Research shows that practically every dimension of life happiness is influenced by the quality of one’s marriage, while divorce is the second most stressful life event one can ever experience…
— from ‘The First Lesson of Marriage 101: There Are No Soul Mates’ by Christine Gross-Loh in The Atlantic.
I’m mildly interested in the subject of marriage. But only as a topic suitable for academic study.
And also, the subject of ‘soul mates’. Back when I was married — how many years ago has it been now? — Darlene often talked about ‘soul mates’ and wondered aloud if she would ever find one.
The obvious implication being, that I wasn’t one.
I honestly hope she finds what she’s looking for. But maybe ‘soul mates’ belong in the same academic research category as Santa Claus, and unicorns? Journalist and author Christine Gross-Loh insinuated as much with her headline — that “there are no soul mates” — in her 2014 article in The Atlantic. The article concerned a college course that’s been offered at Northwestern University for a couple of decades now, taught by Dr. Alexandra Solomon, a lecturer with the university’s School of Education and Social Policy.
Dr. Solomon is also the author of Loving Bravely: 20 Lessons of Self-Discovery to Help You Get the Love You Want (New Harbinger, 2017).
The key words above being, “Bravely” and “Help”. Marriage in the 21st century is not for the faint of heart. I understand Dr. Solomon continues to teach the Marriage 101 course, despite everything.
I wish they had offered a “Marriage 101” course at my college, taught by a verified expert who wanted us to get the love we wanted. Because I can guarantee, we all wanted love, even if we were studying engineering, or social policy.
But what kind of role models did we have? Our parents.
In my own case, my parents were not the worst role models you could ask for, but they also learned about marriage from their parents, who learned from their parents…
…and so on, back to the days of the Cave Man.
And the Cave Woman.
Take the garbage, for example. My dad helped my mom with all kinds of housework. Not just the standard lawn-mowing and hedge-trimming, but also with the more ‘feminine’ chores like laundry and dish-washing. But there was one place Dad drew the line. He would absolutely not take out the garbage. That was a woman’s job. He had been raised to believe that real men did not take out the garbage.
My mom, meanwhile, had been raised in a family where her father never helped with any household chores at all. Her mother even had to mow the lawn. But there was one chore that her father did religiously. He took out the garbage.
Did my parents fight about who would take out the garbage?
I’m not sure if it was the garbage issue that finally resulted in their divorce. They had other issues. And they’d never taken the Marriage 101 course in college. (Dad studied engineering and mom studied social policy. As they say, opposites attract.)
Darlene and I also never studied marriage in college. We didn’t fight about taking out the garbage, amazingly enough. We fought about more intellectual topics. Like, did ‘soul mates’ exist?
I thoroughly enjoyed Christine Gross-Loh’s article in The Atlantic, especially because the headline — ‘The First Lesson of Marriage 101: There Are No Soul Mates’ — clearly inferred that soul mates don’t exist, thus substantiating my academic assertion. (If only I’d had this article in my back pocket back when I was still arguing with Darlene.)
Sadly enough, the article didn’t say anything at all about soul mates, in spite of the headline. It talked mostly about the idea that a person hoping for a lasting marriage — even a lasting and happy marriage — needs to, first of all, dig deeply into his or her own emotional and intellectual baggage.
The theory behind Dr. Solomon’s approach to fulfilling relationships seems to be, stop looking for the ‘perfect partner’. Instead of looking outside yourself, you need to work at becoming the perfect partner. yourself. You need to dump your own garbage.
Exactly what I kept telling Darlene.
I am left with one question, however. Journalist Christine Gross-Loh had written:
Research shows that practically every dimension of life happiness is influenced by the quality of one’s marriage, while divorce is the second most stressful life event one can ever experience…
But she never said what the “first most stressful event” was.
Maybe, being married?