This past Saturday, David and I joined three other young married couples to plant a garden in our Astoria/Long Island City neighborhood, which we hope (fingers crossed) will provide us with fresh fruits and veggies that taste just as good as the organic produce at Whole Foods, but without the price tag. While the men took the bus to Home Depot to buy cedar to make planters and bagged soil for our raised beds, the women had brunch (any scraps of food went into the compost bin, of course) and then organized a clothing exchange. I lugged a small suitcase of clothes I liked but was tired of to my friend’s living room, lined with dark wall shelves full of philosophy books and a plush red couch, where we laid out a strapless dress too short for its owner, dress pants that needed to be hemmed but never were, shoes ordered online that looked cuter in the picture, among other things—and everyone left with something “new.” Later on in the afternoon, there was weeding and building and tilling to do in the small, overgrown backyard that we hope to transform into something beautiful. And then of course there was a celebratory meal when the work was done: deli meat and cheese and a colorful array of fruits, brown and white breads, cool green cucumbers, salad with blue cheese crumbles, and water with lemon slices and mint leaves.
I once heard marriage therapist Bill Doherty use the term “friends of your marriage.” I realized as we were enjoying our feast that this term aptly describes what this group of friends is to David and me.
For one, they share a bedrock commitment to marriage—they’re the types who say things like, “Divorce is not an option. We don’t even use that word.” I know that if David and I were arguing, my girlfriends would not feed the fire of any grudges I was holding, but would give me a better perspective. And the ability to talk about our marriages and share experiences is invaluable. I’m always amazed at how a problem seems to be much less of a problem when you realize that it’s relatively normal. I know when David and I had our first major fight because I felt he wasn’t being empathetic enough and he felt that I was being overly dramatic, it helped so much to hear that our friends had had similar arguments. We were able to talk about why we were each feeling this way and to resolve the issue without feeling like the argument was a deal breaker or a major crisis—our friends had fought over the same sorts of things, and they were doing just fine now. It’s reassuring to have models like that.
Conversely, when we moved out of the city for three months last year and were away from our friends, relatively isolated in a small town, we got on each other’s nerves a lot more than usual.
Doherty’s term, “friends of marriage” captures the truth that marriage is, as sociologist Kai Erikson says, “something of a community affair.” In his book Everything in its Path, Erikson elaborates by saying that marriage is “…validated by the community, witnessed by the community, commemorated by the community” (219) and that the community is almost like a magnetic force that can help to hold the couple together (or perhaps tear it apart).
Given this, I think that one thing that we can all do to lower the divorce rate is to “befriend” the marriages of our friends and families—whether that means offering a listening ear, offering to babysit on a Friday night, or working cooperatively on a garden.
