365 Nights Read online

  So for me, getting married early was not in the cards, through fate or choice, and Brad and I married when I was thirty-one. I do know four people who married early, to their high school sweethearts—my mother, my mother-in-law, my cousin Jenn, and my college roommate Diane. For everyone else, I shudder to think about the trajectory of their lives, including mine, if they married their first love so young. I was a late bloomer, and late bloomers should never marry a high school sweetheart because they still have some finishing up to do. If you want a depressing twist on It’s a Wonderful Life (which is already depressing, if you ask me), imagine your life if you had married your high school sweetheart. If I had married Alex, and I really thought I would, who knows how crazy and miserable I might be and he certainly would be. So I am always intrigued when people marry their high school or college sweethearts and it works out because you’re making really, really important decisions and you’re still really, really young. How do they do that?

  So as I matured (ever so slowly, like those plants that only bloom every seven years or so), I started working on the list of qualities I must have in a mate. Women do this whether or not we admit it, and hopefully the list grows and matures as we do. For example, my list from my twenties included stupid mandatories like must be “a scratch golfer” and “from the South.” I thought these two traits were extremely important. Go figure. People might scoff at the list but, remember, often your mate is only as good as the requirements you put on it.

  I remember a dear friend of mine calling me in tears one day. This was during Marriage No. 1, and her first husband was on her case about her weight. “He says he’s not attracted to me now that I’ve gained a little weight,” she sobbed into the phone. This is a good time to mention that this friend of mine is a knockout and she and Hubby No. 1 met at the gym where they both worked. Hubby No. 1 was a nice enough guy, I guess. But I think the most important thing he had going for him was that he was smoking hot. “I can’t believe he married me for my looks!” she wailed into the phone. “Sweetie, tell me this—why did you marry him?” I wanted to add, “It wasn’t because he was a brain surgeon, now was it?” But I didn’t. She had married Hubby No. 1 for many of the same reasons he had married her, I suppose. And yes, she loved him and all that stuff, too. But she had made a list, and then she outgrew her list, and once she realized it, it was too late.

  Even though I had purged my list of some of the shallower requisites and updated it with more substantial ones, Brad still didn’t fit the mold. Sure, he wasn’t from the South and wasn’t a scratch golfer, but he also came from divorced parents, went to a college I had never heard of, wasn’t bust-a-gut funny, wasn’t short and stocky, and so on. Why did Brad measure up? He fit a mold I hadn’t tried before—decent, smart, loving, kind, interesting, and incredibly devoted to me. Yes, that last one was a new one.

  We choose men for lots of the same reasons they choose us— attractiveness and attraction, employment, family background, faith, religion. But intimacy compatibility? Well, that’s generally present in spades at the beginning and it never occurred to me that could change. It is difficult to imagine ourselves twenty years from now, married with kids, a job, a house, and a very mediocre sex life. In fact, it is difficult to imagine all the bumps in the road ahead of a married couple that could affect our sex lives: illness, unemployment, stress, infertility, fertility, financial woes, infidelity, success, aging. Let’s face it: We never know what life is going to throw at us, and all and more of these issues can knock a relationship sideways, and spin intimacy completely out of the consideration set.

  Most of us don’t know any of this, we get married anyway, and we enter the covenant of marriage with unlikely expectations. Whether your parents were married or divorced, it seems many of us are woefully unprepared for all that is demanded, expected, and negotiated in marriage. It is an unwieldy lifelong assignment, and it brings out the absolute best and worst in us all. Premarital counseling seems like a noble endeavor, and many churches and synagogues and other places of worship require that you attend some sort of workshop in order to get married there. But there have been times when I thought that psychic counseling may have provided greater value.

  Brad and I had premarital counseling that consisted of, among many things, taking the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator, which I really advise against, especially if the invitations have already gone out. I mean, when you find out that you and your future spouse could not be more incompatible, isn’t it a tad too late already? That wasn’t entirely the case for us, but I did find out that I am an extrovert and Brad is an introvert. The important insight we got out of those tests is that we “recharge differently.” Apparently, being around him (and other people) recharges me, while Brad needs to recharge . . . without me.

  Were we discouraged from getting married? Of course not. We had momentum on our side—the whole wedding thing had taken on a life of its own. That wedding was happening, just ask my mother. And we were so darn in love that we wouldn’t let any differences get in the way of us getting married—we could work through them, gosh darn it. Rather, they should really have done a sexual compatibility test. Brad will want sex and will resent having to ask for it. I will not want to have sex after two babies and fifty-hour workweeks and will resent having to have it. Now, talk among yourselves . . .

  So instead, I would like to suggest Marriage Internships. Unlike living together before you get married (which I still think is a shaky idea despite my feminist views about many things, because it lacks permanence), you and your fiancé live with another couple. Preferably in a small house, modestly furnished with young kids. It’s kind of like auditing a class. You spend day in and day out observing this couple navigate jobs, house, babies, cleaning, social lives, and each other. Sometimes it’s bad. Sometimes it’s good. Sometimes it’s just life. It’s a hard, close-up dose of reality. If after that you’re still smitten with your partner and the idea of marriage, then give it go.

  I asked my mom once what was her secret to her long and happy marriage. She glibly replied that she had picked the right guy. Well, how did you know? I probed. “I don’t know, sweetie, I loved him. Plenty of my friends thought they had a good one, too, but it was the wrong one.” Luck of the draw, God’s hand, call it what you want, but she was grateful for it. Brad’s parents were also high school sweethearts and they divorced when he was ten, so who’s to say?

  Back then, people tended to stick close to home and marry young. That way, you didn’t know much about the great big world you were missing when you married Most Likely to Succeed , who became Drinks Too Much and Can’t Hold Down a Job. In some ways, is life better if you don’t know how many choices eluded you?

  Nowadays, you go away to camp, you travel every summer, you go to college, you travel abroad, you have different internships in different cities, you have several different jobs, again in several different cities. You have global friends, global experiences, and a global love life. You are exposed to so much, how in the world can you narrow your options and choose the one person with whom you’ll spend the rest of you life? It’s simply too much. Choices can kill the ability to make basic and rational choices that won’t later haunt you till your dying days.

  My friend Cindy thinks there are too many choices available to us all and research says she’s right. Apparently, Wal-Mart can be bad for us as we spend exponentially more hours making low-impact decisions because there are too many choices. Frivolous choices that don’t necessarily enhance or change our lives. Sunscreen. Baby wipes. Shampoo. And the potato chip aisle? Forget it. Anyone remember the Charlie Chip Man? He rode around in a Charles Chip postal truck painted yellow and brown and delivered a tin of chips to your house—plain, BBQ, and sour cream and onion. Surely one would fit the bill, and if it didn’t, we were better off anyway.

  For some of us, life narrows our options. And maybe that’s not so bad. All the options could give us ulcers. But my dad is a big believer in options. He’s made a career out of develop
ing, honing, and creating options for himself and for our family. Networking, building, and planning what will come next. The man could teach a master class on options.

  When applying to college, you want to have options, he told me. Don’t put all your eggs in one basket, and you will always have options. When you’re looking for a job, leave yourself some options. When you’re in a job, stay focused and work hard. But remember, you always have options. Options are a reward of sorts. Hard work, smart decisions, and commitment yield choices. And having choices means you’re not stuck. Stuck in a job, stuck in a place, or stuck in a rut. Choices are a good thing. But how about stuck in marriage? Getting married is antithetical to options. Marriage means you’ve made a choice and you’ve decided there are no better options. But despite the fact that marriage and options don’t really jibe, my dad was still a fan of the institution.

  Now here my father and I are, standing in the foyer of First Baptist Church at approximately 5:57 P.M. on Saturday, June 20, 1998. I am, as you might guess, dressed in white. My dad is quite handsome and looks smashing in his tux. The brides-maids have already made the march. The trumpeter is in the balcony above our head preparing for my dramatic entrance and my mother is at the front of the church in one of the three mother-of-the-bride gowns purchased for a day she thought might never come. And I am sweating right through a very, very expensive wedding dress. The wedding planner is fluffing my train and Dad turns to me.

  “You don’t have to do this, you know, honey. Just say the word and we’re out of here,” he says.

  Say what?

  Who is this guy? He looks like my dad and sounds like my dad, but no dad of mine in his right mind would offer his thirty-one -year-old daughter the chance to skip out on the wedding of her dreams and the party of a lifetime—mere seconds before the walk down the aisle. Not in front of all these people and not on his tab. He must be whacked . . . or drunk.

  So again—say whaaat?

  “I just want you to know that, no matter what, you always have options.”

  My eyes are as big as the gorgeous pink roses stuffed into my very heavy bouquet and I’m wondering if my makeup is melting off my face. Now, I suppose it is better to discuss marital options before one has actually said “I dos,” but my goodness, this was cutting it close. I am about to march down the aisle, publicly declare my undying love to Brad, and promise to cherish him ’til death do us part. Whether or not we should have added lamb to the carving station, well, those are options I can discuss.

  My maid of honor is nearly making the turn. The wedding planner is pulling at my arm, positioning Dad (who is quite sober and sane) and me in front of the giant double doors that are about to swing open and reveal my sweaty, melting self to all the world—or to at least five hundred people standing in the church. You know those moments people have when they think they’re going to die—the ones where their life flashes before their eyes (and they sometimes faint)? Well, that happens to me, without the fainting part. I have flashbacks to my childhood (happy), visions of swimming slowly underwater with my hair all crazy and undulating around my head (peaceful), visions of eating birthday cake (tasty), vision of holding hands with Brad (joyful), and visions of dating (horrific). Well, those visions of dating are what snap me out of it. I shake my head, take a deep breath, get myself centered, and contemplate what the heck has just happened.

  And then it comes to me. I realize that, true to form, my father has simply given me a gift. He’s telling me that no amount of money spent or people assembled is more important than my happiness. And up until that very minute, that very second, in fact, there has been nothing that we couldn’t undo. He’s offering me a mulligan if I need it. And at that very moment, I’m overcome with emotion for my dad—the very first man I ever loved. But I don’t need a do-over on this one. In fact, I feel really good about this option. So the trumpeter starts his gig, the wedding planner gives us the signal, the doors crank open, and I turn to my dad and break out the best smile I’ve got. “Thanks for the offer, Dad. Let’s go.”

  Perhaps it is the power of choice, and possibilities for newer and better, that can chip away at the previous choices you’ve already made. For instance, how long do you love your first couch, your first car, your first job, your first husband?

  Newer and greater things come out all the time, and in our consumer society, it’s practically sanctioned that we swap out the old with the new. So it might feel as though you’re still hanging on to a choice that you made from 1992 when you were so young and stupid, and maybe life without your husband or wife would be so much, well, so much brighter and shinier and newer?

  And perhaps that’s the scariest thing—despite the commitment we made for better or for worse, there is still the idea that our spouse could wake up one day and decide on an upgrade. We know it happens, but we don’t think it’s going to happen to us, especially when we’re young and vibrant and “new.” But when we hit forty, well, we’re not that shiny and new anymore, are we, despite forty being the new thirty? And the marriages we were sure would go kaput are still going strong. And the marriages that sometimes seemed impenetrable suddenly implode.

  Working in PR has its moments. On occasion you get to do some neat things like meet your favorite B-list actors—Kim Alexis, anyone? Go on great trips—North Dakota, for example. Or you get to coordinate over-the-top firework shows or even blow up buildings. Recently, I helped blow up an old coliseum in our city. It was actually an implosion; the coliseum would collapse inwardly with force, as a result of the external pressure being greater than the internal pressure. In this case, complete obliteration of something that once stood for something. Are we all party to some sort of implosion in our marriages? Do we sometimes collapse inwardly as external pressures bear down on us? Do we contribute in some way to the destruction of something that was, at one time, useful?

  Believe it, it’s incredibly stressful blowing up a building, and we worked all hours to prepare to implode a giant structure so that my client could build something shiny, new, and useful. We had worked months and months on the strategy to implode this building. Where would the crowds stand? Which VIPs would push the button? What would we say about the old and the new? It ran on ESPN, Fox News, and more than seven hundred stations around the country. It was voyeurism at its finest hour—short, sweet, and utterly complete.

  We imploded the old space because it wasn’t needed; but we really imploded the building because we had outgrown it. Do we do that in relationships? Do we implode them, too, when we’ve outgrown them and it’s time to move on to something else? Of course we do, especially when we’re young and we lack maturity and insight to value things that have the worn patina of time.

  According to the press packet, there were 524 charges timed to explode in 52 delays of 500 milliseconds, split into two sequences running concurrently to reduce the concussion from the blast. Overall, the process was expected to take about 13 seconds to complete, dropping the roof onto the floor and toppling some of the walls. In one tiny moment a building that took years to build was reduced to rubble. When relationships end, people can sometimes pin it to one tiny charge. Others say the 524 charges exploded in such subtle milliseconds that they didn’t know it had imploded until they were standing in the rubble rubbing their head from the concussion of it all.

  When a relationship collapses, the voyeur in us sneaks out. We want to know, we have to know: What went wrong? What did you do? How did it happen? Why did it happen? For some, it’s shameful nosiness. For others, it’s a need to know so that we can protect ourselves against such heartache and tragedy—and it still comes across as shameful nosiness, doesn’t it?

  But even if we do know what happened and why it happened, what do we do then? If knowledge is power, how do we use it to our marital benefit, and do we even know how? You don’t have to be a marital pioneer to know that infidelity can cripple a marriage, for example. But what about the little triggers or charges we could avoid every day that might sav
e our relationship a little bit—do we have the sense and the discipline to steer clear of those? I often think about my wedding day, waiting with my dad for those heavy church doors to swing open and for my life as a married person to officially commence. I could have jumped in the car that day and created an implosion of another kind. So here I am.

  Independence Day!

  “Did you have a happy birthday, honey?” I sang out as I woke up on July Fourth.

  I rolled over, gave him a smooch, and grabbed my robe. “Where are you going?” he mumbled from under a pillow.

  “I’m getting up. It’s a beautiful new day! Sleep in if you want.”

  “I think I will. And I know it’s a new day, thank you. Could you please not be so happy about it?” He rolled away from me.

  Happy is an understatement. I mean, come on, I had done it!

  I offered to be intimate with my husband every day for a year and I did it! My first day off was Independence Day, July Fourth—how incredibly appropriate. Let freedom ring, friends! This marked both the birth of this journey, and the independence from it. I was relieved, I was giddy, I was downright ebullient with the notion that I didn’t have to have sex today! When we had kicked off this arrangement, I wasn’t sure where we would end up after this daily affair. While I woke up in the same place as I had exactly twelve months ago, to the day—in my bedroom in my parents’ house on a mountain vacation—I was not emotionally in the same place. I had gone from feeling like the best, most tuned-in wife in America, to the thoughtful Professor Oz. “Well, what have you learned, Dorothy?”

  My perky little bounce had less to do with the fact that I was free from daily sex (okay, maybe a little). I was bursting with a deep satisfaction that I had carried through on this gift. “I did it, I did it, I did it,” I sang under my breath as I moved around the bedroom that morning. Brad knew I was pleased with myself, but I didn’t need to flaunt it. After all, reaching Day 366 of this arrangement didn’t exactly make him Mr. Happy Pants. But there are some things—like kids growing up or hair getting gray—that happen regardless of my level of involvement. And then there are things that require me to show up and do the work—like learning how to play the flute, getting a high school diploma, getting married, and giving this gift. And I have to say I was pretty darn proud of all my hard work. Soooo, “I did it, I did it, I did it!”