There are moments when phrases strike you and you realize their interiors are waiting to be explored.
The unbroken heart is one such phrase.
The marriage container is another.
RollercoasterRider uses both terms, and a good deal more, in recounting her own fight to save her marriage, as she responds in a comment on “Leaving to Survive.”
Pop culture is filled with romantic references to hearts – broken and otherwise – as our society spouts pro-marriage platitudes and supports them with tax (and other) policies.
But hearts and their unions are tricky and evolving organs; likewise, the institutions that govern and depend on them. People are not simple, relationships are fluid, and the structure of the culture in which we live is not navigated without confusion.
I’ve been thinking about these concepts – the broken heart, the unbroken heart, marriage as a container. I have been unable to stop the flood of impressions, emotions, and images. I am not certain they are illuminating, but I am curious for reactions.
The Broken Heart
As I interpret her meaning, RollercoasterRider takes up the idea that the Broken Heart not only won’t kill us, but may lead us to something more. She writes:
We think of a broken heart as a bad thing—as something that can bring death. The irony is that an unbroken heart is a truer death, a living death if it is with vital signs and has a greater chance of losing those vital signs at a much earlier age than those who break open their hearts to make room for other hearts.
I hear what she is saying as it applies to her story. The same could not be said for my story, personally, nor those of most of the women I’ve known who have lost a spouse to death or divorce. Death is a special case; I will set it aside for now.
When speaking of divorce, whether vital signs remain or not, perhaps it is because RollercoasterRider and her husband were able to fight through their challenges and arrive – together – at something new, or possibly “renewed,” that she is a believer in the Broken (but still beating) Heart.
That heart – capable of growing stronger again – in harmony with the same person.
Many of us are not so fortunate as to have a partner willing to share in reconstruction rather than deconstruction. In fact, as I think of the time, money and energy devoted to dismantling marriage in some instances, I wonder if with the same determination (and funds and time) – more marriages couldn’t be saved. Not saved purely for the sake of it, but improved – their health improved.
The proper beating of the heart – two hearts, a family of hearts – restored.
Is Survival Enough to Maintain a Marriage?
I did not leave my marriage, though I understand leaving to survive, though my eyes were open at the end to all that didn’t work, though I might find myself now to be “more” myself outside of the marital sphere.
My heart was open to repairing what we could. But many of us come to realize that the foundations necessary for a thriving marriage do not exist, or are so crumbled as to prevent building anything whatsoever, not even a “good divorce” on the rubble of the ongoing battlefield.
Yet we would choose to remain resident in marriage – to “survive” marriage – if it is not overtly abusive, if there are children still to raise, if we recognize that financially we will otherwise spiral down into an untenable situation.
Often, I believe, we consider the first two elements of that hypothetical, and not the third. Or rather, if our marriages end, we do not consider the possibility that the third piece of that puzzle – money – may dog us for the rest of our lives. And that is not because we “lived off” husbands, but because of the consequences of our priorities: the years of willing or necessary mommy-tracking, especially problematic if you’re older; earnings and market competitiveness sacrificed to domestic life (of no small value but uncompensated); our subsequent vulnerability when we try to re-establish footing in the post-marital work-for-pay world.
Worsened, of course, if an ex-spouse plays games with support monies.
Worsened, of course, if energy and health are siphoned off during a long drawn-out battle of wills, manipulation, legalities.
Are You Broken?
When I consider the words “an unbroken heart is a truer death” my interpretation travels a different line of thought – through the giddy, jubilant, painful, and instructive path of loving – and living through an ending. And there, I will put the emphasis on living through.
Beyond the ending, however messy and imperfect, there may be beginnings – also messy and imperfect. Opening doors to who we, ourselves, have become; opening windows to the fresh air of awareness to our own faults and need to address them; opening opportunities to solitude if we prefer it; opening of our minds and hearts to new relationships if we learn to recognize how better to identify what is suited to us, and operate with and within them.
How can we come to value the profound privilege of love that works – however imperfectly – if we haven’t felt love that clogs at every turn of the wheel, is destructive, or simply disintegrates?
I wouldn’t wish a broken heart on anyone, but I do agree that the unbroken heart is one that hasn’t (yet) lived the depths of human interaction that lead us to value another human being and ourselves, possibly in the most connective ways.
Even during the worst of my post-divorce experiences, struggling to restore some sense to the world for my little boys and myself, I knew I wasn’t broken. I may have felt broken, but that is a different matter. I believed that I was reparable – if not my woman’s heart, surely my mother’s heart and my capacity for love, because loving my children has never wavered. Loving my children got me through terrible times and towering fear.
Pain as Teacher
Most of us are bent or bruised or cracked by life, but we are not broken. We suffer pain. We cannot escape life without suffering pain.
To extend Rollercoaster Rider’s thoughts beyond repair of a troubled marriage, I would say this.
My heart is not an unbroken heart; its fissures remain, though my heart may have expanded in other directions and grown scar tissue over the wounds. My heart knew wounds long before marriage and divorce and perhaps this is in part the source of my strength.
It doesn’t require divorce or widowhood to suffer the gutting experience of deep disappointment, of betrayal, of terrible tragedies that enter our lives or the lives of those we cherish.
We muddle through, we make advances, we circle back, we muddle through again. Some of us are fortunate enough to put real distance between pain and the progress in our journeys.
But pain is a teacher. We learn from these experiences if we are attentive. We learn to protect ourselves and our families; we relearn – tentatively – how to be vulnerable.
The Container of Marriage
As for the “container of marriage,” RollercoasterRider writes:
Part of what we were to learn was how to follow our bliss without losing each other; to embrace our bliss within the container of our marriage.
And I would like to mention my own words above relative to new relationships – “how to operate with and within them.”
A relationship, a marriage in particular, can be viewed as a sort of container, though the very word sends a ripple up the back of my spine striking a suffocating chord in me, too close to the notion of being trapped, enclosed, able to see out through plastic or the glass of a jar but nonetheless captive.
I wonder if the word “framework” would provoke such a negative visceral response.
I don’t think so.
I am certain he word “vessel” would not, as I picture a sort of container that is open and cradling, more like a pair off cupped hands or a worn piece of pottery that nonetheless continues to do its job of holding.
Not trapping. Holding. Allowing for whatever is held to evaporate, to escape, to seep out if it must, and something more to fill the space again – naturally. It is this image, this metaphor, this less than hermetically sealed alternative that feels viable to me. Less frightening. Less suffocating.
Mingled, mixed, together, but free.
What is Marriage – to You?
And so I find myself winding my way through these words (and my reactions to them) and arriving at marriage, remarriage, and freedom which is, in this case, too vague a word for my intent but I haven’t another to substitute at the moment.
I felt no particular need to marry; I entered marriage late, as a place of synergy and familial welcome. I had no idea of the significance of a ring, unaware of the exclusive club that existed on the other side of that threshold, and painfully aware of being banished from its affectionate embrace once I was divorced.
I entered marriage believing it to be a haven, a living organism, not a trap nor a container, and certainly not characterized by dwindling possibilities but rather, the opposite – with the idea that two people committed to one another were stronger together than on their own.
But in my marriage, I was wrong.
My spouse was stronger. I was not.
He was free. I was not.
Opportunities did not come with the support of two people encouraging each other; my opportunities, my dreams, my “me” was shrinking; my responsibilities were growing exponentially. I am not saying that his did not expand as well, but I was trapped and realized it only years later. I don’t believe that was the case for the man I married.
I did some of this to myself. Some, I did not.
That was our marriage, and only that. But given the rugged years that followed, that image of entrapment, containment, suffocation, chains – and the impossibility of ever feeling truly “free” again if married are the legacy of our union, and even more so, the years following divorce.
None of this is to say there weren’t joys – most notably – our sons.
Does Divorce Break Something in Us?
But marriage can become a trap and all the more so because the expectations we paint in popular culture are unrealistic and do not stack up to the reality. Not even close. We are foolish, I believe, to perpetuate the myth of marriage, and to allow marriage to take place so easily. Should it not be at least a fraction as difficult to engage in as divorce?
I have thought of the next logical steps that so many expect from me because I am in a relationship. Any relationship that endures a certain amount of time kicks off the “when are you getting married” question. It’s a reasonable question (in our society) because it is the norm. It becomes more reasonable because it is (theoretically) less expensive, and potentially a path to social benefits that are not otherwise available if you aren’t in an employment relationship. That is another discussion but one that is no small topic and yet, perhaps, one more way in which a conservative society uses governmental policy to push its social agenda.
And while I am not broken, and I have seen marriages that thrive, my own experience of marriage and divorce have broken many of my belief systems.
Why Marry? Why Remarry?
I look around at those who have remarried – some are doing well. Others, after a year, three years, five years, are wistfully wishing themselves free once again.
Perhaps they succumbed to the “grass is always greener syndrome,” and jumped into something without heeding or healing. Perhaps they chose unwisely, perhaps they were unlucky, perhaps circumstances they never anticipated brought more challenges than they could weather together.
I believe our stories of marriage are private, personal, mysterious even – and to reduce them to simplistic formulas rarely approaches the complex realities we live, and our own evolving and movable truths.
Each couple is unique. Timing matters. Lessons learned – or not – are hugely influential in the successful functioning of partnership. Yet I am not convinced that most of us bring our wiser, albeit once broken and hopefully healing hearts to the undertaking of a new, committed relationship. And as long as the only way we view (and socially support) committed unions resides within the framework of containment, personally, I feel as if the very relationship I would honor and treasure is threatened.
Still, I tell myself “never say never.”
That leap of faith, that seemingly small and simultaneously monumental act of officially and legally binding oneself to another – with loosely tied ribbons rather than chains – is a powerful dream. I believe it to encapsulate a vow that proclaims “I make you my family” – which is perhaps why the breakup of marriage is, for some of us, deadly.
Yet there is beauty in so profound a commitment, at least in concept, which to me – must be allowed to breathe. What I cannot ascertain is the extent to which most of us can respect and act on the daily practice necessary to keep that precious awareness of beauty alive and flourishing.
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Ewww, does she really use the term “container?” I also have a visceral, negative reaction to that word. A container is what my kid puts her mouth guard into. I think that is such a strange term for a marriage–aren’t people constantly changing, growing, learning? I see marriage as a fluid thing (an amoeba? joking, sorry).
If your heart never breaks, you will never know how strong you are. You will never learn how to heal yourself.
Good stuff, Wolfie.
There is lots of thought-provoking material here. My immediate response is that much of the angst you refer to is caused by the tension between needing to be tied & secure on the one hand, and wishing to be a free agent on the other. I believe this motif runs through many relationships and sets their tone, depending on how the parties negotiate their options.
We could debate the word “free” and even negotiate what that means. But “agency” is perhaps more problematic. Marriage often eliminates the agency of one of the parties. Perhaps that’s where the containment begins – at least in my view.
Another huge factor – the extent to which marriage is institutionalized in American culture, not to mention the dysfunction that results from our Divorce Industry.
There’s a song by Christina Perry that I drove around singing at the top of my lungs on the bad days of my breakup— “Jar of Hearts.”
When it was all said and done, my divorce was one of the easiest in history. I said, “I want all this,” and he said, “it’s yours.” Signed the separation papers giving me everything I asked for, and seven months later, it was done. I haven’t closely examined the fissures in my heart. They’ve sort of crystallized, I think. You can still see the cracks, but now they’re filled in, clear and shiny. I’m just polishing the outside now, and I’m grateful to be me again, making my choices, not constantly adjusting to his ever-changing opinion of me.
He is still family— father to my sons, and to me like a crazy cousin I used to have a crush on when I was ten and now see a few times a year, all grown up. We’re friendly, with a shared family history.
Words of wisdom, BLW. 🙂 And I like that you bring the material issue, because those who don’t see it will be trapped just for that reason, and if the soup tastes bad they’ll have to eat it anyway.
In fact many things totally escape me, in those attempts to mend couples when obviously, what gave them sense is just over. Can’t people see that one just don’t love the other anymore, or lost all kind of desire (which is insurmountable in the prime of life, the way I see it), or that all kind of trust and esteem has been lost? To pertain in such situations is absurd and destructive. Nothing good can come out of it.
Now the rest is a different story. If that kind of thing occurs between decent persons it can be worked out with the less possible damage, but when they are not, it can just be horrendous! Well, it goes the same in any other situations in life, some people over ranking you at work will make hell out of your life, and I never saw any conciliation fixing that kind of thing either.
Of course you can have your heart broken, it goes the with territory. But why so many people forget that they can break hearts too? If you completely lose your feelings of love for someone who lived for it, maybe it can’t be said to be your fault, but you’ll hurt him or her anyway.
Why marry? I know that I didn’t bother to marry myself in the first place. I was living with someone for 3 years and was feeling perfectly ok like that. In fact I did for practical and economical reasons, when you start to have kids (I had two) and pretend that you will deal, as a couple, with their education and well being, this couple has better to be “a team”.
It seemed to me that in France marriage was an ok way of “teaming”. Marrying again? I really don’t see why. Teaming around bringing up children, I did it, and in a way, I still do (they can grow adult you’re never done with you children). And since I never intend to do any reset in that department, I’ll live any future love relation as a complete free man.
Dear BigLittleWolf,
I can only imagine what your heart fissures feel like. I am widowed and was married to a widower, not long enough, alas. I had no interest in marrying until he said “I find marriage adds a layer of happiness”, and I assumed he was right, since he had been happily married for so long, and he was so right, in our case. He was divorced from his first wife and mentioned a terrible sense of failure about it, and that being widowed was easier because he had no conflict about his second wife. I am assuming that for me, too, being a widow is easier than being divorced, because it is so final, although it seems nothing will quite erase the broken pieces, and that’s ok with me too, since it was so worth it :-). I hope things get better and easier for you.
You are most kind, DaveysHouse – and for sharing your experience here as well.
There is so much in this piece that resonates. I left a marriage (barely making it out alive) because my ex was not interested/willing to work to make the marriage better. I left because I felt that I was losing myself to anger and bitterness and wanted better than that for myself and my children.
I never considered myself “broken”; my marriage was broken, but I was whole. I found strength I never knew I had; my children and I came out better than before. We have a life that would never have been possible had I not left a broken marriage.
Walking away (HA! if only that’s all it took!) is not easy and compounded when there are children involved. My adult children often tell me that leaving their father was the bravest thing I could have done for them. That alone made it all worthwhile.
Marriage is not a container. You catch fireflies in a container. You store marinara in a container. You put all the stuff for Goodwill in a container.
I don’t know. The people who have renewed faith in marriage always creep me out. They’re like born-again monogamists.
Funny, naptime. I also pictured the fireflies captured as a child and placed in a jar. Tiny holes were poked in the top of the container. After awhile, I wanted to set them free – and did. I hated the idea that they were enclosed just for my entertainment.
As for those who fight through difficult periods and renew their marriage at the end of a long and tough process, I find I admire them, generally speaking. I don’t know that I could do this. I do know I fought for my marriage. But when it was clear it was done, that was that, and focus shifted to survival – period.
Not simple. But I would like to believe that marriage can be a breathing, living entity. Then again, at the moment I’m in a relationship that ain’t broke. No need to “fix” it. 😉
Always pleased when you stop by. (And I always see that orange peel!)
The Broken Heart
“As I interpret her meaning, RollercoasterRider takes up the idea that the Broken Heart not only won’t kill us, but may lead us to something more. She writes:”
We think of a broken heart as a bad thing—as something that can bring death. The irony is that an unbroken heart is a truer death, a living death if it is with vital signs and has a greater chance of losing those vital signs at a much earlier age than those who break open their hearts to make room for other hearts.
“…When speaking of divorce, whether vital signs remain or not, perhaps it is because RollercoasterRider and her husband were able to fight through their challenges and arrive – together – at something new, or possibly “renewed,” that she is a believer in the Broken (but still beating) Heart.
That heart – capable of growing stronger again – in harmony with the same person.
Many of us are not so fortunate as to have a partner willing to share in reconstruction rather than deconstruction…”
You know I have always felt uncomfortable with the poem I wrote and posted in that comment you referenced. I have this need to add titles and that may just be silly. I titled it The Broken Heart because that just seemed straight forward. I think through the poem and then just slap on a title. But in the poem, the hear is broke open, not broken and that is a huge difference. I think I should change that title now—maybe to Broke Open or Broken Open.
Though as I said it is for Sweetheart, in those moments I wrote it, it was for the woman in my office. It was not meant to be romantic, but about emotional intimacy and union in the we are all one sense.
The Container of Marriage
“As for the “container of marriage,” RollercoasterRider writes:”
Part of what we were to learn was how to follow our bliss without losing each other; to embrace our bliss within the container of our marriage.
“…A relationship, a marriage in particular, can be viewed as a sort of container, though the very word sends a ripple up the back of my spine striking a suffocating chord in me, too close to the notion of being trapped, enclosed, able to see out through plastic or the glass of a jar but nonetheless captive.
I wonder if the word “framework” would provoke such a negative visceral response.
I don’t think so.
I am certain the word “vessel” would not, as I picture a sort of container that is open and cradling, more like a pair off cupped hands or a worn piece of pottery that nonetheless continues to do its job of holding.
Not trapping. Holding. Allowing for whatever is held to evaporate, to escape, to seep out if it must, and something more to fill the space again – naturally. It is this image, this metaphor, this less than hermetically sealed alternative that feels viable to me. Less frightening. Less suffocating.
Mingled, mixed, together, but free.”
TheKitchenWitch: “Ewww, does she really use the term “container?””
Yes, she really does!
Merriam-Webster
Definition of CONTAIN
a receptacle (as a box or jar) for holding goods
Examples of CONTAINER
1. bowls, boxes, jars, and other containers
Synonyms: holder, receptacle, vessel
Definition of CONTAIN
to keep within limits…
to have within: hold
enclose, bound
As I was writing that section, it was that word that I considered and compared with others when deciding whether to use it. I’ve wrote that idea at other times in other places and it is probably the word container that is the least consistent.
I considered bond since marriage is referred to as a bond or maybe bounds. Sometimes I do use those forms, but then sometimes people will criticize that since they come from bondage and of course that brings forth negative connotations which I do not want. Ironically I chose container in part to avoid criticism.
I considered structure or framework, but I think they just didn’t feel poetic enough as I felt the sound and feel of the words in my mouth; they were just too left-brained.
I like your suggestion of vessel and yet that is what a container is to me. And I think I have an image of a water-going vessel with that word-even though it really is broader than that. But I didn’t want to limit the idea to something on water and when I picture a marriage container, I don’t picture the open mouth to be as broad as a boat—though I do happen to like a pottery bowl. For me the image is of a pottery jar or vase; the kind that mimics feminine curves—so full-bellied. The mouth is wide, but not as wide is the full-bellied curve—but way to wide for a cork to close it off. Some of those are water tight and some have openings—whether for light or holding lights within or for holding incense and being a way of distributing it.
I also picture the cupped hands as a container.
To me, to contain is to hold and within that, it is to protect.
RollercoasterRider – I in no way meant to diminish what you wrote or your choice of words. If it comes across that way, I’m sorry. If anything, what you said unleashed so many images for me, and thoughts I wanted to probe, that I thank you for doing so whether you intended to or not.
Oh goodness, I didn’t think that at all!
I was surprised and quite flattered that I inspired an entire post in you and that I did bring up so many images.
I read a wonderful post a few months ago about the Hindu goddess Akhilandeshvari, She who is never not broken. The article written by JC Peters (Why Being Broken in a Pile on Your Bedroom Floor is a Good Idea) is about how we must be willing to break apart to come together again in a new way. It was much more poetic than my short summary, but I have added Akhilandeshvari to my list of powers to draw strength from. It changed my view, my fear, of being broken. Akhilandeshvari took some shame away and made being broken powerful.
As for marriage? I asked a friend the other day, “Does it make me a shitty mother to encourage my kids not get married?” My kids are young, they will decide their own paths, but I want them to know there are other options that may work better for them.
In my late 30’s I’m redefining what I want in romantic relationships with men. It is exhilarating and terrifying. I feel as though I am in unchartered waters, but happy that those waters are un-contained and I am captain of my own vessel.
“Captain of your own vessel” – ah, Sassy Queenpin. Yet another use for the word, vessel. 🙂
PS I just love your smart writing, Wolf. Thank you so much.
Thank you for saying that!
Like another commenter, I thought of Jar of Hearts, too, in relation to “container”. Great post, really enjoyed following the twists and turns!
I discovered you today. I shall be back daily. Profound, thought provoking, entertaining.
What an incredibly kind remark, Georgia, thank you. I hope you visit often and enjoy!