Striking at the Heart of Couplehood

In the emotionally charged days after the attack on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, people everywhere were stunned by the enormity of loss and the realization that their own loved ones could have been on the doomed planes or in the targeted buildings. For many people, the tragedy sharpened a sense of gratitude, appreciation and love for a mate previously taken for granted.

“I am so grateful that we are still standing here next to each other,” said Linda Whittemore, who has been married for 25 years to her husband, Don. Together they run Dandy Don’s HomeMade Ice Cream company in Van Nuys. “The tragedy makes us look at our life differently. We are holding hands more. I can reach out and touch my husband’s hand and face and say, ‘I love you,’ because I didn’t lose him. There are people who can no longer do that with their loved ones.”

Don has been similarly changed. “This whole thing has been so horrific--we are so glad for ourselves and so sad for the thousands of people who lost loved ones. Out of the numbness comes a sharpened perception that this is my life partner and I don’t want that to change.”

Don said that he has become “much nicer to his wife,” whom he has promised to stop habitually interrupting. “I don’t know if it is real or temporary,” said Linda.

Such changes in behavior are not unusual in the aftermath of a catastrophe, said Bill Doherty, director of the marriage and family therapy program at the University of Minnesota. People experience an abrupt realization of life’s fragility and preciousness.

Couples sympathizing with grief-stricken widows and widowers are left imagining what life would be like without their mates. “Most of us live routine lives, and one of the subterranean realities of married life is that we come to take one another for granted,” said Doherty. “At times like this, we are snatched out of this ability to take our spouse for granted. There is this sense of shared shock and sadness and a kind of connection happens.”

Janice Levine, an expert on couples and a clinical psychologist in Lexington, Mass., said that in times of crisis, people ponder their “own potential demise,” feeling “it in their bones.”

“The question becomes not is the glass half empty or half full but do you have a glass at all?” Levine said.

In catastrophes, time freezes, and the first thoughts to emerge are what is most important. “Usually what becomes important to us is the people we love,” Levine said. “We see financial papers strewn all over New York City, and we see that that is expendable but that the people we love are not. That is what sears itself into our consciousness.”

The poignant cell phone calls made by victims who knew they were not going to make it show that in the moments victims had to make a decision, they chose to call loved ones to deliver a final “I love you.” “The only thing that mattered to them was that their love is known because that is what is going to endure when everything else is gone,” said Levine.

For Dottie and John Cramer, the attacks obliterated an already faltering sense of security. The Santa Monica couple had been robbed days before Sept. 11 and were preoccupied with allaying the fears of their two young sons over the robbery. Now, they are spending more time with each other.

“There is much more telling each other ‘I love you,’ and much more eating together as a family,” Dottie said. “There is much more, ‘C’mon, let’s be together.”’

John, who works in financial services, added: “The feeling is, ‘We are still here.’ Dot and I are as solid as ever. It has been a big perspective thing of--all the little things are not so important. At the end of the day, Dot and I lie together and share the different stories we have heard that day.”

Not every couple is able to meet each other’s needs, usually because of conflicting coping styles, said Levine. One partner may be glued to the TV or engrossed in the stock market, or fixated on gathering guns, gas masks and water, while the other is consumed with dealing with a child’s nightmares or making sure children feel safe.

Emotions may collide. One may be angry; the other sad and fearful. Levine said she and her husband initially reacted with a “Thank God, let me hold you” after the tragedy. The similarity in coping styles, however, ended there. “He is glued to what is going on in the world market because that means security for him and our family,” said Levine. “For me, security is about tucking our kids into bed and making sure they feel safe. I have to say where we grimly come together is when we talk about the possibility of our son having to go to war.”

The question is: Will the profound insights and heightened sense of appreciation hatched from terror be sustained after people return to normality? Levine doesn’t think so.

“People want to get on with life more normally because we need our defenses to function in a world where there is an illusion of safety--so we act as if [there is] and go back to complacency,” said Levine. “It would be nice if these insights into what is really important in life changed us more permanently. Terror is what it takes for us to realize what we have now. That is what Buddhists try to teach us that, each moment is a new beginning because we may not have tomorrow.”

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Birds & Bees, a column about relationships and sexuality, runs on Monday. Kathleen Kelleher can be reached at kathykelleher@home.com.