Today we no longer assume, as we did in the past, that marriage is forever. We know that in our complex, rapidly changing society a lifelong marital commitment has become increasingly difficult to sustain. After fifteen or twenty years of togetherness, the contemporary martital relationship is almost invariably corroded by dullness or differences, as many couples in their forties are discovering for themselves. Husband and wife may each be pulling in opposite directions, or simply feel suffocated by sameness or realize that they have grown apart and become hostile strangers who share little.
Faced with an impasse of this sort, many men in their middle years choose to divorce—not because they are seeking to escape marriage, but rather because they want to exchange a boring or unhappy marriage for a more satisfying one. Intent on revitalizing their life by shifting course, they hope that changing partners will give them a second chance at happiness.
Through the years the development of men and women frequently proceeds in mismatched steps, as we have seen. At mid-life a sexual reversal occurs, which means that many women are becoming more assertive and seeking an active role in the outer world, while men are becoming more emotional and turning inward. Whereas this disparity can often be the basis for mutual support, providing the foundation for renewing a relationship, it can also be the basis for mutual resentment.
For the man who is beginning to become aware of emotional needs he never knew he had, one solution—if he cannot achieve the intimacy he craves within his marriage—is to
divorce and remarry. “Serial marriages” are the wave of the future, predicts Alvin Toffler, and that is the style many Americans have already adopted. Now such splits and rematches are occurring increasingly during the middle years, and the evidence is overwhelming that these second marriages are usually better than the first ones. The explanation is quite simple, say the experts: People who remarry are more mature, experienced, and confident. They know themselves better, and are less likely to need excessive support or confirmation from a mate. They also tend to work harder at making the marriage successful.
Today it is becoming increasingly common for a man in his forties to leave his wife for a woman half his age. More popular now than ever before, such marriages seem to rejuvenate men who worry about declining energies and diminishing powers. Moreover, in contrast to the scornful judgments passed by a stranded wife, the choice of a younger mate does not necessarily mean that a man is emotionally immature.
In such matters appearances are often deceptive. What is condemned at first glance as regressive behavior may actually be a more complex case of late development. For example, Herb C. is a reporter in his early forties who had been married fourteen years when he fell in love with a much younger woman. Now planning to divorce and remarry, he docs sound suspiciously like an infatuated teen-ager when he describes his romance:
When Laura walked into my office two years ago it was no more than ten minutes into that first conversation when it was quite clear to both of us that something very extraordinary was happening. There was a chemistry that was almost literally crackling in the air. We are fond of telling each other now that we were made for each other, and I genuinely believe there is something in her head and psyche that very much mates with my own, and I think both of us recognized that from the outset.
We really are very much alike. And there is very little to remind us that there are twenty-three years between us, because she is young and enthusiastic and terribly bright, and / am young and enthusiastic and terribly bright. We even share the same prejudices and the same view of the world, and we’re tickled by the same kinds of things.
I’m going to sound like a sophomore if I tell you what it’s been like. It’s been falling in love for the first time. It’s been finding a woman who is my woman, who is everything I always wanted. It has been a hopelessly fairytale romance, quite lollipop, you know. We really feel that way about each other. It is a classic love affair which, to us at least, far surpasses anything we know in history. Like the Brownings were beginners, compared to us!
On closer examination, however, it becomes apparent that Herb is not replaying the joys of adolescence, but is developing his capacity for emotional intimacy for the first time. His choice of a younger woman relates both to his earlier lack of direction in some areas, and to his recent growth in others.
Herb’s work efforts had been sporadic, and his employment record spotty until he was about thirty-five. Thus he had always depended on his wife, who held a well-paying job, for economic security. Because of sexual inhibitions on both sides, their marriage had settled into a sterile living arrangement—one that Herb found quite comfortable for years. In his late thirties, however, he finally began to experience some success in his career. This increased his self-confidence and sense of personal worth. In turn, as he grew less dependent on his wife and more discontent with his marriage, he became eager to form a loving relationship.
Given this history, it is understandable why Herb was attracted to a younger woman like Laura, who was relatively inexperienced with men. Whereas an older woman might have overwhelmed him at a time when he was just asserting his independence, Laura bolstered his new-found sense of strength. Nourished by her unqualified admiration, he was able to let down his guard and learn from her. Here, too, Laura’s age was vital: Like many other contemporary young women, she was extremely open and expressive emotionally. This allowed her to act as Herb’s emancipator in the realm of feelings, freeing him to establish the kind of intimacy that many American men cannot manage until around forty anyway, despite their business success. Delighted by his transformation, Herb describes the pleasures of a give-and-take relationship:
An interesting thing going on here is that there is a great deal of role interchangeability. Sometimes I will be the teacher and Laura will be the disciple, and sometimes she will be the teacher and I will be the disciple.
She is a totally free kind of person, quite uninhibited. What I mean is we had an occasion to take a drive together on one of the major thruways recently, and it was the first time I ever had fellatio performed on me during a 90-mile drive! She expresses herself in every way. She hollrs when she wants to holler, and she performs fellatio when she wants to perform fellatio. Just whatever occurs to her to do, when there’s no significant reason not to do it, she does—and I find that very good. I am somewhat more circumspect in my life.
One of the ways in which she’s my teacher is giving greater expression to one’s feelings. We verbalize everything, which is something she has helped me to do and that I never did as freely as I do now. I’ve come to understand that a feeling of tenderness, a feeling of love, is of only half value if it’s not shared—and that’s something I have learned from Laura. Because she does it, and she requires it. And if I don’t pat her bottom often enough, or tell her that she’s gorgeous, I hear about it. And I’m glad to hear about it. It’s very important to me to give her what she wants and needs.
It was almost a little intimidating at the beginning because I really had never been exposed to a woman who demanded so much, and was so open in her demands. Laura wanted it all and she said so. She’s an extraordinary person, and an enormously giving person. But I was aware at the outset that she wanted more than I had ever been called on to give before, and it worried me a little bit because I didn’t know if I was prepared to accept that kind of relationship.
Because of course it means two things. It means that I have double the pleasure and double the fun. But it also means that I have double the anguish. If she stubs her toe / hurt—which means my toe hurts twice as often as it would otherwise! I didn’t know whether I could handle that, so it was something of a conscious decision on my part to try.
Now Laura is my best friend and I am hers, and we respond to each other and nurture each other and comfort each other. I have gotten tremendous feedback from her about myself as a male and as a sexual person and as an intellectual person. And it has been common for my friends to say, “You seem like a different person now—much warmer and more open.”
The way I feel about what’s happening is that I am taking the final step toward being a grown-up, and I hope that will be expressed in every aspect of my work life and my private life.
The younger woman aside, it is apparent at this stage of life that many men are discovering a new need for closeness. Suddenly aware of the lack of intimacy in a marriage that has become emotionally distant, or discordant, a man is likely to become more critical of an unsatisfactory home situation that, in earlier years, he tolerated with forbearance.
This was the case with Michael B. who, as we saw in a previous chapter, divorced his wife after fifteen years because he began to resent the absence of communication between them. Theirs had been the typical marriage of the 1950s, based on traditional sex roles. He had gone out into the world, and changed in the process of becoming successful. She had stayed at home, limiting her life to the household and kids. Approaching forty, Michael complained that Shirley had become a “nonperson.” But, he confessed, his devoting himself exclusively to his business had been costly too: It had left him “less than a whole person.”
Since then, Michael has made up for lost time. He has now been married for a year to his second wife, a divorcee in her thirties who was an accomplished workingwoman when he met her. For him, this second marriage is like a second life. Based on deep love and honesty, it has transformed him as a person and caused him to revise his priorities. Newly aware of himself as a profoundly caring human being, Michael describes how this metamorphosis happened, and what it means to him:
I had met Eve briefly at a party while I was still married—and I was attracted to her. So right after I left home I pursued it, and we started seeing each other. Something special was there from the beginning, but there were layers of each other we had to peel off to get to the bottom. For about six months we went through some very, very difficult times together, and we finally found there were no more layers left. We were simply able to talk about anything—anything on our mind—to each other.
We’ve been married a year now, and we can do it to this day. It’s incredible. Whatever comes up gets discussed out in the open so nothing ever lies there to fester and be upset by.
Eve and I have both changed enormously. The experience was unique for both of us. It was the first time either of us really had a relationship with somebody. And whatever gave us the courage to see the problems we faced also gave us the strength, somehow, to survive . them. When you take two people with 3 decades of layers of experience, and suddenly say, “Now open up,” because you see something happening to you—that’s very traumatic.
I now have an entirely new set of values about what’s important in my life—how you lead your life, how you have relationships. I don’t run away from them now. My business is still important to me, but it doesn’t take precedence anymore. Before I had superficial social relationships. Now it’s a much smaller group. I feel it when people feel close to Eve, respond to her—and I realize the absence of that before. Because we’re not one; it’s not “me and a wife.” We’re two. It’s Eve and me.
One thing I’ve found with this opening up of emotions which I’ve never talked about is that there is a possibility for violence in me that never existed before. If I had been walking down the street with Shirley and someone had attacked her, I assume I would have done the right thing—but it wasn’t anything I thought about. Now I’m very protective, and if I feel a threat of any kind to Eve I immediately prepare to do violence! To defend. To attack. If I see some guy trying to make a pass at her, I’m ready to go.
Before nothing bothered me—maybe because I didn’t care. I wasn’t in touch with my feelings. Or they were so submerged they would only come to the surface in an extraordinary moment. Now I’m more aware, my senses are more aware. All the time.
I really don’t know what more you could have in a relationship. I consider myself very lucky. Most of the people I know are unhappily married. Because of what’s happened to me, guys in this company have come in to talk to me—and what they wanted was to find the guts to look at themselves. I detected that painfully, and it was a shock to me. I’ve become sensitive to this kind of unhappiness, which I didn’t see before, because I was one of them. You never open up any of the feelings. When I did I looked at myself and everybody else from a new perspective, and I suddenly realized the extent to which most men cut off their emotions. They work out compromises, and even when they are unlivable they usually don’t do anything about them.
The decision I made to divorce changed my life. It changed everything in my life—including what my future holds and the way I want to handle it. Taking the chance that Eve and I did, I took a chance with my life. Now I find myself more willing to take a chance on other things within that life. It’s a terrific way to live—to do what we really want to do, and not worry what other people think, and not feel tied to being president of this company forever. My success has been earned, and I’ve enjoyed it—but it’s not enough anymore. There will be a point in the not-too-distant future when I want to cut down my obligations to everything except Eve and myself so we can, as she says, “smell the flowers all over the world.”
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