Fix Your Parents’ Marriage (and maybe yours too)

Yael

Wed, Mar 29 2017, 8:52 am

By Alan M. Singer, Ph.D. www.FamilyThinking.com

Why are so many empty-nesters divorcing after twenty, thirty, and even forty years of marriage? In this essay I will endeavor to quantify this growing problem, offer an explanation for this calamity, and suggest seven practical steps to help you the reader in your rescue mission. "In 2014, people aged fifty and above were twice as likely to go through a divorce than in 1990 according to the National Center for Family and Marriage Research in Ohio,” (Abby Ellin, The New York Times). While we don't have any hard data like that from within the frum community, I can confirm the same trend among frum couples from my observations in my thirty years as a marriage and family therapist. Why is there a growing trend of divorce among empty-nesters?

The Third Age

Several years ago, much of the secular media was excited (yes, excited) about the separation of Vice President Al and Tipper Gore after forty years of marriage. I was distraught; the media was energized. Deirdre Bair’s essay in the New York Times brought my blood to a boil. She authored a book on late-life divorces and described a term I had never heard, “the third age.” This refers to life after divorce. Bair described the “courage” that these divorcing couples showed as they left the supposed security of marriage. “To them,” she writes, “divorce meant, not failure and shame, but opportunity.” Most of the couples she interviewed did not divorce impulsively. They mentioned the desire for freedom and control over themselves for the rest of their lives as reasons for their decision to divorce. Typical for our consumer oriented society, many long-time married couples now want to be with someone new and exciting.

Ms. Bair alluded to the idea that we leave the all-about-me phase of our youth to get married and raise children. Then, when our adult children leave the nest, we should seek that all-about-me time again. “Women and men alike want time to find out who they are.” And many of her interviews ended with, “It’s my time, and if I don’t take it now I never will.” Bair concluded, “So let us not feel shocked or sad about the end of Al and Tipper Gore’s marriage. Let us, instead, wish them well and hope that they might enjoy their third age.”

Do you think adult children are happy to see their parents split the family and pursue their third age? I don’t. In Bair’s all-about-me world, there is no consideration for the many stakeholders in each marriage such as parents, children, and siblings. Their lives, in my view, will never be the same when the patriarch and matriarch divorce. In fact, when parents divorce they significantly increase the odds that their children’s marriages will end in divorce. Even grandchildren are affected. Researchers Paul Amato and Jacob Cheadle of Pennsylvania State University are authors of a study, The Long Reach of Divorce (Journal of Marriage & Family, February 2005). “Our study suggests that events in the lives of grandparents can have long-term implications for the lives of grandchildren. Grandparents’ decisions to divorce predict less education, greater marital discord, and weaker ties with parents two generations later. These findings were particularly striking when we considered that the great majority of grandchildren were not yet born when these divorces occurred.” They concluded, “Parents who fight frequently or divorce may increase the risk of a variety of problems, not only for their children, but also for their children’s children.”

Now that I understand “the third age”, it perplexes and nauseates me as much another term that has been popularized in recent years, the starter marriage. That’s when you give marriage a try and hope for the best, like a starter house which presumably you will quickly outgrow. When marrying, each couple stands before their family, friends, and Hashem to pledge a commitment “no-matter-what”. We each need to take steps to nurture our own marriages to prevent them from simply fading like the furniture.

Don’t I Deserve to be Happy?

This is the scenario that plays out in front of me frequently during a counseling session. ‎The wife (age fifty-five) states: "I am getting older and I have been in a miserable marriage for over thirty years with a man who doesn't understand me or respect my needs. With life expectancy on the increase, why shouldn't I be happy for the last thirty to forty years of my life…don’t I deserve that?" I respond with, why are you bailing out of your marriage commitment to search for happiness before trying to search for happiness within your thirty-year marriage? We know that we reap what we invest and using the word “deserve” implies that someone walks around gifting healthy marriages to random people. Tragically, two-thirds of divorcing couples have not attempted even one hour of counseling. If a couple decides to work on repairing their marriage, I ask them for this commitment: two to three months of weekly therapy sessions where the “d” word is completely off the table.

What Started this Distressing Trend?

‎Lacking hard data, permit me to suggest from my own experience with frum empty-nester couples on the brink. What brought them to this brink? I believe that many frum couples put their marriage on the back burner for decades while child-rearing is placed on the front burner as the top priority. This is in no way the children's fault. Adults make conscious decisions and decisions have consequences. Consider that a frum family with a larger than average family size, may have a time span of thirty to forty years from the birth of their first child to the wedding of their youngest child. That is an enormous amount of time to relegate one's marriage to the back burner. When children are primary and marriage is secondary, the risks of marital dissatisfaction often skyrocket.

The Consequences of a Child-Centered Marriage

A child-centered marriage is exactly what it sounds like - everything revolves around the children. My colleague, Dr. Bill Doherty of the University of Minnesota explains, “There is a difference between adjusting your marriage to meet your children’s needs and losing your marriage to parenthood. In a two-parent family, marriage is the foundation of the family - the base of the family pyramid. It is the core relationship that preceded the children and the parent-child relationship. Our children rely on the stability and security of our marriage for their own stability and security. But children are natural and eager consumers of whatever time, attention, and goods and services that parents will provide. It is the job of parents to discern how much is enough, how much is too much, and to enforce the difference. Setting limits on how much time and attention we give them, and how many opportunities and activities we provide is not stressed in our culture. Children nowadays own their parents.”

This precise behavior of placing children as the top priority is what morphs into a grandchild-centered marriage with husband and wife not even pausing to reprioritize their own marriage after child-rearing. ‎Empty nesters transition from having children as the center of their universe, to grandchildren occupying that position. The consequences of a child-centered marriage are pervasive and prolonged. Doherty emphasizes, “The greatest danger of having a child-centered family is that when the children leave home, so does your marriage. The second danger is that, even if we stayed together after the children leave home, we are permanently diminished as couples. We choose vital parenthood, but we devitalized marriage. The third danger is the most benign, but it is still regrettable. We can refine our marriage after the children leave home and the light shines bright again. This outcome is positive but it is sad for two reasons: the many years of unmet marital potential and the lack of good marital role models for our children.”

If you feel that I have been describing your marriage or the marriage of someone you care about, here are seven practical steps that can help to bring your empty-nester marriage back from the brink:

1. Daven for Your Marriage: Enlist divine assistance from HaKadosh Baruch Hu. I’m guessing that gezundt and parnassah are in most people's top five bakashos of the Almighty. Might I suggest that for a few months you insert fixing your marriage before health and parnassah. The basis of my recommendation is the myriad of reliable research that demonstrates that happily married persons are physically/psychologically healthier, as well as better off financially than their unmarried counterparts.

2. Men: Ask your Rav to recommend a text that you can learn with your wife on a regular basis to help strengthen your relationship. And remember the idea of the Michtav M’eLiyahu who explained the root of ahavah (love) is hav (to give). We love when we give; the more we give, the more we love.

3. Seek professional help from an observant marriage therapist ‎(Why an observant therapist? Please refer to my Jewish Press essay of 1/20/17).

4. Seek help from your village. Ask your siblings and close friends what helps them to nurture their relationship with their spouse.

5. Relationships 101: My colleague, therapist Michelle Weiner-Davis urges: From this point onward, before every action that you take (assuming your goal is to fix your marriage) ask yourself this key question: Will the action I am about to take bring me closer or further from my goal? If it will not bring you closer to your goal - STOP! Don't Do It!

6. Honest Expressions of Regret: Forgiveness is not a feeling it’s a decision! Lack of forgiveness imprisons you and takes its toll on your physical and emotional health. You walk around with low-grade depression. Forgiveness is a gift that you give yourself.

‎7. Triple-A Benefits: Show Appreciation, Admiration, and Affection (Malka Schulman). When your car engine won't start, you call AAA for road assistance. When your marriage needs a jump start, utilize the AAA benefits of repair.

Pirkei Avos teaches us: The day is short and the tasks are considerable. Pesach is the Chag of togetherness; a time of great celebration as families gather at the Seder. Here's a great quote I heard recently, “There's no present like the time.” Empty-nesters, please use this time wisely.

Closing Thought

Let's teach our children that we value our marriage without devaluing them, that more for us means more for them, that we were mates before we were parents, and that in the solar system of our family, our marriage is the sun, and the children are the planets, rather than the other way around.

Dr. Alan Singer has been a marriage therapist in New Jersey and New York City since 1980. He has an eighty-percent success rate in saving marriages of couples on the brink. His mantra: I am the last person in the room to give up on your marriage. He counsels via Skype, blogs at www.FamilyThinking.com and is the author of Creating Your Perfect Family Size (Wiley). He serves on the speaker’s bureau of the National Council of Young Israel and is listed on the National Registry of Marriage-Friendly Therapists. Married for thirty-nine years, he and his wife are the parents of four grown children. dralansinger@gmail.com (732) 572-2707

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