Jane and Ted and Marriage Surprises
Having recently published a book on the subject of marriage, I get occasional calls from reporters asking for comments on the failures of celebrity unions, such as the impending divorce of Jane Fonda and Ted Turner, reportedly over Fonda’s recent discovery of religion.
My Jewish upbringing has lodged in me the conviction that God would be more in the business of making marriages than breaking them, and I think most of my Christian friends would agree. On the other hand, as a believer married to an atheist, I am familiar with the pitfalls of Fonda’s and Turner’s particular sort of mixed marriage.
In our case, every visit to a house of prayer, even for a family event, becomes first a tug of wills and then an excuse for a diatribe on either the quaintness of certain religious rites in a technologically advanced society or the inauthenticity of modern worship in general. Whether the inspiration for such commentary is a bar mitzvah or an Easter service matters little; I can imagine the Turners’ marital spats over religion at least initially sounded quite similar to my husband’s and mine.
Of course, Turner charges that the thing that really bugs him is the suddenness of her conversion. Evidently, she came home one day and announced, “I’ve become a Christian.”
Well, Ted, all I can say is: Marriage is a bundle of surprises from “I do” till death us do part.
Just the other day, I waited for my husband in a trendy Greek restaurant in Manhattan. Looking out the wall of windows from behind the bar, I saw a paunchy, gray-bearded man shuffling breathlessly down the street, his tired arms laden with plastic bags bearing the name of a famous record store chain. There, I thought, as I sipped my drink, goes my husband in 20 years--an overstuffed old man who shops till he drops.
Only I was wrong. As the figure came closer, it became clear that this seasoned fellow wasn’t my husband in 20 years; he’s my husband now. Talk about epiphanies. You see, it’s been 20 years, and we’ve been busy, and I hadn’t really noticed the change--which, of course, was not sudden at all, but quite steady and predictable.
Now, I’ll admit that given the choice today of marrying two new men, one a winded spendthrift on the cusp of 50 and the other a 30-year-old Adonis who works out at the gym and picks the right mutual funds, I would definitely go for the Adonis.
But in defense of my old guy and my determination to keep him, I have changed too. My husband may be heavier, grayer and more extravagant than he was 20 years ago, but I’m scrawnier, stingier and a good deal less even-tempered. Individuals, to use a well-worn euphemism, evolve.
When we married, my husband had never seen the sea; now he’s an old salt and talks of nothing but rigs, winches and circumnavigations. I used to play the piano rather passionately. Now I’m a tennis freak.
Let’s be realistic. The reason that my husband and I stay together despite unpleasant changes probably has something to with the fact that unlike Turner, he is not very rich and, unlike Fonda, I am not very beautiful. There are no prospects waiting around the corner just dying to snap us up once our divorce agreement is settled.
But there also are other reasons that only the Grim Reaper is likely to separate us. One is that after two decades together, we are thoroughly broken in--equally comfortable with love-nesting, fighting or simply pursuing independent lives side by side.
More important, we respect our wedding vows. These were made, admittedly, in the impetuous heat of fresh love. But they were made with sincerity in the knowledge that marriage is more than just a love affair: It’s a path of life.
There may be good reasons to end a marriage, but I refuse to allow that getting religion could be one of them, no matter how contentious the views of spouses on this subject.
I think that too many men and women value their egos more than their promises and obligations and refuse to accept the inevitable--namely that nobody remains the same person he or she was on the wedding day.