The Marriage Artist

I was talking to my friend Stephanie yesterday about John and our plans to get married in August. “Why get married?” she asked me. The question, asked by others too, has nagged at me. Why get married when we have both been married before; when we won’t have kids; when we don’t know what might happen to his health or to our lives?

Perhaps the implied question: Why are you getting married again? Both of us married before –four past marriages between us--so why again? We talked about the cultural issues, the social status, the fact that marriage carries an additional satisfaction knowing that there are some who have bet against our relationship.

But there is something else: I like being married. As I’ve described it to friends, I like the container of marriage. I have always envisioned marriage as a container in which two people concoct something chemical, physical, emotional and spiritual. Some of the creations live a long time and some don’t. Some have stunningly beautiful chemical reactions, some make stinky messes, but all are living things.

Yesterday talking to Stephanie—as we pushed and pulled at this idea --I realized another part of this. Marriage is a creative act—and yes, in a way that living together is not—the materials are more expensive, there is an audience and there is no net. The very legality adds a risk factor. Seeing marriage as a work of art and myself as a marriage artist came closest to making sense of why I am willing to do this hard, imperfect and often uncomfortable thing over and over. Perhaps it is a kind of performance art created in front of a live audience. Or an installation –bizarrely conceptual and wildly improvisational.

It is also why the question, “Are you happy?” seems irrelevant to me. Friends-- wondering about this marriage –have asked me, “Are you happy?” But that’s not the question that I ask myself. I’m not always happy. What artist is? But am I interested? engaged? challenged? stretched? learning? surprised? perplexed and ultimately deeply changed? Yes to all of the above.

All of these years trying to find my medium, here it is at my finger tips. Marriage as medium. The marriage artist.

Taking a Risk

The past week has been good. Travels and reading and art. And fear. Fears rise up again and push me and pull me. It is cancer and death and money and other women and the story in my imagination always has the same ending: I am alone. Years of therapy have taught me that I come by this fear honestly. There were huge and horrible abandonments in my early life. But while I can chronicle them they have left scars and bad emotional habits. One is scaring myself to death on a regular basis.

But this week something new. Risk taking by going toward John and not away from him. Risk taking by going toward intimacy rather than girding myself from it. Risk taking by letting him in—bit by bit—on the fears and fantasies that make being me a daily challenge.

I have a new idea. This vulnerability-and it is that—is not a concession of weakness or something I give over to him, but a strength in me and an acceptance of the woman I am who has survived so much and who still wants to give and receive love.

Risking the Complications

When I was in my teens and twenties I did a lot of rock climbing and mountaineering. I was strong and boldly claimed that I’d do anything once. I hung out with men and women—mostly men --who climbed and flew and jumped out of planes and dropped into deep caves. I went down rivers in a kayak and once came so close to drowning.

Later I realized that my physical risk taking was a substitute from emotional risk taking. I could jump out of an airplane but I also jumped out of any relationship when I got to close to loving. Over time I’ve become wiser about physical risks and riskier about my emotional life. It’s worth the trade-off.

Here is a quote I kept taped to my wall when I was that rock climbing, kayaking, spelunking girl. It is by Rene Daumal in his book, “Mont Blanc”.

“You cannot stay on the summit forever; you have to come down again. So why bother in the first place? Just this: what is above knows what is below but what is below does not know what is above. One climbs, one sees. One descends one sees no longer but one has seen. There is an art of conducting one’s self in the lower regions by the memory of what one saw higher up. When one can no longer see one can at least still know.”

This may also be the answer to why I am willing to love this man even with all the complications.