"I know that neither one of us has anything left to give,” a desperate Wendy Erwin told her husband, a New Jersey pastor, over the phone. “But I love you and we’re going to make it.”
With those words, she grabbed the lone thread that would hold her marriage together over the next few months.
For Wendy and Scott, their 11-year-old marriage had come to the brink. After a whirlwind romance and two storybook years of married life, a series of personal crises gradually dragged their relationship into despair.
First came a change in career direction, the first hint that things weren’t going according to plan. Then came two ectopic pregnancies that resulted in miscarriages.
Then twin daughters were born, but both developed severe health problems. While Grace would overcome most of them, Katie was left with serious multiple handicaps.
The resulting emotional, spiritual and financial stress pulled their marriage apart. Communication became almost nonexistent, and they stopped nurturing each other. “We were sleep-deprived, depressed and emotionally exhausted,” Scott told Faithworks magazine.
Counselors agree that, more often than not, a marriage relationship doesn’t flame out in a burst of betrayal or anger as much as it simply grows weaker over time. Opportunities to do maintenance are missed. Warning signs are ignored. Eventually the marriage is enveloped by the slow, encroaching darkness of alienation.
Many people have already given up on the ideal of lifelong marriage, as evidenced by increases in both cohabitation and divorce. Half of all marriages are disrupted by divorce or separation within 20 years.
So how do people make it to midlife with their marriages intact?
“The turning point as I see it was that we realized that we had to find a way to stay together,” Scott said.
Disappointed with life and frustrated with God, the young couple clung only to their commitment to stay together. Finally, their breakthrough came in late 2001 with a change of jobs and location. “We moved to Virginia and not only reduced the financial pressures, but we got a new start,” Scott said. “Slowly we started to talk with each other. We would turn the TV off and figure out who we were.”
“Eventually we began to date again. We’ve fallen in love again. And that’s weird because we’re totally not the same people who met on the beach all those years ago. It’s a true starting over, figuring out who we are and where God fits into that equation. I wouldn’t say we’re where we want to be in communication, role negotiation and other important skills. We still have moments of intense grief, as you will when you have a special-needs child. But we aren’t in crisis now by a long shot.”
Few marriages that last remain unchanged. On the contrary, counselors say change is a key to marriage survival.
If a couple is willing to work on building and maintaining a solid relationship, they can arrive at midlife — and survive it — with a strong, healthy marriage. But the journey starts even before the wedding, and it involves daily attention.
To simply conduct a wedding and send the newlyweds out to fend for themselves is a dangerous way to start a marriage, said Robert Herron, director of the Presbyterian Counseling Center in Greensboro, N.C.
Herron spearheaded a 1996 dialogue among clergy in the community about the problem of failed marriages. It resulted in a covenant committing the ministers — and all couples they married — to a waiting period before the wedding to allow for counseling sessions, an in-depth analysis of each relationship, enrichment opportunities for the couples and a support network to mentor the newly married. By 1998, more than 70 churches had signed on.
“They have to understand that the person they married at 25 isn’t the same anymore at 45,” said Wade Rowatt, director of the St. Matthews Counseling Center in Louisville, Ky. Adjusting to those changes is some of the hardest work in marriage, Rowatt said.
As with the Erwins, a deep commitment to preserve the marriage — above all else — is the essential ingredient in overcoming a lifetime of changes and challenges, Rowatt said.
“Commitment has to be both intellectual and emotional in nature or it won’t be balanced enough to see us through,” he added. On the days when the romantic side of the marriage doesn’t seem real, the fact that you once loved a person enough to marry him or her may be the only beacon to follow out of the darkness.
(ABP)
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