Kirshenbaum, Mira - Too Good to Leave, Too Bad to Stay

Instead of answering right away, Jack made me justify every bit of what I asked. Frankly, I think he was stalling for time and, on a deeper level, he was making it hard for me because he was scared I’d provide some illusory and ultimately disappointing piece of reassurance.

First thing he said was, “What do you mean ‘besides children’? What’s wrong with children bringing people together?”

The short answer is that children aren’t glue and shotgun weddings don’t work out. You probably know people who had kids in the hopes that it would pour some cement into the shaky foundation of their marriage. We all root for that to work, but we all know how often it doesn’t. Children will keep you connected, that’s for sure, but it’s not the kind of connection that has much to do with your love for each other. People fall in love and make a bond before there are children and they have to stay in love after the children have left home; if you want to look for a sign of life you’ve got to look beyond the children for it.

Beyond Sex

Jack was silent for a moment. He and his wife did have children and they had similar values and, on the rare occasions when they had the time, they shared family time together. But now I was asking him for another positively pleasurable connection between him and his wife. He still had trouble wrapping his mind around what I was getting at. “Do you mean sex?” he asked. “I like sex. Does that count?”

Maybe, I said. Orgasms alone don’t count. Good sex alone doesn’t count. Sex counts for question #5 only if it’s something you really share. You know it counts, I said, if it’s something you both anticipate with pleasure, if it not only feels good but makes you feel close, if that glow of closeness is real and lasts for a significant period after sex, and if you keep seeking it out.

I could almost see the wheels working as he tried to take in the distinction between sex that superficially felt good and sex that produced a real close connection that felt good on every level. Then I saw discouragement spreading over his face.

“Look,” he said, “I’ve never had bad sex. But I can’t honestly say that Laura and I really connect through it. Sex happens but we don’t go out of our way to make it happen and when we do, for me, it’s basically about sex. So does that mean that I’ve struck out on this question?”

Not at all, I said. We’ve just begun. It doesn’t matter how you connect as long as there’s something you do together that feels good and you look forward to doing together and that makes you both feel close. I’m not saying that if you don’t have this things are over between you. But if you do have it, that’s an indication of life in your relationship, a foundation for love.

“So help me out,” Jack said. “What are you talking about?”

It’s different for different people, but here are some activities that people have told me give them a close, pleasurable connection, that give these particular people an experience of being in love again:

• Cuddling in bed together before turning off the lights

• Having friends over for dinner

• Gossiping about those friends after they’ve left

• Laughing together at the same zany comedy

• Going dancing

• Going away together

• Talking politics

• Playing tennis

• Sitting around on Sunday morning with the New York Times and a pot of coffee

• Kissing each other

• Checking out the antique shops

• Gardening together

• Walking home from church

• Holding hands and going for long walks in the country or on the beach

• Running around in the park with the dog and a Frisbee

It’s not that activities like these make everything great or that they’d mean anything to anyone else, but for at least one particular couple one of these things made them feel close and made them feel good about feeling close. Whenever they did these things—and they did them at least once a month—they not only felt their love, they felt their love was real. For a few moments they could forget all the things that made their relationship feel too bad to stay in.

Now You’re Cooking

Jack closed his eyes and drifted off in thought to see if he could find something like this in his life with Laura. “Does cooking count?” he asked.

It depends. What are you talking about?

“The thing is,” he said, “that we don’t have to cook at all, not together the way we do, but every couple of weeks or so on a Saturday afternoon or something we’ll really get into making some special meal and we’ll go into the kitchen and we sort of mesh the way we work together. We’ll talk, we’ll even sing, or we’ll be silent for a period. I know some couples get into fights the minute they’re both in the kitchen together, but for us it’s a kind of tension-free zone, and I have no idea how it happens but I think we really feel close, like we’re enjoying something together we’re not supposed to enjoy.”

Jack had found it, and it had been under his nose all the time. That’s how it works for some people with this question and with other questions later on that point to the possibility that a relationship really may be too good to leave. Pain throbs, but the current of life in a relationship is all too invisible. No wonder it so often dies of neglect.

So here’s the guideline I was able to provide for Jack:

GUIDELINE #5

If there’s even one thing you and your partner experience together and look forward to (besides children) that reliably feels good and makes you feel close, there’s the possibility you’ll be able to clean out the crap between you and have a viable relationship. If you had just met, there’d be the possibility of your falling in love. Quick take: Real love needs real loving experiences.

This guideline doesn’t refer to things you do together that just feel okay or that enable you to stop fighting or hating each other. It refers to things that provide regular, positive, pleasurable connections, that you both look forward to and you both make happen.

But remember that Jack was a tough customer. “If all this gives me is just the possibility that I’ve got a viable relationship, what’s the big deal about it?” he said.

Every sign of life is precious. A yes answer to question #5 is a sign that love is possible. It gives you what strong, deep roots give a plant that’s been hit by drought. There’s reason to hope. There’s reason to press on. There’s reason to keep cultivating the relationship and looking for more signs of life. It might still turn out that later on in this book you’ll learn something about your relationship that makes it clear that you’ll be happier if you leave, but for now it’s clear you’re not there yet.

PERSPECTIVES : A NOTE ON HOW THE GUIDELINES WORK

Because this book works just like medical diagnostics, positive and negative guidelines don’t exactly have equal status. A guideline that says your relationship is too bad to stay in overrules any guidelines that say your relationship is too good too leave.

Why is that? I know that sounds negative, but it isn’t. It’s just how diagnostics work. Let me explain.

Suppose you were trying to decide whether to stay in your house or move. An incredible view or an ideal layout might make your house too good to leave and might outweigh a lot of negatives. But they don’t counteract your house being sandwiched between a slaughterhouse and a cement factory. They don’t counteract your house’s foundation having been completely eaten away by termites. They don’t counteract your living in a floodplain.

It’s a kind of rule in life. A lot of good stuff might make us willing to put up with some bad stuff. But any really terrible stuff has veto power over a ton of good stuff.