Letter 14: Marriage

Hey whoever is reading,

DISCLAIMER there is sex talk in this post.

I just came back from a bachelorette trip with close relatives, I had so much fun. To sum it up, I went to a baseball game and accidentally bit my cousin’s finger, boogied on the dance floor, made a candle, enjoyed everyone’s company, went to a bar where Billy Ray Cyrus was performing, and saw the happy couple celebrate their last rodeo. Now, I don’t really know much about marriage, apparently I need 15 years of marriage to understand anything in life. Since I am still considered a little girl and I don’t know anything, we will let Mary Pipher talk about her take on marriage. 

We are now entering the last segment of the book which is “Part III: Summer”, I can’t believe we are almost done with this series. I’ve learned and understood different perspectives on therapy and appreciate that there is always going to be change in the world of psychology. Just like life, marriage will be a part of your growth but the cool part is that you can find a committed partner by your side. 

Mary starts off the letter to Laura by talking about how humid and hot it gets during the summer where she starts to feel bad for couples that have weddings during the summer. When Mary thinks about the ceremony her first thoughts are, “Have you thought this through?” and “Oh man I am going to cry with all of this vulnerability and hope.”

Mark Twain once wrote that marriage is an example of the triumph of faith over experience. Of course on the day of the wedding, couples are deeply in love but as the years go by marriages have serious crises and half end in divorce. As Jorge Luis Borges once said, “Love is a religion organized around a fallible god.” If I am reading it correctly, love is an emotion that brings in the feeling of the other person being the most amazing person, they put them on a pedestal but the word fallible means doing wrong, making mistakes, or failing. What will you do when you take them off the pedestal and they do something that is considered break up material you know? How much will you tolerate? 

Within the thirty years that Pipher has been involved in therapy, she has seen things change and some remain the same. She did martial enrichment work that encouraged couples to be creative, communicate, and lively in bed. She sometimes blushes at the thought when she has to do lectures about sex. People expressed to her about their anxiety or boredom about the quality of their sex lives. She would lecture them on foreplay, massage, and vibrators. She encouraged couples to make love in new places and in different positions. 

During the 1980s couples argued about money and in the 1990s they fought overtime. In our current decade, our challenges couples face bring in all challenges from all past three decades as Mary Pipher believes to be. Everyone is busy earning money to make a living so there is no time for sex or even conversation. As Mary’s client once said, “Sex is the new sleep.” Though, regular problems still remain: How do you resolve conflict, make good decisions, and get along with the in-laws? How do you reconcile “we” with “I”? How do you have someone around when you want them around and not around when you don’t? How do you make passion last? 

Supposedly marriage is both neutral and unnatural. Mating for life is cross-species behavior as Mary likes to put it. Modern marriages require two people, often with different interests, personal styles, ways of communication, and habits, to live together for sixty years. Throughout time, people change and we become people that current actions cause us to be… a different kind of consciousness. As therapist Carl Whitaker put it, “I have been married seven times– all to the same women.” We should recognize that if marriage is growing for the better and strive to keep it going, it can create different problems. 

Mary believes that the worst kind of marriages are the “can’t live with and can’t live without.” which relationships are riddled with addictions, lies and violence. A close second for the worst place is the utterly disconnected couple, who shares space but nothing else. Both fire and ice suffice for destruction of the human soul.

Passionate but fickle marriages thrive on fighting and making up. Untalkative behavior from a spouse can eschew any discussion of conflicts. As time goes by, more and more things are left unsaid, until the water spills over and can break the backbone of the marriage. There are couples that end up in divorce without ever having an argument. 

In some marriages, one person calls the shots. Most marriages have one person who is pursued with the other mate is the pusher, one eager-to-please partner married to the withholding person who likes being pleased. And we are well aware of couples who could best be nicknamed “Bickersons” as Mary likes to put it. In these couples, criticism and nagging are entangled with love. 

A common dynamic for couples is when one mate is intellectual and controlled while the other mate is impulsive and emotional. Often, the man is the more detached and analytical one. Therapist Jan Zegar calls this the "stone and the witch syndrome.” In time, this kind of marriage destabilizes. The emotional person feels she must shout louder and louder to get a reaction from the mate who grows more wooden and unresponsive. Over the years these couples become caricatures, being locked into their roles no one else would choose. 

Different kinds of personalities can benefit a marriage. There are many relationships that work because one person supplies stability and the other the energy. One of Mary’s happily married clients once said, “I’m the gas. He’s the brakes.” Two over-controlled people who marry each other are likely to have clean houses, balanced check-books, and well-organized schedules. But they may also be a little antiseptic and bland. Last, two florid emotional people are likely to burn each other up before the year one is finished. 

Mary had a client where the wife was intuitive, empathetic, and complicated. She was married to a computer programer who slough through emotional and interpersonal issues. She was a loyal wife who stayed in the marriage for their kids. She did all the emotional and interpersonal issues. She tried to make their marriage work. She once said bitterly, “He is aggressively dull. He would be happy with anyone who liked to have sex and knew how to grill bratwurst.” Of course, the husband felt unappreciated for being a solid citizen and good provider. He also stayed in the marriage because of the kids, that was their only purpose which made for bitterness. 

There are truly happy marriages but depending on your definitions, these can be rare or common. The closer Mary is to couples, the more she is aware of the fault lines in their relationships. In other words, happiness doesn’t mean perfect. A surprising number of people value their mates in spite of chronic unresolved issues. 

Mary believes that most marriages combine aspects of all the above relationships. Nobody is as simple as any category. Al and Carina are a case in point, Al came in wearing cowboy boots and tight flared jeans. He made his living as an auctioneer at a stockyard. His wife, Carina, was a poufy-haired blond, a former barmaid, who said, “Now I work for Al.” They came to see Mrs. Pipher because Carina was growing weary of her role as a big-hearted, good-time girl. She cleaned, cooked, and did yard work while Al hung out at the local honky-tonk.

Mary was having a slight problem when the couple came in for their session, Al raged about being there in the first place and took it out on Mary. She asked him to call her Mary instead of Mrs. Pipher, he smirked and said, “Mary Henceforth.” Mary raised her brow and he said, “Lady, you asked for it.” When she asked him to define his ideal marriage he said, “The perfect woman would be a nymphomaniac who ran a liquor store.” 

“What a defensive smart aleck”, Mary thought. Carina smiled at her, totally not able to stand up for herself. Her first words were, “My doctor sent us because of my acid stomach.” 

As Mary believes, good therapy transcends first impressions. Al came from a family where his father slapped his mother around and charged her what little money she made selling eggs for a ride into town on Saturdays, Al’s peer culture was men who believed in keeping women barefoot and pregnant. Given his background, Al had come a long way. He had never physically hurt Carina and he genuinely wanted her to have fun. He seemed most puzzled that she wasn’t satisfied with staying home in a nice house. 

Carina came from a home with a dominating father and a beaten-down mother. She had no models of assertive women but she managed to get Al to go to therapy and with Mary’s help she began to verbalize her complaints. They both identified good things about their marriage. Carina said, “Al would never cheat on me. And he is lucky with money.” 

Al winked at me, then said, “The harder I work, the luckier I get.” She asked Al what he liked about the marriage. He smirked and said, “She is good in bed.” Then he choked up and said, “She’s my best friend. I don’t know how she puts up with a jerk like me.” 

The goals for therapy were only a few. Carina wanted Al home on Saturday and Sunday nights. During the week she wanted him to call by mid-afternoon if he wasn’t going to be home for dinner. “That way,” she said, “I’ll microwave myself something and spend my time the way I want.” Al said, “Carina is A-Okay.” Then he paused, “Well maybe she could drop a couple of pounds.” I groaned and Carina threw a Kleenex box at him. He laughed and said, “All right. All right. Forget I said that.” 

This couple’s way of communicating was not something therapists recommend. But they had modest expectations about marriage and after five sessions, they left pretty satisfied with each other. 

“Good communication doesn’t mean saying everything.” Lots of couples who communicate spend their time nagging, criticizing, and venting, none of which necessarily helps. “Good manners soften hard hearts.” Laughing together eases tensions effectively. As Al and Carina’s marriage shows there are plenty of ways to make things work.

Happy spouses tend to see their partners as smarter, better looking, and sexier than they really are. Research shows that positive illusions about one’s spouse foster good marriages. A man whose wife sees him as a hero is more likely to behave heroically. Mary applies this research to therapy by reinforcing positive statements about spouses and challenging negative ones. Some comments Mary has said, “I agree with you completely that still water runs deep.” or “What makes you think your husband doesn’t love you?” 

Mary knew a couple happily married for over fifty years. At their anniversary celebration, they were asked to reflect on their many years of married life. The wife said, “I regret the time we wasted trying to improve each other.” The husband said, “The secret of my marital success is I wake up every morning, look in the mirror and say to myself ‘You’re no prize either.’” 

Hope doesn’t always die. There is a depth of wisdom and emotion that comes from years of being together. Mary’s Aunt Agnes is a small fragile old lady but takes care of her husband who is in a wheelchair. It is hard on her health but she puts it, “I want to give him the gift of dying at home.” Mary said that this is the kind of love young people in their wedding finery cannot even imagine. 

Thank you for reading Mary’s insight on marriage in a therapist perspective, she has seen many types of relationships. How some have failed and some have succeeded. Pipher portrays marriage as a lifelong practice of empathy, flexibility, and shared growth. She emphasizes that strong partnerships rely on honest communication, realistic expectations, and mutual care. She frames marriage not as perfection, but as two people continually choosing connection, responsibility, and love.