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Fall/Winter 2009 : Away
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Oregon Humanities: Fall/Winter 2009
Irreconcilable Dissonance
The threat of divorce as the glue of marriage
I have been married once to the woman to whom I am still married, so far, and one thing I have noticed about being married is that it makes you a lot more attentive to divorce, which used to seem like something that happened to other people, but doesn’t anymore, because of course every marriage is pregnant with divorce, and also now I know a lot of people who are divorced, or are about to be, or are somewhere in between those poles, for which shadowy status there should be words like mivorced or darried or sleeperated or schleperated, but there aren’t, so far.
People seem to get divorced for all sorts of reasons, and I find myself taking notes, probably defensively, but also out of sheer amazement at the chaotic wilderness of human nature. For example, I read recently about one man who got divorced so he could watch all sixty episodes of The Wire in chronological order. Another man got divorced after thirty years so he could, he said, fart in peace. Another man got divorced in part because he told his wife he had an affair, but he didn’t have an affair, he just couldn’t think of any other good excuse to get divorced, and he didn’t want to have an affair, or be with anyone else other than his wife, because he liked his wife, and rather enjoyed her company as a rule, he said, but he just didn’t want to be married to her every day anymore, he preferred to be married to her every second or third day, but she did not find that a workable arrangement, and so they parted company, confused.
Another man I read about didn’t want to get divorced, he said, but when his wife kept insisting that they get divorced because she had fallen in love with another guy, he, the husband, finally agreed to get divorced, and soon after he found himself dating the other guy’s first wife; as the first guy said, who could invent such a story?
I read about a woman who divorced her husband because he picked his nose. I read about a woman who got divorced because her husband never remembered to pay their property taxes and finally, she said, it was just too much. Is it so very much to ask, she asked, that the person who shares responsibility for your life remembers to pay your joint taxes? Does this have to be a crisis every year? She seemed sort of embarrassed to say what she said, but she said it.
It seems to me that the reasons people divorce are hardly ever for the dramatic reasons that we assume are the reasons people get divorced, like snorting cocaine for breakfast or discovering that the minister named Bernard who you married ten years ago is actually a former convict named Ezzard with a wife in Wisconsin, according to the young detective who sat down in your office at the accounting firm one morning and sounded embarrassed about some things he had come to tell you that you should know.
I read about a couple who got divorced because of “irresolute differences,” a phrase that addled me for weeks. Another couple filed for divorce on the grounds of irreconcilable dissonance, which seemed like one of those few times in life when the exact right words are applied to the exact right reason for those words. I read about another woman who divorced her husband because one time they were walking down the street, the husband on the curb side in accordance with the ancient courteous male custom of being on that side so as to receive the splatter of mud or worse from the street and keep such splatter from the pristine acreage of his beloved, and as they approached a fire hydrant he lifted his leg, puppylike, as a joke, and she marched right to their lawyer’s office and instituted divorce proceedings. That particular woman refused to speak to reporters about the reasons for divorce, but you wonder what the iceberg was under that surface, you know?
The first divorce I saw up close, like the first car crash you see up close, is imprinted on the inside of my eyelids, and I still think about it, not because it happened, but because years after it happened it seems so fated to have happened. How could it be that two people who really liked each other, and who took a brave crazy leap on not just living together, which lots of mammals do, but swearing fealty and respect in front of a huge crowd, and filing taxes as a joint entity, and spawning a child, and cosigning mortgages and car loans, how could they end up signing settlement papers on the dining room table and then wandering out into the muddy garden to cry? How could that be?
The saddest word I’ve heard wrapped around divorce like a tattered blanket is tired, as in “We were both just tired,” because being tired seems so utterly normal to me, so much the rug always bunching in that one spot no matter what you do, the slightly worn dish rack, the belt with extra holes punched with an ice pick that you borrowed from your cousin for exactly this purpose, the flashlight in the pantry that has never had batteries and never will, that the thought of tired being both your daily bread and also grounds for divorce gives me the willies. The shagginess of things, the way they never quite work out as planned and break down every other Tuesday, necessitating wine and foul language and duct tape and the wrong-size screw quietly hammered into place with the bottom of the garden gnome, seems to me the very essence of marriage; so if what makes a marriage work (the constant shifting of expectations and eternal parade of small surprises) is also what causes marriages to dissolve, where is it safe to stand?
Nowhere, of course. Every marriage is pregnant with divorce, every day, every hour, every minute. The second you finish reading this essay, your spouse could close the refrigerator, after miraculously finding a way to wedge the juice carton behind the milk jug, and call it quits, and the odd truth of the matter is that because she might end your marriage in a moment, and you might end hers, you’re still married. The instant there is no chance of death is the moment of death.
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Oregon Humanities magazine examines topics of broad public interest from a variety of perspectives and approaches. Recent issues of this publication have focused on stuff, nostalgia, and civility. Through good and thoughtful writing, Oregon Humanities magazine enriches our understanding of important subjects and stimulates conversation and reflection among readers, their friends, families, colleagues, and neighbors.
Contributors
Apricot Irving
Apricot Irving is a writer and radio producer whose most recent project, Boise Voices Neighborhood Oral History Project , brought together elders and youth in Northeast Portland. She has lived in Haiti, Indonesia, and the United Kingdom, but currently calls Portland home.
Brian Doyle
Brian Doyle is the editor of Portland Magazine at the University of Portland, and the author most recently of Thirsty for the Joy: Australian & American Voices, from One Day Hill Press in Melbourne, Australia.
Kevin Nute
Kevin Nute is a professor of architecture at the University of Oregon. He is the author of the American Institute of Architects award-winning monograph, Frank Lloyd Wright and Japan (1993) and Place, Time and Being in Japanese Architecture (2004).
Lucy Burningham
Lucy Burningham is an independent writer and journalist who lives in Portland. During the past decade, she has traveled on assignment for a variety of newspapers, magazines, and Lonely Planet guidebooks. She holds a master’s in nonfiction writing from Portland State University.
Sarah Gilbert
Sarah Gilbert is a writer and photographer who lives in Portland with her husband and three little boys. She writes about food and finance for several web sites, including DailyFinance, WalletPop and Culinate, is cofounder of the Portland parenting resource urbanMamas.com, and keeps a blog, cafemama.com.
Susan W. Hardwick
Susan W. Hardwick is a professor of geography at the University of Oregon. Her research and teaching focus on the geography of immigration, identity, and place in the Pacific Northwest. She is the author or co-author of nine books, including Russian Refuge: Religion, Migration, and Settlement on the North American Pacific Rim (University of Chicago Press, 1993). This article is adapted from Hardwick’s Commonplace Lecture that she delivered for Oregon Humanities in 2007.
Vicente Martinez
Vicente Martinez lives in Portland and works at a fast food restaurant.
Commentary
As a person who has been married almost 47 years, I venture to say that I have experienced nearly all (with the exception of the fire plug example)of the stories recalled by Brian Doyle, either in my own marriage, or via the memories of friends and acquaintances.
Bravo, Mr. Doyle, for your very amusing and clever article, and congratulations on receiving the recognition you deserve. I will, forever more, strive to make every sentence I write as long as possible!
Janice Gates | 07 Apr at 12:46 PM
What holds a marriage together? Brian Doyle knows. Boy does he know. For some it’s the fear of divorce, for others it’s an invitation to live with open feelings. Open? As in open marriage? Not defined in any normal way.
For instance, if Kathleen Turner shows up at my door from her Body Heat days, I’m forgiven if anything goes astray.
Same goes if the Sophia Loren of 1954 happens by.
For the wife it used to be Hugh Grant. Now it’s the guy from The Mentalist television show.
It’s a trade off and I’m getting the best of it, but not as good as the tired marriages got from Mr. Doyle.
PS: William Faulkner thinks those sentences are too short, but hold together beautifully.
David Gillaspie | 07 Apr at 09:48 PM
Made me grin. I don’t know anything about marriage, especially my own, but the sheer interestingness and startle and surprise of your spouse’s mysterious thicketed mind seems like the main draw, and the laughter. The woman who married me, who is a very perceptive soul, says that the whole essence of the thing is witness; to see someone else’s hard work and grace under duress day after day after year, that’s a great privilege. With total respect for lust and financial stress as glues for marriage, I think maybe she’s right that it’s witness. And as regards serpentine sentences, I assign us all Edward Gibbon for homework, heh heh heh.
.(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) | 08 Apr at 02:32 PM
Thank you, Mr. Doyle, for reminding me. We stay married because we want to stay married. We remain living in the same house because we choose to love the same house. We banish most thoughts of infidelity because we revel in the trust and intimacy that exclusion welcomes. We love the one person in our lives above all others because the reward - the exchange - of being so loved is precious beyond description. That half of the population doesn’t know these things is no reason for despair. Half is no island. Those of us who stay true and inside our love are not isolated yet. No use in bemoaning statistics. We needn’t search for reasons why our marriage might be doomed. We stay because we choose to stay and treasure the joys provided by our remaining.
.(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) | 10 Apr at 05:39 AM
The first sentence in the penultimate paragraph stretches for over a hundred words. Surely, Mr. Doyle, you have a reason for this stylistic choice, and as a student of the essay I am interested to know exactly what it is.
.(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) | 10 Oct at 09:15 PM
Hey Patrick—well, it’s tempting to say simply ‘why not,’ I mean, don’t you think prim little orderly sentences are kind of fascist, in the end, the prissy little marching ranks of sentences the same size and shape…but really I think what I was after (unconsciously) was flow and pace, conversational zest and energy—a good essay, it seems to me, is as close to the speaking voice as we can get in prose, and it also seems to me that the closer we get to the speaking voice, the more immediate and naked and direct the connect between writer and reader, sometimes, somehow. Edward Hoagland, a very fine essayist indeed, uses very long sentences to good effect, often; as does the greatest of all writers in English, Robert Louis Stevenson; see, for example, the end of his masterful ‘Open Letter to the Reverend Doctor Hyde,’ a terrific piece of work.
.(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) | 12 Oct at 07:43 AM
That is a satisfactory response for sure. Thanks for responding - I appreciate it - and thank you as well for the suggestions - I’ll be reading them.
.(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) | 12 Oct at 04:16 PM
Beautifully done. Congratulations on the inclusion of this essay in “The Best American Essays 2010!”
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0547394519
.(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) | 13 Oct at 02:28 PM
Brian—As someone who is currently smack in the middle of a “shadowy status,” I was drawn immediately to your essay. I believe I’m somewhere around mararated—a little married, a little separated, not past the point of no return, but definitely on the other side of happily wedded bliss. Having spawn of my own, your reference to a tired, tattered blanket instantly conjured up in my mind another reference about a falling apart blanket, by Diary of a Wimpy Kid author, Jeff Kinney: “[it] was basically a couple of pieces of yarn held together by raisins and boogers.” So, when a tattered marriage is held together only by the kids, what then? Thanks so much for your insightful perspective and an entertaining read. Kudos!
Denise Nichols | 30 Oct at 11:10 AM
That’s a lovely sad honest note, Denise—thank you for its sinew. I do not know what happens to a marriage held together only by its miraculous products. I have seen enough marriages fray apart to not have any flip comment or absolute conviction about marriage, which seems brave and crazy to me; but I have also heard enough fatuous arrogance along the lines of ‘the kids will be fine’ to snarl when I hear that. As far as I can tell the kids get hammered when their parents divorce, no matter what people say in rationalization. And yet many divorces seem to be excellent ideas. I bow creakily and hope for peace and joy where we can find it, all of us, stuttering through the days.
.(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) | 01 Nov at 07:55 AM
Brian - I think on the OPB site you were quoted as saying, your wife knew what held a marriage together and it was witnessing. I think I have an idea of what you meant but could you elaborate on this some. Is this a theme in any literary work?
.(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) | 30 Dec at 11:36 PM
Hmm—well, I have always been properly leery of writing anything at all about marriage—I don’t know anything about marriage except that lighting candles when you eat together seems to be a good thing—but I did write this once, which might have a scrap of substance in it. B
The Next Eleven
I am not so stupid as to make any public comment whatsoever about the character and nature and music of my marriage, which I understand less about by the year anyway, because my marriage, like every marriage that is or was or will be, is different from every other marriage, and my marriage changes shape every eleven minutes or so, and my marriage, like every marriage, is ultimately an utterly ephemeral thing, a shared idea, a mental and emotional construct which both parties believe in to varying degrees at the same time or else there you are at the bus stop muttering about how you used to be married, and also the person to whom I am married, or to whom I was married eleven minutes ago, is a mysterious changeable country whom I try to simply savor and appreciate rather than attempt to understand, or god help us all predict, in any way shape or form whatsoever, such predilection to prediction being the surest road to muttering at the bus stop about the marriage you used to have.
Yet there have been many riveting moments in my marriage, and I recount them here cheerfully so that you can tell me what they mean, for I have no idea. Like when our three children were hauled wet and startled from the salt sea of her womb and I saw my wife’s spleen and thin layer of subcutaneous fat, which I thought was pretty cool but she didn’t. Or the time we lost a baby in utero. Or all the times she has fallen asleep on my shoulder watching movies and the way she wakes with a start and asks anxiously did she drool or snore? Or the way she becomes so absorbed in the paintings she paints that she loses track of the time and hoots with surprise when she realizes how late it is. Or she way she reads by the fire wrapped in a shawl. Or the way she forgets that the milk for her coffee is boiling and yelps with surprise every single morning when it boils over. Or the way she loves to work in the yard rain or sleet or shine. Or the way she laughs from the very fiber of her being sometimes with a dear friend on the phone. Or the way she loses her temper sometimes suddenly and slashes and slices with a stunning tongue. Or the way she retires upstairs sometimes in tears overcome by exhaustion and rude children and unsubtle husband. Or the way our love affair has waxed and waned and ebbed and flowed and worn so many different coats of motley that sometimes I conclude it has died and sometimes I am agog that it has been born once again miraculously from ash.
Many times I have concluded that all marriages are nuts and my marriage is nuts but I find myself delighted by her company which is endlessly stimulating sometimes in ways beyond hilarity or sensuality and sometimes in ways so frustrating and heartrending that I go pray and walk and hum and fold laundry and recall that I am no gleaming glittering prize either, I am just a guy, muddled and humming.
I remember everything, I am memorious, that’s my gift and my curse, and I remember the way her voice once came shivering out of the dusk, telling me about her dad who had just died whom she loved madly, she was his last child, his late-surprise baby daughter, and I remember the quiver of joy in her high-beam eyes as we danced on our wedding day, swinging each other so fast and wild that if either let go we’d still be orbiting Neptune, and I remember the million hours she has rocked and consoled and bandaged and fed and cleaned and snarled at and sang for our children, and the million hours we have wrassled ideas and locked limbs, and I know the sound of her sob and the lilt of her laugh, the lurch of her logic and the flare of her fury, yet after twenty years I know her hardly at all; which maybe is crucial for marriage as a verb, and why I am married, and why the most momentous moments of my marriage seem to me to be incontrovertibly and inarguably the next eleven, if they come, which I hope they will, I pray they will, though no one, including most of all me and my wife, knows if they will come, or what they will bring, which seems to me somehow the secret of the whole thing.
But what do I know?
—Brian Doyle
.(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) | 31 Dec at 11:27 AM
Brian - That was some visceral description of marriage! Once, a senior psychologist, can’t remember his name said, “I have had eight different marriages, all to the same woman.”
I asked the question about witnessing as it sounded like what Martin Buber was talking about with his description of I-Thou and is some times referred to as presence. I have the idea that it is more to the core than empathy or communication and while inexplicable and often obscured and therefore confusing, it is tangible and drives behavior within a marriage.
Do you know of any passages in literature that point or at least hint to this? - Clark Martin
.(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) | 31 Dec at 06:18 PM
This essay, which I find astonishingly clever, true, witty and honest, seems to have received far more comments than any of the others (although I have yet to read them all). I, too, am married. For the second time. And yes, my divorce was a good idea, not only at the time, but since. And yes, it hammered our 2 children, one of whom has decided never to have children of his own (a sorrow for me, and also a loss to the unborn child, too, as I feel he would be a terrific Dad).
Meanwhile, my second marriage is humming along very nicely in a kind of way, and I stay married primarily because I am tired, which I can also understand as a reason for divorce, by the way, even a reason I might have applied to ending the first.
But chiefly I am too tired to a) have an affair (the very idea of which makes me want to sit down on the couch and grab the remote) and certainly b) breaking in a new spouse or being broken in by one. And I find living with my husband so much more companionable than just living with my cats, although, don’t get me wrong, the cats are truly companionable.
In a more serious vein, I wish to say I am glad divorce is now at least possible to consider without (too much) baggage from religious threats of Hell or the pure impossibility of a woman living safely on her own. Nevertheless, the financial consequences of divorce remain dire. Underneath the wit and banter of this essay, I nevertheless hear the suffering of children living in poverty, and moms wondering why the men they once loved so fiercely, and who professed to love them, choose to shirk their responsibility to keeping their children fed and clothed.
.(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) | 09 Nov at 05:19 PM
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