LOVE, MARRIAGE, AND SEX IN DIFFERENT AGES
Does marriage grow better as the years pass? When sociologists at Miami University of Ohio reviewed a variety of studies of marital happiness, one-third bleakly confirmed the old jokes: happiness peaks at the honeymoon, and over the years it steadily declines. Familiarity and the pressures of child rearing lead to disenchantment. By the twentieth anniversary, what was there is either disintegrating or gone. And people never recoup what is lost. Couples stay locked in disenchantment after their children grow up and they are alone together again.
But half of the studies showed there is truth to the idea of a second honeymoon. Marital satisfaction dips dramatically after the children are born, reaching its lowest ebb during the turbulent years when a middle-aged couple has adolescents in the house. But it rises again after the nest is empty. We can regain what we once had when we are free from the pressures of bringing up children and have the luxury of focusing on one another again.
For instance, Robert Atchley and Sheila Miller found long-lived marital happiness in full bloom among a large group of mainly white, middle-class, elderly couples. The Miami University researchers interviewed their subjects - residents of a pleasant mid-western community - periodically from 1975 to 1981 seeking answers to these questions: How do upheavals such as retirement, changes in health, or a recent move (being a new arrival in the town) affect a marriage? How similar in values, interests, and goals are husbands and wives who have been married for decades?
Neither retirement nor moving affected the high degree of marital happiness that was typical. And these long-married husbands and wives were amazingly alike, - on a long list of goals and favorite activities, they gave identical answers an average four-fifths of the time. The people married longest were most similar, giving scientific weight to the cliche, "When they've been together that long, they even begin to look alike."
The researchers loved doing this study, saying, "It was a genuine pleasure to be around these couples. They accepted one another fully, were obviously devoted to one another, and were very much enjoying their lives together."
Poor health was the only cloud in these sunny marriages. If a husband or wife became sick, the partner's happiness tended to take a nose dive. The men were most vulnerable; they seemed more dependent on their wives than vice versa, because having a healthy spouse was absolutely central to their marital happiness.
It makes sense that illness would shake a happy marriage. It is hard to be giving when your energy is consumed by aches and pains. It is hard to enjoy your marriage when your job suddenly shifts from life companion to nurse. And when illness strikes an older couple, the nursing job does fall hard on the well person's shoulders, even when there are grown children around. Studies agree, when a husband or wife is alive, sons and daughters tend to shy away from really stepping in. It is all the more remarkable, then, that even in the midst of the upheaval, many elderly couples do regroup, close ranks, and stay firmly committed to each other.
Even the most distressing illnesses can draw a couple closer. For instance, when researchers probed the emotions of husbands caring for wives with dementia, one-fourth of the men said their wives' illness actually heightened their feelings of closeness and intensified their feelings of love. Being trustful time into the role of caregiver takes away from friends and other activities making the marriage the total center of life. And when the possibility of losing a loved one looms close, what we have is transformed from a given to a gift. What may have been taken for granted for decades becomes precious and irreplaceable. Illness tugs strongly at our sense of obligation, too.
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