Ben and Me_ From Temperance to Humility - Cameron Gunn [87]
Add to that complacency the everyday pressures and time constraints of raising children, gathering income, and simply living life, and the time devoted to the actual relationship gets short shrift.
The secret, according to experts, is hard work and focus, along with a commitment to the relationship. Trying new things together can also stimulate romance.
I SHOULD BE BETTER AT BEING A SPOUSE. I’VE HAD GOOD ROLE models. My parents communicate well, viewed (and view) their marriage as a partnership, and have managed to see and do new things together throughout their married lives. I’m sure they’ll shudder when I hold them out as examples of what romance should be, but theirs is an exemplary marriage. My paternal grandparents were role models as well. They were together since they were essentially children.
But when I think of real-world romances, I think of my maternal grandparents. Hazen and Mary Dickson, like my paternal grandparents, met when they were little older than children. He was nineteen and she was seventeen when they married. Youth, however, wasn’t their biggest problem. This was the 1930s, and Haze was a Protestant and Mary a Catholic. The community in which they lived, settled almost entirely by Irish Catholics and Scots Protestants, was not a place, at the time, of religious tolerance. Prejudices died hard, and theirs was not a marriage particularly welcomed by their families.
But they persevered, perhaps because of the struggles rather than in spite of them. They survived the death of a child and the Depression. They never made much money, but that didn’t seem to matter. Their children and grandchildren viewed them as the center of the universe and a safe haven against all of life’s storms. Theirs was a simple life, but it was a good one—one that they made together. On the tombstone that they share in the quiet country cemetery not far from their family home, the epitaph reads, “Life’s Work Well Done.”
That was the type of romance I had imagined as a young man. I had my example of what Ben Franklin meant by Chastity.
This, then, was to be the focus for the week’s virtue. I decided to dedicate the week of Chastity to rekindling the romance in my own marriage. Not the fake, greeting-card-company romance, but the real-world, shared-mission romance. The type of romance that never gets made into a TV movie but that leaves a mark on the world, even if only a small one. The type of romance that would set an example for my own children.
The type of romance about which someone might say, “Life’s work well done.”
Operator, Can You Help Me Place This Call?
The secret to projects like this is to start small. Don’t overextend yourself in the early going. To stretch the metaphor to a prize fight, you need to pace yourself in the early rounds, feel out your opponent, and settle in for the long haul. I decided to begin with a phone call.
One can never overestimate the impact of the unexpected phone call. The normal (at least in my world) daytime phone call between husband and wife concerns errands for the day, activities and children, or everyday complaints. A phone call for no purpose other than to describe how much your spouse means to you may be, I assured myself, an effective and simple way to begin the week of Chastity (as I had defined it). I made the call.
Strangely, it worked exactly as I had thought it might. My wife seemed genuinely happy to have had me call for no other reason than to say “I love you.” I followed up the call with a conscious effort to remember in all circumstances how I had first felt about my wife. The effect, obvious to me because I was aware of my efforts, was instantaneous. We were partners rather than opponents.
Now, I don’t want to give the impression that there is ongoing strife between my wife and me; there is not. There are, however, instances where our interests diverge. For the most part, these surround household responsibilities.