Marriage 101

I had an interesting conversation on my way to work with my grandma.


My maternal grandmother is the last grandparent that I have with me. Orville Cobb, affectionately known as “Gee Ma” “Nana” and “Bill” is absolutely revered by her grandsons. The feeling is mutual. I think it is because she knows what craziness her daughters, these boys’ mothers, inherited from their dear father. Granddaddy Cobb was a trip, but that is another story.


I have often said of Bill that she never has an unkind word for anyone. I have often joked that if the devil himself stopped by she would call out to me, “David! Please bring Mr. Mephistopheles some cool lemonade so he can be on his way. He is really sweating something awful.”


When Granddaddy Cobb was sick, bedridden with the last stages of Alzheimer’s, I was in college in the city. The house at 1235 was always home. It wasn’t as nice or as large as my folks’ place, but there was a peace in the lived in bungalow. My granny had raised about 40 children in this house, six of them whom she brought to life. The rest she just gave life because in so many cases, no one else had time for them. She never got a stipend or a license to be a foster parent. Things were different in those days. She did it because raising children is what she did. Except for a brief period when they were saving for a house, my grandmother did not work out of the home in the forty plus years she was married. She felt, towards Granddad’s last days that perhaps she was committing some form of adultery when she began volunteering at the local school.


“Earlee and I had an agreement,” she said one day while we had coffee after Granddaddy’s nap. “He would work outside of the home. He worked two full time jobs and had his own business. Plus his church. I would raise children. Once a year he sent me somewhere, first class, on my own, to get away and get a break.


“We didn’t love each other because of some new age formula. He loved me for having his children. I loved him for taking care of me, for his word being good, and for protecting anything that came his way.


“For a lot of young folk, that isn’t enough. They need ‘soul mates’ and ‘lifetime connections.’ It worked for us, however. I didn’t start out being his best friend. I became his best friend because we supported each other, even when we disagreed. And we disagreed a plenty.


“A lot of husbands weren’t perfect. A lot of wives weren’t, either. Don’t fool yourself. There is a reason we had phrases like, ‘That baby sure favors the milkman…’


“I never asked Earlee to be anything other than him. I also didn’t expect him to do everything. In my opinion, some of these young marriages don’t work because there is no balance. For example, I have seen many a man go too far for a woman, and it causes problems. He buys her whatever she wants. He is working, doing most of the housework, and basically just leaving his wife with too much time on her hands. This becomes a problem because it builds a lot of resentment, but he is afraid: if I stop doing these things, will she leave? But if I feel like I am being used and don’t say anything, will I go crazy?


“You have to understand there is a difference is someone loving you and liking what you do for them. Women used to make this mistake, as they became more independent. ‘Let me help my man’ and your man is driving off in a car you bought him with your best friend, who doesn’t work at all. Then something changed. I don’t mean these women who get with knuckleheads who create babies and then leave. I mean the women who get several good men and just use them up and find another. I mean women who figure it is a man’s job, and have connived some not so smart men, that love means he will do all of the things he has to do, plus some things she has to do, so she can go out and do the things she wants to do. There is a difference. Sadly, the single mothers get it but too many other women do not. The concept that with freedom and independence comes responsibility and society has not forced these women to be responsible. They momma can take care of the baby their husband will take care of the bills and what money she makes is spent on her making herself look good so she can get paid attention by some other men. Her husband can tell you the things she likes and what makes her tick, but she doesn’t even know his favorite color. She assumes that her responsibility in a marriage is to have sex with her husband, and that’s it.


“A marriage can’t work that way, but so many young people are trying and failing. You can’t have a marriage based on selfishness. I grew up in harder times. We saw some bad husbands and daddies, and the goal was to not have that. A lot of us wanted out of our parents’ houses, and that was part of what made a man appealing. We knew, however, we had to work our end of the bargain, and no one gave us talk shows as venues to gripe about having to pull our fair weight in an agreement we wanted. Nowhere in the equation was the idea of getting someone with the intent of him making our every wish come true and when he didn’t, somehow his manhood was lacking. People have always acted on self interest, but I do not, at least for my circle in my time, remember things being so mercenary. And unbalanced. Really nice girls can’t find a man who has basic respect for them. Girls who are selfish to the core keep stumbling upon Prince Charming and testing their luck, confident another chump will come along.


“Maybe I am old. It just seems to me like the women of my generation, we were too BUSY with real world things to be bothered with a bunch of silliness, and too grown to play games. We had children. We had lives. We had work to do. We didn’t have time to make marriage into something it is not or experiment for the sake of just ‘being happy’.


“Or this concept of people marrying their best friend. Now becoming a best friend after marriage? Sure. But do you have any idea what a disaster it can be, marrying someone that knows how bad you are? Or how low you can go? Or the things that you do sometimes because it’s just in your nature to do something that can really hurt someone else?


“Some things it’s better to let people learn over time. If you are true to the idea of staying married, you have long enough to learn your person’s old evils, and enough of their new ones, too.”

I mulled that one over.


“So how do you make it work?


“You have to talk. You have to be honest with each other. You have to have a certain amount of maturity, because a grown person talking to a child isn’t going to get very far. Children have short memories and are selfish by nature. You have to have an understanding. Some things will be one person’s responsibility, and vice versa. The other person can help, on occasion, but if you agree to do the budget and pay the bills, our spouse should not be routinely writing checks because you forgot to pay the bills. That’s YOUR job. Don’t divide jobs based on gender but ability. If you are bad with money, bite that bullet and let your wife manage your finances. If her idea of a balanced meal is fast take out, she has to get over the ‘I’m Every Woman’ syndrome and accept that you will be cooking daily. And you better have that meal ready at the times you agree, because that’s YOUR job.


“Be ready to hear some things you don’t like, but make it a point to only mention the things you don’t like that affect your marriage. If you don’t like her choice of décor for the house, get over it. If you think her mode of dress is too racy for a married woman that may bear a conversation. Choose your battles. You are marrying a person, not your dog. It is not the job of a spouse to recreate another person in their own image. A famous man said there is only one of you in the world, and Lord knows that is enough.”