UPON marrying me, Aurit, my wife, put a finis to a promising career as a concert pianist. That was a decision that I failed to appreciate fully at that time.
But it didn’t mean she could not touch the piano keys again.
After so many years of raising our three children, one day my wife sat down and played the piano again. I couldn’t help, but marvel at the way she could still summon her music muse from a long slumber. I sat ensconced on the sofa, delightfully relishing each note—a one-man audience instead of hundreds in a concert hall who would have jumped up and exulted “Bravo! Encore!”
As for me, I could only offer a bouquet of love, gratitude and fidelity for her sacrifice at the altar of marriage.
Is this what marriage is all about? The willingness to sacrifice, to give up something because of your great love for that one person who is so special to you?
As we approach our 46th wedding anniversary, I reflect on what has helped us survive and thrive as a married couple, ever mindful of the failed marriages of many of our friends and contemporaries. There but for the grace of God go we.
Oh no, we’re not saints. We’re not the poster couple of an ideal marriage. Truth be told, it has not been smooth sailing all the way. To mix metaphors and clichés, it has been a bumpy ride. There were occasional sparks but none that led to full combustion or conflagration.
But our years together certainly made us wiser persons and more deeply appreciative of each other. Someone said that “marriage is our last, best chance to grow up” and he was right. After all, you cannot expect “to reach the promised land without going through some wilderness together” as someone named Charles Shedd advised. Far from being just passion or romance, it’s also three meals a day, washing the dishes, doing the laundry and remembering to carry out the garbage.
The old joke is that an enduring marriage is a matter of give and take. You give, she takes.
Kidding aside, there is some truth to it. Ours has been more of a relationship of continual accommodation, adjustment and collaboration. Giving each other space to breathe. Not to mention learning more about each other. Even now.
To use the piano analogy, I am the good appreciative listener to her piano playing, and vice versa, although in my case, it’s the pen that I wield.
It was never the case of an irresistible force meeting an immovable object. At times, we tug and pull or push each other, whatever the moment calls for.
Which leads me to think of a dance like tango. Sometimes I take the lead, she follows. Sometimes, I let her lead, and I follow. The trick is you know each other so intimately well, you can read the cue instinctively. Moving together as one is a magical way of discovering yourself, as well as the partner with whom you are dancing.
No, I don’t dance the tango. My skewed legs aren’t made for dancing. But my fascination with this dance started when I saw Al Pacino in the movie Scent of a Woman. I also read about Hollywood actors like Robert Duvall who go to Buenos Aires to do authentic tango. Dancing lessons can be viewed on YouTube.
There are things about tango that can be applied to relationships. The key is respect for each other which means giving one another space for both of you to be solid and rooted in your own respective selves while being passionately connected to one another. For you to be able to dance with another person, you need to know where your center is and to be in it. One tango dancer calls it “axis.” An axis is an imaginary line about which a body rotates.
If one or both of you have no solid core, one person starts putting pressure on the other. The balance is upset and the dynamic falls apart. As the saying goes, don’t hold on too tight that you squeeze one another away.
It’s the same thing with other dance forms, be it ballet or cha-cha. One needs to trust each other. One needs to read the cues instinctively. But always, there is a need to have an axis so you don’t lose your balance when you pivot or let go of each other from time to time. So the marriage dance that endures is a relationship that allows us to have an axis, encouraging us to grow as unique personalities while living together as a couple. As one marriage counselor puts it, marriage is where independence is equal, the dependence is mutual and the obligation is reciprocal.
Why was my wife able to give up her career as a piano artist without falling apart? Because she was solidly rooted to her axis. She was so focused on her commitment to be my good companion in our life’s journey together, she did not lose her balance when she gave up her ambition to be a concert pianist. The thing is I never cramped her love for playing the piano. She has not been forced to change who she is just to please me. On the contrary, she was encouraged to bloom in other ways.
In my case, I adjusted my life to become a proficient provider without losing my axis. I chose a job that involved creative work, which put me on solid footing because creativity happens to be my thing, the very air I breathe.
However, it’s not that simple. Learning to ground yourself or finding your axis is a continuous process. As in training to dance better, it’s repeat, repeat, repeat.
Life, even in marriage, is all about learning how to find and sustain your axis more and more consistently over time. Sometimes you fall. It’s just a matter of how quickly we recover back to ourselves. More important, each partner must have that encompassing love to allow the other to get back on his/her axis, again and again. That means the capacity to forgive many times. It ultimately means falling in love again and again with the same person.
And so, metaphorically speaking, marriage is a dynamic dance of togetherness swaying to the beat of love. For without love, there can be no music to dance by. Day after day, as somebody puts it, “we keep on recreating our fragile relationships, making them last through the power of caring love. To dare to make and care to keep commitments.”
But I must immediately add that it’s a kind of love that is enhanced and cemented by a shared faith in the Divine. After all, we never forget that our marriage was solemnized in a church. The two of us are not the demonstrative type when it comes to expressing our faith and spirituality but privately, we often pray for Divine guidance and compassion. Our deep faith has buoyed us through all kinds of trials and challenges, including calamities.
It’s a marriage that has endured, but far from perfect. Is there such a thing as a perfect marriage? One comic says there is perfect marriage, but it could only happen between a blind wife and a deaf husband.
When our friends see us together on social media, they shower us with complimentary comments and likes. Maybe it’s just me but I can also sense something more—surprise, envy and even cynicism. But the general tone is that of amazement that we are still together, especially coming from those who are now living with their “new” partners. Worse, those new partners had been previously married and sired children.
It appears that we are becoming a minority, couples who have stayed together all these years. Exchanging partners or finding new partners seems to be the “in” dance craze for married couples nowadays.
As for me, thanks, but no thanks. This journey together has taken us this far. I’m saving the last dance for the one I married.