Star Benchwarmers

If you were asked to define the word “marriage,” would your response be positive or negative?  Surprisingly enough, most people think marriage is a wonderful thing, even if their personal experience may be less than perfect.  Taking this another step, if you were asked to structure your definition into an analogy, how would you fill in the blank at the end of this sentence?  Marriage is like______.  Of course, no two definitions would be similar, just like no two marriages are ever the same.  Some of us would define it from personal experience, and others could only guess what it’s like.  One thing is sure, though: each marriage is a unique combination of dynamics and environmental circumstances, intermingled with different personalities, values, and expectations.

A gentle and refined definition might be: marriage is like a fine wine, it mellows with age and gets better over time as you come to understand its pedigree and bouquet.  I think this definition would indicate a very romantic and fulfilling relationship, encompassing several areas of genuine interaction.

Other definitions might be more callous: marriage is like one long boxing match, filled with round after round of ducking and jabbing, and minimal communication.  You’d think these unions would fail quickly, but often the combatants endure for years, mainly because the interaction is anything but boring.

Some analogies might be team-oriented: marriage is like doubles tennis, where both partners have the same goal in mind, but bring different talents to the contest.  Hopefully the couple can overcome any obstacles of sharing the court and complement one another by utilizing their differing styles and natural abilities to achieve combined success.

Here’s an analogy I’ll bet you’ve never heard before: I think marriage is like learning to fly.  See, you’ve never heard that one before, have you?  But think about it.  At first there’s tremendous excitement and passion, mixed with a little tension. You know that committing to this goal will involve a lot of hard work and dedication, but in your heart you anticipate the efforts required will be worth it.  In the early stages, you go through some anxiety as you learn the basics, but the pleasure is intoxicating.  You can’t get enough of it.  You want these feelings to last forever and to remain just as intense.  But after some additional time in the relationship, you get more comfortable with the day-to-day activities as they become more routine in nature.  Everyday you try to learn a little something new and adapt to it.  Achieving anything worthwhile usually requires some behavioral modification, and a certain percentage of new aspirants just can’t adapt, dropping out early in the program.  Sometimes the original desire fades, or gets replaced by other priorities.  Inevitably, the biggest hurdle is changing many of your old habits and previous ways of thinking.

Flying has often been described as “hours of boredom, interspersed with moments of stark terror.”  It’s very important in flying to plan for unexpected problems.  You practice emergency procedures more than anything else in the early stages.  If a serious situation happens, you need to understand the symptoms of the problem and be able to react immediately with corrective actions.  It can be a matter of life and death depending on how quickly a pilot reacts to any given situation.

The same is true of marriage, in that problems can arise at any time, any place, and in varying degrees.  Even though you may have discussed ways of coping with certain situations, there aren’t any simple emergency procedures to practice like in an airplane. The aim is to face new problems as a couple and, hopefully, combine your efforts to complement one another, amplifying your reaction to the problem.  Again, this is where many couples find they don’t complement each other in their approach to several situations and, as a result, are less effective at dealing with problems together than they were as individuals.

As you progress over time, there are major milestones.  In flying, it’s your first solo flight, or passing your flight check for your private license.  In marriage it tends to be anniversaries, or the birth of children.  These milestones tend to re-energize the journey and validate all the hard work and dedication.  Many times, the passion is renewed because a goal has been met.

If you stay with it and keep practicing for a long period of time, you get really good at it. You achieve many milestones you never dreamed of, and really don’t have to concentrate very hard to make it work.