Why Marriage is Hard
"If we want the rewards of being loved,
we have to submit to the mortifying ordeal of being known”
—Tim Kreider, New York Times
“My God, would you please stop picking your lip.” Over the past few years, my wife has said this to me at least 172 times.
My lip sometimes cracks and I pick at it. It’s a disgusting habit—something I do, presumably, to soothe my low-grade but persistent anxiety. Whatever the reason, I acknowledge that it’s a nasty habit, but it still irritates me when she points it out.
The myriad incidents where she sees my weaknesses lead me to believe that the hardest part of marriage isn’t dealing with your partner’s faults, though that can certainly be challenging. The hardest part is seeing your imperfection through their omnipresent, sometimes judge-y eyes and understanding that—no matter what—you cannot hide from them. This is the “mortifying ordeal of being known,” as Tim Kreider refers to it in the above epigraph.
Consciously or not, we spend our teenage and early adult years rationalizing our imperfections so we can see our reflection without throwing up. Through denial and rationalization, we weave a narrative shell that makes our foibles, large and small, seem normal or even virtuous:
I’m anxious because I was raised Catholic.
I’m overweight because I’m not caught up in shallow body stereotypes.
I cried during Wicked because I have the soul of an artist.
Sure you do.
While each of these might hold a nugget of truth, they are tales we construct to protect our delicate egos. They work as long as we keep the world at arm’s length, not letting anyone close enough to see what’s really going on.
But then you get married. What you get, in addition to a lover, co-parent, and partner in taking on the world, is a full-time, 24/7/365 observer and occasional commentator on your life. Basically, you get someone who knows you better than you know yourself, who doesn’t have the carefully crafted excuse-machine in which you’ve wrapped your inadequacy. And that is awful scary because while you can bullshit yourself, you cannot bullshit your spouse.
Your siblings, if you had any, know you up to a certain extent. They saw you pee your pants in the school play, knew you cheated on a test in seventh grade, and witnessed you sneak champagne at your cousin’s wedding, then eat coleslaw with your drunken hands before you barfed in the bushes (btw, who serves coleslaw at a wedding?). You, likewise, have the goods on them—so you’re charitable to each other, if only because you share the same genetic flaws.
But your spouse has the current data.
He or she’s going to learn that, deep down, you are still a petrified child who craves the love of a distant mother, or you’re scared of abandonment, or desperate to be acknowledged by the world. They will see that, even if you’re a pretty good person who values honesty, on some level you are a spineless hypocrite just like everyone else.
You will beseech your partner, “Avert your eyes from my hideous countenance!” But they can’t. They’re there—every single day, with a front-row seat to the carnival shit show that is your life.
In Justin Timberlake’s song “Mirrors,” he sings about his hot wife, Jessica Biel. “It’s like you’re my mirror, my mirror staring back at me.” It’s supposed to be romantic, but I find it petrifying. When I see certain aspects of myself reflected through my wife's eyes, I'm revolted. It's like how comedian Doug Stanhope expresses his reaction when he sees his aging face in the mirror: “That can’t be right.”
Being known is indeed a mortifying ordeal. While it’s relatively easy to forgive others for their imperfections, it requires trust that they will also forgive you for yours. When someone accepts you for all of you, that love can be hard to embrace.
But said acceptance has profound benefits. A few months back, Stacey said to me, “What’s happening with your lip isn’t normal. You should have a doctor look at it.” So I did. The dermatologist prescribed an antibiotic ointment that knocked out the lip-cracking right away. Unfortunately, it returned a few weeks later.
On a subsequent visit, she cut a chunk of my lip off and ordered a biopsy. The test showed the presence of serious sun damage and pre-cancerous cells, which she proceeded to burn off with liquid nitrogen.
Holy crap! I could have gotten squamous cell carcinoma on my lip. That would have been ugly at best, and fatal at worst. And I probably never would have gone to the doctor unless my wife saw what I was unwilling to admit to myself.
Yes, being known is mortifying, but it might just save your life.
THE END (but keep reading…)
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