Susan Shapiro Barash - The Nine Phases of Marriage: How to Make It, Break It, Keep It

Advance Praise for
The Nine Phases of Marriage

The Nine Phases of Marriage: How to Make It, Break It, Keep It is a sharply observed yet accessible analysis of the constantly evolving organism that is contemporary marriage. As Susan Shapiro Barash parses every phase, I defy a married reader to resist trying to locate herself on this map. Many, I predict, will shout Game change! as they attempt to follow the author's smart advice.

Sally Koslow, author of Slouching Toward Adulthood

There are so many books out there that put the onus on wives to spice up the marriage. I love that Barash encourages women in this book to tune in to their complex feelings, sort through them, and make choices that help them feel whole as an individual , which is necessary for any healthy relationship.

Michelle Cove, author of I Love Mondays: And Other Confessions from Devoted Working Moms

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For Gary

Contents

PART ONE

PART TWO

PART THREE

A long marriage is two people trying to dance a duet and two solos at the same time.

Anne Taylor Fleming

I love being married. Its so great to find that one special person you want to annoy for the rest of your life.

Rita Rudner

The sum which two married people owe to one another defies calculation. It is an infinite debt, which can only be discharged through eternity.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Preface

What Is the Twenty-First-Century Deal for the Wife?

Lets face it, it isnt always easy being a wife. I write this with some experience, since I myself have been married twice and have spent my adult life in two very distinct marriages. The first time I got married I was in my early twenties. Most of my friends werent married yet and were busy being single, flocking to cities to start their careers. I remember running into a college acquaintance on my second wedding anniversary who remarked that she heard Id gotten married. I told her Id also had a baby girl. She looked at me in wonder and asked why had I done this, what was the rush? This was in the early eighties, a period of flux in terms of women and work, women and marriage; the concept of life/work balance was not yet a fully formed dilemma for women. Mostly what I felt that night was misunderstood, as if those who had not signed on for wifedom couldnt possibly understand what it entailed.

In those days, women were building careers and applying to graduate schools in unprecedented ways, but the safeguard of marriage was clearly in the ether as well. Twenty months after my daughter was born, my son was born. I was deeply invested in the marriage/wife business, swept up with the life of the wifetaking care of little children, pleasing a husband, writing in what stolen hours I could find. By the time my third child, a daughter, was born, five years after my son, I felt that three children might as well have been ten. During this breeding period, I had established a bevy of friends who also had husbands and children. I began to notice that everyones husbands seemed cranky and less forgiving than theyd been just a few years earlier. Meanwhile, my friends, the wives, had now become doubly stressed, but stoicpurposely chipper and intent on pleasing all family members, including, in some cases, even their mothers-in-law.

Few of us wives dared to disclose a negative thought, divulge a disloyal feeling. No one said it was hard to raise small children, that her sex life was precarious, that she stuck with her husband for the security, that she suspected her husband of having an affair. No one spilled forth that she was lonely or overwhelmed as a wife, that her husband was controlling, that she was worried about money, that a colleague at her part-time job had caught her eye. Anyone who got divorced was a pariah in our grouppractically diseased. It was too threatening to mothers of young children who shared a rarefied universe to hear of such defection; we were too deeply entrenched in our wife/mother bubble to tolerate it.

If I ever had any doubts or dared confide any uneasiness at this juncture, my mother and my aunts reeled me in. They reminded me I was a member of a coveted, age-old club, a time-honored institution, one that defines women, stamps them with a seal of approval, and offers an idealized version of life ever after. So what if your marriage went through all sorts of inexplicable stages Lucky you, you were married.

The Truth About Being a Wife

Neither the reveries nor the compromises of my first marriage lasted for me, and after much soul-searching, I filed for divorce when my youngest child was seven. For me this was one of the most painful periods of my life, filled with remorse and murky memory, damage and despair. I didnt glibly dismantle my family; my marriage had completely deterioratedit had no viability. I was still female, still a mother, still a daughter, a writer, a sister, a friend, but I was no longer a wife. Oddly enough, not being a wife loomed large and sinisterit was a profound loss of identity. A few of my married friends dropped me, and I made new friends, among them single women, divorced or widowed. As I got to know these women, I realized that they were unhappy with the status quo; their goal was to be married, and they spoke endlessly of being a wife again.

And in the years that followed, for my research, I have listened to a varied group of women beyond my own circle talk about their liveswith marriage inevitably part of the conversation. Most recently, two hundred women in this study, from small towns, suburbs, and cities, ranging in age from twenty-one to eighty-five years old, expressed that a love relationship, preferably a marriage, is a big piece of their lives. Some interviewees were realistic, seasoned, and sophisticated; some naive and hopeful. That isnt to say that others werent disappointed the first time around or that young women assumed that it was a slam-dunk; rather, it was the happily-ever-after aspect that was ubiquitous, that got everyones attention. These women reported that:

80 percent of wives begin their marriages believing they are based on romantic love.

70 percent of wives express unhappiness and dissatisfaction (emotional, sexual, financial) in their marriages over time.

60 percent of wives feel that theyve married for the wrong reasons.

55 percent of wives say they wouldnt marry their mate if they had it to do all over again.

85 percent of women yearn to be married at some point in their lives.

After I had compiled the statistics, I felt that the complexity of these feelings had to be addressed. I was curious to know what it is about marriage that makes us want it so intensely, and why a faction of women say they have grown apart from their husbands, while others are content with their husbands for decades. Although I anticipated a natural progression for each phase, I wanted to investigate those wives who felt uneasy after five years, others who reported a disconnect from their husbands after ten or fifteen years, and those who finessed every phase. If we are able to look closely at ourselves as wives at every stage of our marriages, we may be able to find a middle ground and establish better bonds with our husbands.