Feb. 15, 2018 "Why we leave ‘good-enough’ marriages": Today I found this article by Victoria Lambert in the Edmonton Journal:
‘Till death do us part” may still be part of traditional marriage vows, but it’s not a phrase in the lexicon of Avivah Wittenberg-cox. “If your husband of many decades, with whom you have lived, loved and raised kids, is not interested in working on your relationship, you should change your partner,” says Wittenberg-cox, CEO of 20-first, a gender-balance consultancy, and author of Late Love: Mating in Maturity.
“I don’t think that’s necessarily catastrophic. As we live longer – to 80, 90, 100… we will see more transitions through love, as we do with work.”
Wittenberg-Cox may have a point. February might be the rose-tinted month of love in many cultures, but all that competitive pressure to get romantic can cause even established couples to re-evaluate their feelings.
After all, if you can’t remember to grab a card from Clinton’s on the way home from work, are you really committed to hanging around for the Golden Wedding?
Valentine’s Day itself has even become a flashpoint for break-ups, with divorce lawyers reporting a mid- February surge in calls in the wake of disappointing celebrations.
Meanwhile, divorce rates in England and Wales last year increased for the first time this decade, says the Office for National Statistics – especially among the over fifties.
Moreover, the average age of divorcees now stands at 46 for men and 44 for women, the highest on record.
Perhaps it’s no wonder, then, to see high-profile break-ups – Davina Mccall recently split from Matthew Robertson after 17 years together; Louise Redknapp called time on her marriage to Jamie after 19 years; and Ewan Macgregor left Eve Mavrakis, his wife of 22 years – all happening in midlife when there still seems time for reinvention.
Your marriage may be OK, but is “good enough” really a good enough reason to stay once you’ve turned 50?
Wittenberg-Cox believes we should consider the advice of Margaret Mead, the anthropologist, who said we all have three great loves in us
– the romantic one of youth and discovery;
the stable partner for child rearing and homebuilding;
and the adventurous free-spirited partner for the third age of life when we want to redefine ourselves.
(These can even be the same person if you and your partner keep growing together.)
Wittenberg-Cox followed this path, albeit unintentionally: a handsome Frenchman in her early twenties (“passionate, a good dancer, a tender lover”); the husband and father of her two children, with whom she spent 22 years; and for the past seven years, Tim, an old friend who turned out to be her “soulmate”.
This last relationship began after she asked her husband for a divorce. He assumed that marriage would carry on indefinitely, even though she had repeatedly signaled her feelings of dissatisfaction. “My ex-husband couldn’t understand or accept my decision, and it was a very painful time for everyone.”
But Wittenberg-Cox refuses to be painted as some stereotypical villain. “We need to change the narrative from this extraordinarily negative frame of divorce and rupture, into something positive – a wonderful human aspirational story, where two people can lean in to a constructive opportunity for growth.”
She explains: “You can redefine a relationship and perhaps swap roles. That’s fantastic if people are engaged and excited. But it takes two to tango.
“Remember, this is the first mass generation of highly educated Baby boomer women who have earned money all their lives. A different breed of women and not necessarily what educated Boomer men expected, or want to work with.
“The men may think they are doing what they are supposed to be doing – not fooling around, earning money – and they think that is enough.”
So, she has no sympathy with a man who finds himself being dumped from this type of stereotypical marriage. “Are we going to let men off the hook?” asks Wittenberg-Cox in horror.
“None of us are responsible for the happiness of any other person. We don’t have to fix other humans.
“Men change at work all the time because it is a higher priority for them. But they ignore the invitation from partners at home to grow and expand their skills. I don’t buy that they can’t do it.
“They may not want to do it, the way they are asked may not be best way.
But there is an opportunity in your fifties and sixties to redefine the rest of your life, and that may mean a last gasp at a real relationship and love.”
What if you ask your partner to change, they refuse, you leave – and don’t find a great new love?
Anecdotal evidence from midlife daters would suggest genuinely interesting new loves are thin on the ground. Especially if you are a woman over 50.
Wittenberg-Cox is not having that as an excuse for staying in a dull marriage either.
“Among the people I interviewed for my book,” she says, “I found those who were independent and determined enough to leave were mature and happy on their own. But if they did want another partner, they went out to find them.”
What she thinks is important, though, is that between finding a new love and dumping the old, one needs to look inside and self-reflect:
“It’s hard to move on if you’re desperate, needy or unhappy. Break-ups are crises – and crises are clarifying. They are full of growth opportunities.”
Some, of course, will feel financially tied. “The evidence shows that women who leave marriages may be less well off financially, but are happier.
We have this dominant narrative that money is everything but what’s right about selling your soul to keep yourself warm?”
She emphasizes that she is “not telling people to leave their spouses. But if the only reason to stay is because you are short of money, then get a job.”
Nor does leaving have to be acrimonious, she points out. “Most want to leave well and lovingly, but they don’t know how.
But, again, it’s like a work situation. We know not to slam the door there. You have to prepare, get people on board, if you have children you will have to stay connected as co-parents.”
If you do want to stay in your present marriage but upgrade the thing itself, how best to approach it?
“You need an MOT every decade,” says Wittenberg-Cox. “What we need changes over the course of a partnership. The older you get, the more intimacy you want, the more love, the more focus on the relationship itself.
“You have to have the intention; to proactively want to stay with them. You need to say: ‘Let’s reignite this, let’s have a conversation.’ No bitching or moaning but visualizing what you will become next, and motivating each other.”
Wittenberg-Cox believes in the ideal of a partnership: “We are seeing the emergence of some of the happiest, most balanced couples we have ever seen, who help each other.
They are much more than the sum of one plus one; they’re more like two to the power of two.
They create ways of supporting each other.”
And many of these will be the new couples who have found their last love in midlife. “I think that older, late-love couples may be showing us the way through reinvention.”
She adds: “Happy couples are so magnetic – it is worth it – that’s the issue. That’s why people yearn to be in one. Relationships are better when you are in love with someone as excited about your life and goals as their own. It’s a nourishing base from which to live – people deserve that.
“Love is like art. You can become masterful if you work on it. You know, we are all practicing mindfulness and yoga – but we should be practicing love. It’s much more fun.”
Late Love: Mating in Maturity by Avivah Wittenberg-cox (£15, Motivational Press) is out now
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Jun. 2, 2017 "To marry or not to marry?": Today I found this article by Zito Madu in the Edmonton Journal. This is about marriage decreasing in Japan. It's decreasing because the economy is filled with part-time jobs and the gig economy.
More people are working because they have to make money, and they don't have time to date. There are other issues too:
Japanese people just aren’t getting married anymore. According to a recent report in The Economist, the average age of first marriage in Japan has risen by 4.2 and 5.2 years (respectively) for men and women since 1970.
The number of unmarried people by the age of 50 rose from five per cent in 1970 to 16 per cent in 2010.
This is a very serious problem in Japan because it’s coupled with a population that simply doesn’t have children out of wedlock — only two per cent, as opposed to 48 per cent in Great Britain, 41 per cent in the United States and a modest 25 per cent in Canada.
The most fascinating part of all of this is that Japanese people generally still want to get married — 86 per cent of men and 89 per cent of women, according to a survey published in 2010 by the National Institute of Population and Social Security Research.
The hindrance, it seems, is a matter of economics; a deterrent not unique to Japan.
Young men are increasingly stuck in part-time jobs or jobs without any real security and the women are finding it hard to combine the traditional views of marriage with newly discovered career and financial freedom. The days of the stay-at-home mom are almost gone.
The younger generation of men and women aren’t just eating avocado toast; they’re spending their free time working and bolstering resumes instead of socializing. As a result, relationships seem more of a burden than a benefit.
The solution to what the Japanese government calls “celibacy syndrome” has so far been aimed at getting younger people to meet more frequently, but that seems like treatment for the symptom rather than the issue.
The only true fix for this marriage problem would require a complete change of the economic landscape — to build a secure environment in contrast with the current gig economy that profits off the anxiety and insecurity of the workers.
And in doing so, create some level of comfort in a world where work doesn’t equal worth, and young people could pursue things that make them happy, like love and family, rather than agonizing over things that they need to do for basic survival.
And all the world would be a rainbow.
But it’s easy to suggest impossible remedies. What can actually be done in practical terms is a rebranding of marriage for the new world. The traditional stay-at-home mom role doesn’t fit the ambitions of women of today.
And the emotional toll of relationships, the cost of marriage and children are unnecessary hardships to people who are working numerous part-time jobs.
A real solution would be to show how intimacy, relationships and ultimately marriage can relieve some of the pressures facing millennials.
Promote the idea that married people are less stressed than singles; having two incomes helps to deal with financial disasters much better than being on your own.
And with women finding greater independence, relationships need to be shaped as two equals working together for the benefit of themselves — both as separate entities and a collective.
Less breadwinner and housewife, and more power couples. Simply put, rather than trying to force a new crop of people with different worries into an old system, marriage needs to adapt to the people. Otherwise, it could soon become an archaic practice altogether.
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