Recently, I heard an essay read on NPR by a woman who was extolling the virtues of settling in a marriage.
At first I thought, huh? You should never settle! But then, as I listened to what she had to say, I realized that maybe what she was calling settling, was really what you could call appreciating. She said that she and her husband were very different, and that in a lot of ways they were incompatible, but that over the years she has come to the conclusion that her marriage was good enough. Not perfect maybe, but good enough to make her happy most of the time.
It’s a particularly telling American quality to strive for perfection in all areas. We tend to want the whole banana. In marriage’s case, the whole banana is a well-paying, successful and fulfilling career, a good-looking, high earning spouse who also happens to be able to read our minds, get all of our jokes and never does anything that bothers us, and children who are happy, smart, and well-behaved all of the time. We’re not happy unless we have it all, and even if we have 99 percent of it all we’ll lose sleep at night trying to get that last 1 percent without taking time to savor the accomplishments already gained. Our culture inexplicably promotes this expectation, without encouraging us to be mindful that nothing, or anyone, is perfect and it is foolish to expect perfection.
A lot of times I get frustrated with my husband. He is maddeningly stubborn. He’s a know-it-all. He’s not very tactful and has a harsh tone that in the beginning of our relationship would have me crying in astonishment at the way he said things. But now, five years and two kids into a marriage, I realize that, although it’s annoying, his tone is not what really matters. It’s the things he does for our family that do. As I would always say to my old roommate when she asked me to decipher the latest relationship quandary—actions speak louder than words. Thank god that’s true!
