Over the course
of an enduring marriage, love changes. When
the couple first gets married, their love is centered on the two of them
sharing and creating a life together, getting to know everything about one
another in the sense that Badiou writes.
Their love has a very physical aspect to it, involving a great deal of
hugging, kissing, petting, and sex. In this
way, the physicality of the relationship echoes hookups, although it has the
opposite goal when it comes to emotions.
In a young marriage, couples embrace the romantic side of love and want
to feel as strongly connected to their partners as possible. The work in an early marriage is learning and
accepting the flaws and quirks about your partner.
This honeymoon
phase may be the best and worst time of a marriage. It’s full of surprise, adjustment, and compromise
during the course of learning as much as possible about your spouse –because
you have the desire to do so, because you are living together, and because
others have certain expectations about the ways in which your relationship will
function. If your friends are single,
you may feel isolated from them because you feel like this is not a part of
your life they can understand. At times,
all of this feels like too much and you may find yourself fighting over trivial
matters. Not putting the toilet seat
down turns into a scene from your favorite war movie. Yet, this can also be the best time of your
marriage. Your marriage is new and
exciting, something to be explored and relished. Your spouse seems perfect, and you feel like
nothing could go wrong. If you survive
the honeymoon phase, your marriage changes a bit.
Whether it’s
five days or five months or five years after the wedding, the honeymoon phase
will wear off. The love may shift from
only the couple to include children and, eventually, grandchildren. Or, it may include pets, a charity, work,
friends; the point is that the couple widens their net to include more than the
two of them. As time goes on, the
physical component of the relationship becomes less of the focus. Yes, you will still hug, kiss, have sex,
etcetera; but it won’t be the most important or frequent way in which you
express your love for your partner. Now,
intimacy and affect become more important.
Helping to take care of your partner and completing little gestures
become the focus of love. You might
drive him to physical therapy, or he might help you down the stairs; you might
leave him a little note, or he might pick you flowers from the yard. You still embrace potential romance in
marriage, but you also understand that no marriage is perfect. It requires hard work to make tough decisions
together and get through the marriage. Obviously,
there are many other paths a marriage can take, but I see this one as
describing long-term marriages that have lasted 25+ years. If you can
constantly renegotiate with each other, then you may have the recipe for a
successful (meaning long and happy)
marriage.
One way my grandparents show their love for each other is by supporting one another in activities that are important to them. My grandpa has been an active member of Rotary for over twenty years. Here, he is receiving an award. My grandma finds Rotary meetings boring, but she went because she was so proud of her husband and happy to share in his accomplishment.
Pictured above: Our small family has grown over the past three years, when my brother got married and had two babies. My grandparents were so excited to shift the focus of their marriage to include even more people.
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