Advice about marriage from a son to his father on the father's wedding day

Last weekend I attended the best wedding weekend ever, including my own. This was not only my opinion, it was shared by many who flew from far corners of the world - South Africa, Malawi, Israel, California, the state of Washington and many more - to attend. I will call the couple who were married, Edward and Alyssa. Edward’s son and his wife I will call Justin and Kaitland.

For me, a high point of the weekend - at a reception following the ceremony - was a speech that Justin gave to the assembled guests, both acknowledging his father and advising him on marriage. Their relationship was an unusual one. Edward raised Justin as a single father for most of his life. When he and Kaitland decided to share the same home, Edward offered to share his modest home and they all lived together for several years. When Edward and Alyssa, too, decided to share the same home, she, joined what became a close and supportive community of four. Eventually Justin and Kaitland married and, sometime afterward, purchased a home of their own, though Kaitland reported that she grieved for weeks at the separation.

Eventually, Edward and Alyssa decided to culminate their many years of friendship by marrying, occasioning the celebration I have been describing. By this time, Justin and Kaitland had been married several years. In an unusual ceremony that combined multiple ethnic and religious traditions, Kaitland and Justin ‘gave’ Edward to Alyssa at the moment when that traditionally occurs in Christian ceremonies.

Here is what Justin said to his father, culminating a moving acknowledgment of their years together. ‘Even though you and Alyssa have been friends for many years,’ he advised. ‘Marriage is different. Before you are married, even if you share the same home, you know there is the possibility that she will pack up and move out. The marriage commitment, which I know you both take seriously, changes things. Be sure you use this as an opportunity to deepen not only your love for one another, but your friendship with one another. Don’t let it become, even for one moment, an excuse to take each other for granted. In all the years we lived together,’ he concluded, ‘though you are both strong individuals, sometimes with differing views, I never heard either of you say a mean word to one another. Your relationship has been a model of how love, friendship, mutual respect and sometimes independent lives can go hand in hand. I pray that marriage will not change that.

A marriage paradox

I was speaking with my daughter’s boy-friend last evening. He and my daughter have been close for several years. They have considered marriage, but not yet taken the plunge. “It wouldn’t change anything,” he told me. “We care about each other, care for each other, enjoy our time together, but still live independent lives. How could that change? My experience in two marriages, both more than twenty years in duration, had been different, I told him. Marriage is a serious commitment that does change a relationship, ‘for better or worse.’

He then recalled a conversation with a friend, about how guys and girls view marriage, that confirmed my view. “Guys and girls view their relationships differently,” he said. “A girl marries a guy, loving some things about him and disliking others. She figures that after marriage, she can change him to be the way she wants him to be. A guy, on the other hand, will often marry a girl because he loves her exactly the way she is. He doesn’t want anything to change. The paradox is this. After marriage, the girl changes. she can become a very different person. The guy, on the other hand, stays pretty much the same as he was.’

My daughter joined the conversation and said, “When a girl friend tells me she has fallen in love with a guy ‘who has potential’ and wants to marry him, I know there is trouble ahead.”

Celebrate Your Existence

When friends marry, I always give a copy of Judith Wallerstein and Sandra Blakeslee’s The Good Marriage as a wedding present. (Often, I include a check as well.) I have blogged about this book before, particularly at the academic year’s ending when AU students who are friends share marriage plans with me.

Wallerstein’s Preface describes the The Good Marriage’s motivation

On a raw spring morning in 1991, I shared my earliest thoughts about this book with a group of some one hundred professional women—all friends and colleagues—who meet each month to discuss our works in progress.

"I'm interested in learning about good marriages—about what makes a marriage succeed," I said cheerfully. "As far as our knowledge is concerned, a happy marriage might as well be the dark side of the moon. And so I've decided to study a group of long-lasting marriages that are genuinely satisfying for both husband and wife." I looked around the room at these attractive, highly educated women—women who had achieved success in our high-tech, competitive society and who appeared to have it all. "Would any of you, along with your husbands, like to volunteer as participants in the study?" I asked.



The room exploded with laughter.

I felt disturbed and puzzled by the group's reaction. Their laughter bore undertones of cynicism, nervousness, and disbelief, as if to say, "Surely you can't mean that happy marriage exists in the 1990s. How could you possibly believe that?"

Many of the women in the group had been divorced. Some had remarried, but a good number remained single. Some had come to feel that marriage should not be taken all that seriously. "Happy marriage doesn't exist," protested one woman, "so I'm going to get on with my life and not worry about it." Yet when their sons and daughters decided to marry, these same women announced the marriages with great pride and accepted heartfelt rounds of congratulations from the others in the group. No one acknowledged the apparent contradictions involved.



When I pondered the meaning of their laughter later that night, I realized I had hit a raw nerve. For many, my innocent mention of a study of successful marriages seemed to strike below the well-defended surface, bringing to life buried images of love and intimacy. For a brief moment, I believe, the women had reconnected with passionate longings, only to confront again their disappointment that their wishes had not been fulfilled. And so they had laughed, dismissing their longings as illusory—vain hopes that could only lead to sorrow.

This duality of cynicism and hope is familiar to me, as it is to millions of men and women in America today. We share a profound sense of discomfort with the present state of marriage and family, even wondering sometimes if marriage as an institution can survive. At the same time, we share a deeply felt hope for our children that marriage will endure. I do not think this hope is misplaced.

Wallerstein continues:

In every study in which Americans are asked what they value most in assessing the quality of their lives, marriage comes first—ahead of friends, jobs, and money. In our fast-paced world men and women need each other more, not less. We want and need erotic love, sympathetic love, passionate love, tender, nurturing love all of our adult lives. We desire friendship, compassion, encouragement, a sense of being understood and appreciated, not only for what we do but for what we try to do and fail at. We want a relationship in which we can test our half-baked ideas without shame or pretense and give voice to our deepest fears. We want a partner who sees us as unique and irreplaceable.



A good marriage can offset the loneliness of life in crowded cities and provide a refuge from the hammering pressures of the competitive workplace. It can counter the anomie of an increasingly impersonal world, where so many people interact with machines rather than fellow workers. In a good marriage each person can find sustenance to ease the resentment we all feel about having to yield to other people's wishes and rights. Marriage provides an oasis where sex, humor, and play can flourish.

Finally, a man and woman in a good, lasting marriage with children feel connected with the past and have an interest in the future. A family makes an important link in the chain of human history. By sharing responsibility for the next generation, parents can find purpose and a strengthened sense of identity. These rewards take root in the soil of a strong, stable marriage.

Wallerstein and Blakeslee studied the lives of fifty couples in depth and reported on their findings. Couples had to meet the following criteria.

... Both husband and wife had to consider their marriage a happy one. They had to have been married at least nine years, because the number of divorces peaks in the early years, and I wanted my subjects to be past that danger point. The shortest marriage studied was ten years, the longest forty years. The participants had to agree to lengthy interviews. I asked to see each spouse separately and then together in interviews that often lasted up to three hours each. Most people were interviewed at home, and a few at their place of work. I wanted to observe them in the surroundings they had created.

I have been married twice, each time for more than 20 years. My first marriage, entered into when my wife and I were quite young, ended in divorce. When the young marry, they make a lifetime commitment, but most have not the remotest idea of what such a commitment means. When I married for a second time, again pledging a lifetime commitment, I did know. I have taken that commitment seriously, however neither my first marriage (obviously) nor my second would qualify for Wallerstein and Blakeslee’s study.

In fact, I know of only two marriages that do qualify. One of them I experienced intimately because the couple welcomed me into their tiny condominium for extended periods while we were producing a book together. Their gift allowed me to view the joys and vicissitudes of a resilient relationship from a unique vantage point.

In the more than thirty years since Making it Happen: A Positive Guide to the Future saw the light of day our paths have crossed rarely. However each year we have exchanged Christmas newsletters and I have received a Valentines Day greeting that has become a tradition. The Christmas newsletters paint a vivid picture of the joys and anguish of a two personal and professional lives shared richly together. Children have grown, married and produced grandchildren. There have been arduous stretches of physical illness to be endured and surmounted. There have been professional achievements and recognition.
The Valentine’s Day greeting is simpler, always a white sheet covered with hearts surrounding a single phrase. This year’s quote, from William Blake may provide one clue to the resilience of a good marriage and two lives very well lived.

CELEBRATE YOUR EXISTENCE !