I grizzle to a work-friend about tension in my marriage. I tell her I fantasise about a buying a long house and my husband lives at one end, while I live at the other, and we meet in the middle for conjugal visits once a week.
“I’m relieved to hear you’re not talking about a divorce. So many people do.”
“No, I’ve been married for 25 years,” I tell her. “Going through cycles of difficulty is par for the course.”
Forced into proximity during the extended lockdowns, without the buffer of going to work or a social life, tension built into irritation. As lockdown ended many couples sought lawyers to formalise the separation that was brought about by enforced proximity, while hubby and I resumed our pre-lockdown lives, the tension dissipating back into our regular cycle of small flare ups and good humour.
We have been together long enough to know that there are cycles of good and bad. In the early days of our marriage the cycles would be marked by weeks, then as we hit a decade they stretched into months, and now that we’re on track for three decades, we know that there might be good or difficult years. That is the gift that comes with a longer relationship: the understanding that time washes over us, and the gift of having someone to witness it all with you, is priceless.
In the early days of our marriage the cycles would be marked by weeks, then as we hit a decade they stretched into months, and now that we’re on track for three decades, we know that there might be good or difficult years.
We had a good foundation formed on the longevity of our relationship and have weathered the regular good fortunes: career highlights, the birth of our daughter, buying our first home together; and the bad fortunes of life: financial struggles from redundancy and near-bankruptcy, death of parents, grief from a miscarriage and secondary infertility, various health issues; and so while life under lockdown was challenging, it was also eminently survivable.
We come from cultures where marriages are for life. My grandparents were married for 60 years. It was not a marriage to envy. He was a domestic abuser, she suffered greatly, but the times they lived in prevented her from divorcing because she couldn’t support her children. My uncle and auntie have both been married to their spouses for nearly five decades, while my mother was the black sheep of the family. She was married three times: the first two were short-lived of seven years each—the first ended in divorce, the second she became a widow, and the third was to my stepfather for 30 years until they died 11 months apart, while my husband’s parents were married for 48 years, until his father’s death.
I feel blessed to live in a time when divorce is a gift to those who know that their time together has become acrimonious and destructive, and am pragmatic about the fact that this too might happen to my relationship.
I read a quote once that has influenced my views on relationships. It stated that “love begins with a smile, grows with a kiss, and ends with a tear.” It made me realise that a relationship will always end in tears, whether it is through death or a divorce. And even if my husband and I were one of the few truly blessed couples who got to spend our whole lives together in happiness and good fortune, and then were even more blessed to leave this earth together, there would still be tears by those we left behind.
It made me realise that a relationship will always end in tears, whether it is through death or a divorce.
Ultimately, I think this is what has been the secret sauce that keeps us going: the understanding that everything is fleeting and it is the memories that we carry with us that make it all worthwhile. Because of this we are grateful to have found each other, we are grateful for the small kindnesses and moments of affection we shower on each other, and most importantly, we are grateful for the time we have together. And on the bad days, I fantasise about my long house, and count the steps it would take to meet my husband in the middle, because he is my person, in good times and in bad.
Amra Pajalic is an award-winning author. Her latest book is a short story collection The Cuckoo’s Song. You can visit her website .
