It is surprising that after so many millennia of marriages and in spite of our national obsession with “how-to” and “self-help” why there isn’t a simple formula or 5 proven steps to achieve marital bliss.
And while Samuel Johnson sees a second marriage as the triumph of hope over experience, I can tell you as a survivor of a 12 year second marriage that your future is bright and that intensity and the happiness you feel today is sustainable, renewable and much more flexible and resilient that you imagine.
But until we can read about these breakthroughs, allow me to offer 7 pieces of advice or my personal Sheva Brachot …
1. Create Time Together. Your lives are crazy. Create time to decompress. Just hang out together. Allow yourselves the sacred time and sacred space to talk, to cuddle to let ideas, data and feelings dribble out at their own pace with or without context. Don’t limit yourselves to routine hocking, venting, whining, physical complaints or lists of chores or bills. And don’t be afraid to express yourselves using new or inventive combinations of pet-names, expletives, barnyard sounds, familiar or obscure Yiddish words or the codex of Italian hand gestures
2. Create more, frequent physical intimacy. Studies have shown it’s good for body and soul. And its fun too!
3. Create Joint Parenting Strategies. Create an ego-free zone where you can divorce your ego from your kids’ actions and your kids’ behaviors. Kids are amazing fabulous and brilliant. They are also annoying, needy and exasperating. Strive to teach them, guide them, enjoy them and discipline together. Aim for a point of view that sees only “our” children. Do everything you can to avoid becoming a persistent critic of each other’s parenting style or each other’s kids.
4. Create Focus on Stuff That Matters. We are inundated with stimuli, information and interruptions. It’s easy to become either overwhelmed or manic or both. There are a handful of things that really matter. There are core values and beliefs that are genuinely worth fighting for. Life is short and too precious to waste time on things that are either optional or distracting. Figure out what these things are for you. Then focus on them. Slough the rest.
5. Create Openness. As we age we get more conservative, more set in our ways, more unwilling to see new things, recognize new facets of old things or adapt to changing realities. Fight these urges. Even Einstein – the man who kicked over the cosmic applecart – went to his grave defending outmoded theories. Fight the urge to default to your parent’s postures and positions. Stake out your own and be willing to abandon them as your kids or those around you show you new things and open up new options and possibilities. As Chairman Mao said --- always be prepared to storm the headquarters.
6. Create Humor. We have 2 choices in most situations – laughing or crying. Laughing is better, it releases more, better and different chemicals in the body and it allows us to see and feel the absurdity of life on this planet. Two people can participate in humor easier than crying and because there are so many flavors of humor – and we Jews are particularly adept at many of them -- in the end humor leaves you more able to cope with whatever you are facing.
7. Create Forgiveness. We transgress against each other in ways big and small everyday. We communicate in loud, staccato purple prose and in soft mumbled asides. We also develop a vocabulary of looks, glances and gestures that can cut each other to the quick. We step on each others toes. We disappoint each other. We trump and double trump each other. We get all bollixed up and we get all untangled. We make each other crazy and push each others’ buttons consciously and unconsciously. Sometimes you need to “stifle yourself” in Archie Bunker’s terms in service to the genuine dialog that comes immediately after you’ve acted out or lived fully in the moment.
And if we truly take to heart the Jewish notion that your wedding day is like Yom Kippur – we can add the full confessional – we lie, we cheat, we steal, we are jealous, we covet – and on and on. You have in your hearts today a great wealth of love and forgiveness. Continuously make deposits into these accounts. Give each other wide latitude to make withdrawals as necessary or as needed.
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