Making It Last

To find out what people's fears were pertaining to family I designed a questionnaire and sent it out to many people I knew asking them to fill it out and send it back. One of the questions I asked was, "What does a long term relationship look like to you?"

One of the answers I got back intrigued me and although I won't disclose everything they said in their answer, I know that there is a lot that can be learned from what they said. Here's the response I got from that person:

Long term relationships look like struggles to me. It starts out looking like a perfect family in the gospel and every one's active and obedient. Then there's an illness and the illness of one consumes the health of the others and soon there's nothing more important than the sickness. There's death and months of grief. The father turns away from the church. The mother becomes overzealous and controlling in the home. And then there's the remaining child who is stuck in the middle of it all without having either person to talk to. That's what long term relationship looks like to me. It looks like pain and long-suffering and abandonment.

I naturally felt so much compassion for their story. And it raised a question in me: How do you make it last? How do you keep the family afloat when trials we didn't ask for come our way?

Several authors for chapter 9 of the book sensitively address this type of issue. They mention that there are a few instances where we may find happiness in the marriage an obstacle: Retirement, Empty Nest situation, Care giving, etc. One other thing mentioned is Loss of loved ones. They mention how the difficult is that both people need comforting but both are at an emotionally weakened state. They share a quote from a novelist about a husband suffering the loss of a child, just as the person who answered the questionnaire watched:

He hadn't known how to touch [his wife] or what to say. Before, they had never found themselves broken together. Usually it was one needing the other but not both needing each other...there had been a way...to borrow from the stronger one's strength. 

"Couples in such situations must work to find shared coping mechanisms that unite them," the authors advise, "especially when silent withdrawal into hurt and depression may feel more natural and less painful." By bonding together as a couple, the trial can be overcome together with a foundation of love and understanding existing where they would have otherwise not been.

The person who filled out the questionnaire mentioned that they understood their father and mother walked away from each other when they needed each other the most. And it left them feeling like they were the one who had no one to talk to. All members of the family separated and did nothing to console each other. As a result, the person expressed that his parents are no longer together and the child does not have a very strong relationship with them. I expressed what the book taught, that we have to be willing to go through the trial together. There is no one person who is affected in trials such as this and everyone needs everyone in order to overcome the grief.

It seems that in order to "make it last" there has to be a bonding together. Walking away from each other for any reason would have the opposite effect.

Here's an article I found that might also shed some light.

Reference

Successful Marriages & Families: Proclamation Principles & Research Perspectives, Chapter 9