It’s love. And it’s good. You share blissful nights, romantic weekends, and cherished hours of conversation.
You laugh at the same jokes. You’re dismayed over the same issues. You like his kids and he likes yours.
You “fit” – and you even understand why.
Oh, it’s not that there aren’t differences. There are, as in all relationships.
But you’re in a great place and you know your good fortune.
Months become a year, and then one year turns into two.
Life and Love… After Divorce
You’ve been here before. In love and happy. But the timing was off, or events intervened, or it simply didn’t last. Maybe something held you back, and looking back, you’re glad it did.
This feels more solid, more stable, more “right” given the direction your life has taken.
Maybe you’ve been hearing the usual remarks, those next logical steps – expectations expressed by others that you should marry, or at least live together.
You both deflect them with humor. You’re mature enough – and experienced enough – to know that life isn’t so simple. We all have constraints. We’re subject to logistics. This is true at every age, but at certain stages more than others, our domestic framework is not easily reconfigured.
Relo No-Show?
Your first place as a twosome?
You’re in it together, you’re traveling light, and it’s exciting.
But if marriage means disposing of a home when real estate values are severely depressed, taking on additional debt when the bulk of your earning years are behind you, or venturing into a new city in a terrible job market – how do you relocate to the other side of town, much less the state, or for that matter – the country?
What if one or both of you both have children in the picture? What about elder parents? The need for two incomes?
Love isn’t the problem. Logistics are.
Risky Business?
A terrific relationship is a gift, but how much do you sacrifice, or should I say, gamble? How long do you wait to see how things play out? How much do you risk after a year or two, and are the risks and adjustments trickier as we grow older?
If we make a mistake at 30, we have plenty of time to recoup and recover. At 45, at 55, at theoretical retirement – this simply isn’t true. Major changes like relocating become incrementally more complicated. There may be issues of health, marketability, adaptability.
Don’t we need a Plan B? Possibly a Plan C?
This isn’t to say we won’t find ways to simplify and figure it all out. Many do. But many don’t. And they may be grappling with a tangle of domestic duties and burdensome balance sheets.
Jobs, Kids, Marital Myopia
Whether it’s our first go-round or a subsequent shot, we live in a culture with marital myopia. Love is the great White Knight, and waltzing down the aisle equates to Happily Ever After.
Once we have kids, most of us learn otherwise.
If we’re lucky – we get lucky – along with choosing well, facing no insurmountable obstacles, and jobs, kids, and complications are all managed within a functioning unit.
Sadly, considering our divorce rate, half of us apparently miss that mark, which isn’t to say we don’t meet, love, and seek to blend our lives as they are, and embrace our changing families.
Logistical Realities
And the logistical issues? Do we put on blinders or confront them head on? And unless we live in immediate proximity, won’t we face issues in some of the following areas?
- Children’s emotional and physical well-being
- Access to medical and dental care
- Access to appropriate schools and related services
- Childcare and elder care
- Job market (training, opportunities, mobility)
- Real estate market
- Transportation (cars, public systems)
- Family access: proximity to college-age or adult children, grandchildren, elder parents
- Legal access: constraints required by family court (divorced parents unable to relocate)
- Friends, support systems
- Environment (climate, allergies, special needs)
- Costs associated with all of the above.
Resources and Reality
We’re hooked on our cultural assumptions that love makes the world go ’round, that love is all we need, that the commitment of marriage will sustain us through tumultuous change.
That marriage requires one to acquiesce – and that one, generally, is expected to be the woman.
In an ideal world, we might hope that all conflicts can be worked out – that relationships wouldn’t degrade when money problems creep into the picture, when one partner is injured or ill, when issues with children create friction and fatigue that form a wedge between parents.
Love alone doesn’t eradicate constraints, though the early high of falling in love may convince us otherwise.
But when the bloom is off the rose or we’re under extreme stress, we realize: without resources and opportunities – relationships will hover as is (whatever that entails), or they may change in ways we cannot foresee and might not choose.
Love Conquers All? Nope, But it Helps
Do challenges negate the joyful presence of a loving and supportive relationship? Hardly.
Does love ease our burdens and add to our happiness? I’ve certainly found that to be true.
But love should not be used as a smokescreen. Marriage – or its promise – does not automatically solve our problems. It cannot become a faux “all clear,” a dismissal of responsibilities, or a refusal to recognize genuine constraints. Nor should logistics be be taken as permanent barriers, but let’s give them their due, focus on addressing them in a rational fashion, and acknowledge that at times – they hold the upper hand.
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Yes! I have been through the logistical phase and it helped to clarify that I was in the wrong relationship! You have some wonderful points to consider.
You write, “That marriage requires one to acquiesce – and that one, generally, is expected to be the woman.” I wonder if you posed the question to men, how many times they would say they had acquiesced? It’s a curious point for me as I have to ask why anybody has to acquiesce. (Are we talking? Ha ha.) Then again, maybe acquiescence is part of any relationship. “Okay, tonight we’ll go to the girls’ movie you picked as long as you promise to go with me tomorrow to see ‘Aging Action Stars Blow Stuff Up’.”
There’s a scene in the movie Annie Hall when Annie, spending a lot of time at Alvy’s apartment, brings up the idea of permanently moving in. Alvy is hesitant calling Annie’s apartment a “free-floating life raft”. She then says her apartment costs $400 a month and Alvy exclaims, “That place is $400 a month? It’s got bad plumbing and bugs.” 🙂
Ah, the price of peace of mind. Maybe a four hundred dollar a month installment plan is cheaper than a settlement. Ha ha.
I’m glad you raise this issue, Mr. Belle. This is exactly why I put the question out to a few gentlemen I know via Twitter. I’d like the input from “the other side.”
I will clarify, however, I wasn’t referring to the usual compromises that are routine. I was addressing the more significant issues to do with career, relocation, and so on. In my experience (no, this is not “data”) I have seen women take the back seat more often than men, which may be a reflection of differences in earning power or the logistics of their particular situations.
And I hope a few people chime in, and share their experience as to the role of logistics in relationships, marriages, relationships after divorce (especially with kids).
And your Annie Hall reference makes me smile.
Aargh. This all makes me want to cry since I am in a lovah logistics hell at the moment. I’m such a pessimist about it, because more items than not on your list up there are an issue. I get mad for even letting myself get sucked into it. But on the flip side, he LOVES me. He worries about me and checks on me and makes me laugh. Something about him brings me peace and I breathe deeper when he is around. Oxygen is good for you I’ve discovered. I can’t leave the area with the kids so if there is an ‘acquiesce’ it will have to be on his side and he can’t leave for several years, and then will need a big job here to match the one there, because his responsibilities aren’t going to change. I don’t know why I fret this stuff, I’ll probably run him off before then.
See? Pessimist! I plan to blog about this and link to your blog.
I hear you, Cuckoo Momma. Logistics are a bitch, aren’t they?
Then again, why is “hover and oxygen” position necessarily a bad thing?
Incidentally, many of these logistical issues can apply even in / during marriage. Personally, I think they’re exacerbated when you’ve got a post-divorce situation (the need to remain in a particular area, for example), but hey – someone who loves you? A good guy? That’s never a bad thing.
Yes, I think getting older does make the logistics more challenging. Not only because there is less room for error, but because we have more ties, roots, teathers to our past. Untangling that isn’t always possible, never easy.
I’m about to remarry after almost two years of getting to know my Mr. Wonderful and integrating our lives. My home sold, his did not so we will be living in his place which is upside down. It weighs heavily on me to take on that responsibility knowing that our options are truly limited for several years. I will be relocating less than ten miles, yet our schools will change, tax status, debt load, etc. Fortunately, my employment and faith community will remain consistent. But even these logistics are almost more than I can take on.
Still, to love and be loved is worth the challenge for me. I never believed in soul mates, now I honestly wonder.
Missy June, thanks so much for sharing your experience on this one – attesting to the difficulties, but clearly believing it’s worth it.
I’m a romantic (read between the lines – foolish). Sometimes logic is not the only or best criteria. I had a friend get married, he was perfect and had everything his wife wanted, and vice versa. On paper all was perfect in reality the chemistry was weak and what was on paper was perhaps not accurate or changed.
Relationships are algorithms in which we plug in the factors. It is a little more akin to home cooking chicken soup where we know what we want but we do not measure, add a touch of this or that, and hope it works out like it usually does. In the end the soup is similar, or slightly better or worse but not completely different.
I’m trying to decide if I ever want to make soup again.
That “on paper” thing. I know what you mean, Curtis. I find myself of a “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” mode as I get older. Especially in relationships. What I don’t know is if that’s wisdom speaking, or fear of the unknown.
One thing that came to mind while reading through your logistics is “paralysis by analysis”! There’s always going to be logistical challenges when deciding to move forward in a relationship, regardless of physical or psychological geography. Entrepreneur and I battle with the thought of moving out of the area in the future, closer to children/grandloves, but feel bound geographically until both sets of aging parents are no longer with us. Truth is, there is never a perfect time. All we have are the opportunities that are presented to us. The only question is….do we….or don’t we? The only thing for certain is we are never guaranteed a tomorrow. So, I say, try and choose wisely….and make sure your heart agrees! 🙂