Americans can now expect to live up to one-third of their lives beyond retirement, according to a researcher at Cornell University.
That’s a wake-up call to married couples, an impending hurdle of immense proportions for those who have spent a lifetime working at individual interests, living parallel lives that intersect only in the business of raising children.
One might call this challenge “Making Marriage Work Beyond 50,” but a good marriage is worked at for its entire duration. The skills that make the relationship good at age 25 are the same ones employed at 50, in retirement and on into old age.
“It’s the same strategy,” said 71-year-old poet-humorist Natasha Josefowitz. “It’s communication. I call it the willingness to be vulnerable. What that means is being able to say things that are embarrassing; things I’m ashamed of; things that one does not share. The more known you are willing to become — therefore vulnerable — the closer you can get to the other person.”
“Without daring to be intimately known by another we risk loneliness, withdrawal, isolation and boredom,” says Better Heath & Medical Network (America Online: keyword: Better Health) relationship-forum counselors Joan C. and David S. Peters of Sarasota, Fla.
“The courage to love helps provide lasting interest and meaningful depth in a relationship.”
Most agree that what’s needed is a continuous working-out of feelings and issues, openly, fearlessly and above board. Optimally, this process occurs according to an agreed-upon code that is re-negotiated by the couple at different stages during the marriage.
What worked best for Ric and Billie Barbara Masten of Carmel was an annual relationship renewal, which they outlined in their 1978 book titled “His and Hers, a Voyage Through the Middle-age Crazies” (Sunflower Press, Carmel). Midlife infidelities nearly ended their marriage, so the couple hammered out an unusual “creative divorce agreement,” to be ratified by both on an annual basis.
“For the first 20 years of our relationship,” said Ric Masten, “I considered Billie Barbara my personal property. I courted her, won her, and then with the help of church and state took her off the open market and made her mine.”
As time went by, Billie Barbara Masten understandably felt trapped.
“Ric’s willingness to sit down and talk with me, to listen to me as a person with interesting ideas,” she said, “helped me to re-evaluate myself and him.”
Reached at home, Ric Masten reports the couple is working on a new book about the contract — which is still in force. To be written with a psychiatrist, the book will explore feelings of the couple’s grown children.
“I like to say we’ve been married 25 times,” said Ric Masten. “Twenty years the first time, and once each year since the contract was made.”
The Mastens’ well-known “His and Hers” love song goes like this: “Let it be a dance we do/may I have this dance with you/ through the good times/ and the bad times too/ let it be a dance.”
The Mastens’ open marriage and renewable contract may seem extreme to many, but it works for them. Unfortunately, a great number of long-term relationships never achieve open communication. The participants fall into something sterile and fallow, a kind of living alongside the other in a state of superficiality and/or denial.
Each plays a prescribed role-by-rote, presenting to outsiders an apparently happy marriage. The principals merely go through the motions.
Other marriages become a picking-at, a needling, a cruelty bordering on abuse, which undermine both partners’ peace of mind and, in the long run, possibly their mental and physical health.
How do couples achieve and maintain the other kind of marriage, the deeply felt, ongoing love affair and friendship that few attain? What passages and life transitions are the most difficult? What are the basic tools?
Eddie and Hilda told their friends at the American Association of Retired Persons Online’s message board that they have had “53 beautiful years,” which they attribute to “understanding, sharing and caring.”
Josefowitz recalled psychologist Carl Jung’s observation that as women age, they become more independent and more outer-directed, while men become dependent and inner-directed.
“Passages” author Gail Sheehy reinforced this theory when she wrote that by the seventh decade of life, each sex becomes something of what the other used to be.
On the heels of the empty nest and the turmoil of midlife, the adjustment necessary at retirement is sometimes an immense challenge, especially for those locked in gender-assigned roles.
Josefowitz suggests couples’ retreats and counseling for those experiencing difficulty.
“My parents were absolutely miserable when Dad, having retired in his mid-50s, entered fully into the running of the household for the first time,” she said. “Always a take-charge businessman, he became the authority on everything else; the correct way to shop, keep house and cook. My stay-at-home, always brilliantly competent mother was loathe to delegate, let alone abdicate any of her territory. Their long marriage very nearly crumbled. Dad opted to return to the workplace.”
Laura Morefield of Saugus has been married 16 years to her “best friend,” Dan.
“Having a strong basis of respect and admiration outside romantic love goes a long way toward being glue,” she said of their marriage. “We communicate what we are feeling and thinking. If Dan irritates me, I’m not allowed to `knapsack’ it and bring it up later in an argument as a sort of `gotcha,’ and vice versa.”
The Morefields strive to give at the 100 percent level to the other partner all the time.
“No lines in the sand,” said Laura. “No `meet me halfway.’ Total commitment, all the time.”
Even strong marriages may be rocked by the necessity of caring for elder parents, the deaths of siblings and friends and the physical challenges of old age. There is another stress as well, one that usually remains unspoken.
“I have a fear I don’t like to talk about,” said Vivian in Janis Fisher Chan’s “Inventing Ourselves Again” (Sibyl Publications, 1996).
“Seeing him age, my best and worst friend from the age of 19, seeing him able to do less, not feeling well…realizing the possibility of losing him…I think about it often…I really would miss this person tremendously.”
What makes a marriage work? What makes the work worthwhile? As her husband stood by smiling, Josefowitz looked at him, winked, and said, “I’ll share a little poem with you, written for Herman: `Each morning as I wake up, you are the miracle in my bed.'”