My eldest son, Locke, has a knack for being able to strike up conversations with pretty much anyone he meets. He also has a knack for attracting people of learning who just naturally want to impart some part of their knowledge to him. Over the last few years, this has happened with increasing frequency; they are often men in their 50s to 60s who are in a profession that they love and which they have been in for usually for 20 to 25 years. However, interestingly, these men are also often divorced after having been married for somewhere between 20 to 30 years and have had kids.
So what’s the advice they like to impart? Aside from talking about their profession and general life tips, they always tell my son to be very careful to pick the right woman to spend his life with. In each case, they had provided well for their families and felt their spouse had let them down. These gentlemen have also told my son that their relationship with their children was “pretty good”, but generally none of their children followed them in their profession.
Their advice sounds perfectly reasonable on first hearing doesn’t it? These men have been there and done that and know how painful it is when the person who committed to be your partner decides to bail. That’s right isn’t it? But who the hell stays in a marriage for 2 - 3 decades if they are honestly with the wrong person? We’re leaving out abusive situations here. Oh, I know, people like to say it’s for financial reasons or it’s the kids, but as someone who’s had real reason to consider divorce - was in fact told to divorce by pastors - I can say that those reasons are really just excuses. You stay because they really are right for you; it’s the circumstances that are wrong.
Priorities
Notice the fact that these men my son has talked to love what they do professionally. Many of these professions take up a great deal of time. This is important. Notice also that they were married for 2 to 3 decades and this was often close to how long they were in their profession for. The love of their profession never seemed to be communicated to those closest to them. These 3 things tell anyone paying attention what really happened:
- Job first.
- Material things second - to be able to ensure the first.
- Children.
- Wife*.
* A woman here can be anywhere from a close fourth to a distant one.
When a person prioritizes like this, people are not on the top and those that are supposed to be close, get exactly that message: They KNOW they’re not because they can see it in the actions and they can FEEL it in their interactions with that person. They might even know that they’re loved, but they will also know that they are not as important as the first things are. If they were, then more time would be spent with them and less on the the first things. In other words, it is where the time is spent and the quality of it that tells people where they are on your list of priorities.
When a woman is truly in love, enough that she knows she can commit for the rest of her life, she puts the one she’s chosen in first place. This holds true even if she’s in a profession she feels is her calling in life. What does she want in return? Why, the same thing of course - to be first in her chosen one’s eyes. This puts her in a lower priority than the one she loves. If children come along and she’s a decent mother, she will move down the list even further. When she realizes that being number 1 in her partner’s eyes is not forthcoming and will not ever be forthcoming, she feels extremely let down. So her priorities go like this:
- Partner first.
- Children second*.
- Material things - to ensure the safety of the first two.
- Herself.
* When the children are small - newborn to as late as 10 or so - they will often move up the priority list to first place. If her husband keeps her priority low, which she will recognize immediately because they will have a continuously higher priority than her, the children will remain higher than her partner.
When you’ve already placed yourself low on the list, you rather resent being put there by your partner as well, especially if they are at the top of yours. It doesn’t matter if it’s the man or the woman; it just hurts. If this happens in a marriage and is not rectified, divorce is a very likely outcome.
Miscommunications = Misfirings
To give an illustration of how a couple can be completely right for each other - The One for one another - and get it all wrong, I’ll refer you to the first few years of our marriage.
During the first part of our marriage, Marc believed I didn’t love him as much as he loved me. I know because of a fight we had 5 years in.
After losing my first child, I was unable to show much emotion for many years, however, Marc was always The One for me: He was HOME in every respect to me. His arms were my place of refuge and contentment. I found everything about him attractive - his mind, his heart, his body, everything. I had tried to explain that I would never have married him unless he was all those things to me, but nonetheless, I failed to communicate this to him adequately. On top of that, due to seeing an irrational loss of emotional control regularly growing up and knowing first hand the consequences of such behavior, I always stayed calm emotionally - especially in a fight.
This resulted in a very rocky 5 years, because Marc was in love with me to the point of feeling crazy, which in turn, made his behavior appear irrational. This gave me problems in respecting him during these episodes. This simply made things worse, because for Marc, the one person he wanted to respect him, especially his emotional side, was me. His behavior over those 5 years, made me think 2 things: 1) I wasn’t right for him and 2) He didn’t love me that much because somehow I was making him pretty miserable. My behavior told Marc that I did not have the same level of love for him as he had for me.
Now, I come to the fight. Marc is an extremely eloquent man who always finds the right words to express how he’s feeling. It never mattered if he was angry or happy - the words just always came. Even so, with the constant emotional pain I was in, I couldn’t hear what he tried to tell me. However, during this one fight, Marc stumbled all over his words and took several minutes to yell out, “DON’T YOU KNOW HOW MUCH I LOVE YOU!”, which was followed by him slamming the door on his way out to cool off.
I was sitting on the stairs that faced the front door as he did this and said quietly after the door slammed, “No, I didn’t… But I do now.” While Marc was gone, I spent my time calmly going over the last 5 years and reexamining everything in light of his very clear declaration and realized something: He was crazy in love with me. Even perhaps more so than when we were first together. Being ridiculously rational, I thought about how I could confirm my theory. When he got home, I told him that I wasn’t angry and I wanted to ask him some questions, the gist of which were the following:
- Did he feel I loved him?
- Did he feel I loved him as much he loved me?
- Did he know how he made me feel?
- Did he know what was hurting me?
- How was I hurting him?
- What would help him to understand my heart clearly?
- What would help him to know that I loved him?
- What could I do to help him let me know his feelings?
Those questions served to act as a catalyst to open doors long thought not only shut, but barred in both of us. There remained another 5 years of potholes to ride over, but with these questions, things began to change: We were no longer trying to metaphorically drive a luxury car through a ravine uphill. Now, we were on the road in something more suited to us - an SUV with GPS. In other words, we became what we always were: Adventurers who could go anywhere together and always find their way home together.
If we had not done this, our marriage would’ve wound up a smoking ruin, EVEN THOUGH WE WERE PERFECT FOR EACH OTHER.
Picking the One
Honestly, it really doesn’t matter which partner has placed the other partner low on their list because either a man or woman could be guilty of this: It simply matters that one partner has placed the other in the wrong order in their heart. And I have seen it go both ways in my own experience and often for the same reasons. Unfortunately, it does often seem to end up being the male partner who is more guilty of this than the female one.
The main point here is, these people have picked their One: Themselves because they define themselves by what they do and that is their profession. They haven’t taken the time to define themselves by who they are. Those who take the time to define themselves by who they are, tend to pick the boundaries of that by who first and what second, they love.
If you have a deep and profound calling such as being a healer, a teacher, an artist, or something similar, then you also have the responsibility to make your partner at least equal to that calling, but preferably above it. If you cannot do that, then you need to consider the idea that this person isn’t who you’re really looking for as The One.
Each of those men my son talked to, told him to chose very carefully when it came to his life partner: Make sure she’s the right one. Not one of them told him that his own behavior also dictates how things go. For instance, if he makes his work the greater priority, he could well lose his partner. So, I told my son that it’s equally important to make sure that he’s BEING the right one too. It’s what I’m telling you here: If you’re lucky enough to find someone who not only fits you like a puzzle piece, but with whom you also have serious chemistry, then you need to know 2 things: 1) You are probably with the right person for you and 2) you have to have your priorities straight:
- Partner.
- Children (keeping in mind the early years).
- (+ 4) Profession you love that takes care of the material things.
People first is a very good life philosophy in my not terribly humble opinion. To have a “thing” we do, that we love, is also important. This is because we each have a need for personal expression and when we have the right one, we can find much happiness in that. If people are first, then meaning is also imparted in what we do and someone hears all the whispered nuances that are what we’re really trying to say. The reason for such a philosophy is, our lives are not measured by how much material junk we’ve accumulated, but by how much love we’ve given away. We’re not here on this earth for very long, so what we do with our time here is crucial. To love and to love well, is invaluable and that IS something you can take with you when you die.
7 users commented in " Divorce and Priorities "
Follow-up comment rss or Leave a TrackbackDearest Dawn, This is very well written and as always so honest. I loved the way you laid it out very clearly. And looking at it from both sides. Of course it made me look at my relationship and I smiled because I saw that both my sweetheart and I put people and each other first. Although we both are self motivated and love what we do. We both KNOW that IT is NOT our Life. Loving each other and being together and just “being” in each others presence is what’s most important to us. We love being together. A lot of that has come from being really honest with each other, going through pain that makes us wiser people, and from just seeing what really matters in Life. We both know daily how we would feel if we lost the other. So we live accordingly.
I think this article will be helpful to both men and women. You are deeply insightful and wise. The depth of your well-lived life is reflected in your writing. It always is. Right to the heart of the matter, with out judgment or shame. I love it.
Hugs to you both,
Robin
Hi Robin!
Sorry for taking so long to reply. The reason is that I’ve been reconstructing one of the books I was working on that was lost in the upgrade to my computer…
I really love and agree with you about “…IT is NOT our Life.” I believe when we really love someone & they really love us, we give over our lives into their keeping and are given theirs in return. I also think you’ve both realized the best and most important way to keep your priorities straight: What would it be like if the one you love was no longer there? Now live as though they could be gone tomorrow.
Take care,
Dawne
What an incredible article this is - I read every word as if you were talking to me. It’s so EASY to put everything else first, before your man, because intimacy and loving someone and being seen by them is just so damn scary. We feel so unloved to start with, it’s just unreasonable to our brains and hearts that we would actually BE loved. Thanks for this, Sarah
Oh - by the way - this is just a shot in the dark - I just finished reading the Ender Quartet by Orson Scott Card - and a prominent - quite remarkable - figure in the series is “Locke” - I wondered if your son’s name had anything to do with that book? (Of course, I know there are so many people and reasons that would inspire us to a great name - it just flashed thorugh my brain, tho…) Sarah
Hi Sarah:
I’m glad you liked the article, Dawne did a really good job on it. As for our son’s name, there is no direct connection to the book(s) you mentioned. Truth be told, we haven’t even read them, though that may change, seeing as how jr.’s name shows up in it
cheers, Marc
People separating after 15-20 years together does send out a certain message, as people wonder whether problems were showing up years before the separation. It brings new length to the term “dragging out”. The time one spends on various priorities sure does show how they rank them, and creating a priority system that works well with others is one item that takes much structuring of one’s time.
Hello & Welcome to the site!
I think that you’re quite right for many couples letting their relationship drag on rather than deal with the issues they needed to early on. Perhaps one of the things I should’ve included is a woman’s propensity to expect their partner to read their mind. I have found that so many women just assume that their partner know what is going on with them or, at best, expect them to understand the situation from their standpoint. Men & women are different in their approach to relational & communication situations. When either person doesn’t recognize this, things will eventually fall apart. On the site, I wrote 3 articles on communication rules for men (7 Communication Commandments for Men), but I think a set for women is in order.
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