If your marriage makes it to the 20th year — when you’re likely at midlife — you’ll either be the happiest you’ve been in your marriage, according to a new study, or you’ll be heading to divorce court, as so many 50 and older people have been doing in recent years, either happily — if you’re the leaver — or not.
According to Paul Amato, the lead researcher on the new study,
You have good things to look forward to. Keep your eye on the long-term goal because that’s a lot more important than the temporary day-to-day inconveniences and hassles that come up in any relationship.”
I respect Amato’s work, and have referred to it in The New I Do and in blog posts, but I’m not sure what he means by “the long-term goal” — to stay together until death? To expect greater happiness after challenging decades (which even he acknowledges is not guaranteed, by the way)? Does every loving relationship have the same goal?
The study, as far as I can tell, doesn’t seem to note what seems glaringly apparent to me — that after 20 years, most of us who have kids are now empty-nesters, having raised them to adulthood and independence and, guess what: that is instrumental in a couple’s happiness because raising young children is exhausting and takes a toll on all marriages. (Although, what about the child-free? As I discovered, midlife isn’t necessarily any easier for them.)
Finding a good match
He also notes that if you find a good match you’ll have a good chance to wind up in a “very good place” with your spouse in the future.
And therein lies the rub — finding a good match. Match for what? To raise kids with? To have intense sex with? To have adventures with? Can one person do all of that? Maybe, but often not.
The partner we need in our 20s and 30s, when many of us are looking to raise kids, may not be the partner we need in our 50s, 60s and beyond, when we’re free to explore new passions or reinvigorate the ones we gave up when the kids came along.
When we’re ready to nest, few might opt to marry a world-traveling risk-taker who works just long enough to fund his or her next adventure. Most of us might prefer someone who’s a little more stable and reliable, and willing to contribute a fair share of the childcare and household chores as well as financial obligations. But, the world-traveling risk-taker may be just the person we want as our companion and lover once we’re empty-nesters.
As lauded anthropologist Margaret Mead said, women need three partners — one for youthful sex, one to raise children with and one for companionship in old age.
Leaving for a ‘soul mate’
Which brings me to Avivah Wittenberg-Cox. In her book, Late Love: Mating in Maturity, Wittenberg-Cox describes leaving her husband of 22 years and the father of her two children to marry what she calls her “soul mate” later in life. As she notes:
While life is long, and getting longer, relationships don’t always last the distance. We are always growing and changing, and our relationships need to grow and change too, or they will fail. Some couples manage to achieve this together, but it takes effort and will from both partners. Many couples, like my first husband and I, can’t make it work. That’s why I believe that in the future, having different partners for different parts of your life is likely to become increasingly common.”
The idea of wreaking havoc to be alone just wasn’t a trade-off I was ready to make. … My exit strategy demanded a partner. It needed a destination.”
That destination was Tim, whom she married not long after ending her first marriage, and that decision informs her book’s approach to love later in life. Having a lover in wait is not the reality of the majority of midlife men and women who end a marriage; most leave with no one else in mind or in heart, but often with the hope that they’ll find love again.
A romantic given makes it easier to leave
Let’s be clear; it’s probably a lot easier to leave a marriage when you have a romantic given. It isn’t the same when the marriage you are in is unhappy but thoughts of life alone — and the fear of dating nowadays and perhaps never finding love again — seem just as unhappy, leading many to stay in miserable marriages. When it comes to staying or leaving a marriage, my belief has always been this: you divorce because the marriage you’re in doesn’t work any more and you can’t make it work even though you’ve tried, not because you believe there’s someone “better out there for you.” Divorce means you have to accept that you may be alone — and you’ll be OK with that.
Still, I have tweaked those thoughts — or at least warmed up — to accept that sometimes married people fall in love with someone else, leave their marriage to be with that person and that’s that. People generally don’t fall in love with others if they’re in a happy, fulfilling marriage.
I reached out to Wittenberg-Cox and told her I want to better understand why her “exit strategy demanded a partner.” She graciously responded by email:
I would not have stayed married if I hadn’t found Tim. I absolutely recognize that most people will leave marriages without a waiting prince/ess and I was prepared to. But as I wrote, I had ‘left’ the marriage, as many people do, before I actually walked out the door. And there are a range of reasons to manage the timing and pacing of an exit. Because I paused before I left, I did spend a year or so looking around at other options. And Tim was placed right in my line of sight at the very moment I had decided it was time to leave. So it was more synchronicity than safety net.
Preparing for midlife
Which brings me back to the start — if your marriage makes it to the 20th year, you’ll either be the happiest you’ve been in your marriage (supposedly), or you’ll be heading to divorce court or another option — you will stay, perhaps miserably or perhaps with resignation. Midlife does something to couples, and they’ll either get through it, happily, with their current partner or they won’t. Neither is better or worse; it just is. What may matter more is exploring whether couples might want to anticipate this and be open about it from the start of a marriage. If nothing else, acknowledging the midlife challenge seems to be the perfect impetus for creating renewable marital contracts. Which would you prefer?
Want to re-create your marriage? Then read The New I Do: Reshaping Marriage for Skeptics, Realists and Rebels (Seal Press). You can support your local indie bookstore or order it on Amazon.
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