Mutualism in Marriage; Or, Lose the “Wife”
I really like the journal prompts from the Coffeemonster.com and on Christmas Day during a lull I found myself answering the question, “What do you think about marriage?”
Ha! What I do NOT think about marriage?
I think about marriage a lot. I wasn’t the kind of kid who dreamed about a big wedding, being somebody’s wife; but I dreamed about having a family that I loved and felt part of. Something that felt more me and less them.
And then I became a relational therapist and find myself thinking of long term commitments all the time! I’ve been working with couples for years and here is what I currently think about marriage: It should be like surgical stitches, something that pulls you together in the beginning that dissolves when you no longer need it.
The first initial commitment – that big yes! that we see in Zales commercials – it does feel extraordinary, doesn’t it? You’re happy, your person is happy, the people around you are happy; perhaps thrilled, even relieved.
But as the years go by and you really start exploring what it means to commit yourself to another person – how you and your partner define “commit”, how the culture around you defines it – things can change. For many of us – women, I find – the labels can begin to chafe.
I’ve never heard a man say, “I just don’t like being called a ‘husband.’” I’m sure many don’t. I just personally have not heard it uttered, once.
It’s more that “wife” word – it simply can’t outrun its past. As a friend of mine – another therapist – said recently: “I don’t want to leave my husband, I just don’t want to be a wife anymore.”
“Wife” conjures up so many words and images having to do with smallness and servitude. Wife is from the old English for woman, wif. If you are a woman, you must also be a wife. A fishwife is a harridan and a nag; housewife isn’t much sexier.
For many of us, having once gotten the commitment, we no longer need it. This is what proves our own worthiness to us: Someone stood up before God and everyone and said they will have us, forever.
Case dismissed! (For those of us with judges and juries in our heads.)
The wedding is the achievement, as shown by the spectacular half-time show we put on, between the service and the honeymoon.
Commitment has everything to do with worthiness. In the infested waters that is the American dating scene, we did our best to find another person we felt we could count on to be there with us throughout the ups and downs of life. To see this person put their money where their mouth is, we asked them to commit themselves and all their fortune to us. If we were lucky, we got that.
But after 10, 20 years, we feel, more or less, secure. I know it’s not impossible for marriages of, well, any length to be rocked, by misfortune, mishap or misbehavior. I mean, I’m a couples’ counselor, I see it all the time. But I do wonder if there is some point in time where we are ok with the supports falling away, for that infantile word “wife” to drop away into our pasts with “girl” “virgin” and anything ending in “ette” “elle” or “ess”.
If we go in to marriage thinking union – and why wouldn’t we? – then at some point our idea of this marriage will probably need to die. The classic four stages of a relationship are: Sweet symbiosis, soured symbiosis, differentiation, and synergy. Note that symbiosis – oneness – ends. Symbiosis is that stage where we think we could not exist without the other – would bees persist without flowers? The pistol shrimp without the goby fish?
In nature this is known as obligate mutualism. Each organism’s survival depends entirely on the other. Consider the yucca plant and the yucca moth: two distinct organisms, the moth’s larvae only eat the yucca plant’s fruit, which can only develop from flowers pollinated by the moth. Now that is co-dependence.
But obligate mutualism is an illusion, in adult human relationships. I’m not talking about the basic human need to belong to some group of humans – of course our survival depends on at least one other person being around to hold down the knot while we make the bow.
Rather, in sweet symbiosis there is a part of us believing we need the other to survive, at least to survive in this happy state. But then here comes soured symbiosis – our flower is no longer sweet! The plover failed to clean my incisors and now I have gum disease! And how easy, to blame the other for this sad state.
Notice, though, that once soured on this lockstep togetherness, we do not return to the two-in-one symbiotic state, but we enter a totally new phase, differentiation: you are you and I am me, we have some overlap but we also have a lot of apartness. This would be known as facultative mutualism in nature; or, a relationship from which both participants derive mutual benefit, but would survive without the other. Disney and Pixar! Whole Foods and Amazon! The Nile crocodile, a ready food supply between its teeth for the hungry Egyptian plover!
So I guess what I’m saying is that yes, for a time we may need a formal contract that says you’ll provide me with protection and I’ll clean your fronds. But it’s that very mutualism that should hold us together, after an initial period of time. I’d wanted to write about how marriage could even evolve to allow couples to live separately, as the rich celebrity couples do; but that’s another whole blog post, where we explore how patriarchy and capitalism have worked together to exploit the labor of women and deprive us of the means of production. You know ... light reading.
