborne from the waves of a tsunami, why not have some light-hearted release of steam at the end of a vanishing weekend eve?
But in pursuit of the Ricocheterian virtue of squishiness toleration, can’t we spread the wealth by citing other sources than the Grey Lady?
Please no derogatory whispering about this being a Crunchy Con rant. And, please take no offense, all of the above was just a joke—just trying to stir up debate where there is none.
Oct '10
Re: Are All Good Marriages Boring?
Michael Labeit
To third parties, yes. · Mar 13 at 8:31pm
Just to add to that, I imagine it takes a lot of hard work to make a marriage look boring. For two people to get to the point where they have rectified a few failings, learned to tolerate huge differences, and appreciate all that they do for each other--in addition to just quietly letting each other be--well, it's hard for people to appreciate when they haven't done it.
Playing the violin sure looks easy sometimes--I wonder why people train for 20 years to make it seem so ...
Jun '10
Re: Are All Good Marriages Boring?
Shoot...you sure talk funny, mister. You ain't from these here parts, are ya? You must be one of them city slickers. We don't get many of you west of the Pecos...and we drink whisky 'round here not any of them fancy French-soundin' wines.