What Truly Beautiful and Wise Oprah Doesn’t Get about Marriage

On an Oprah rerun a few days ago Kristin Richard, former wife of Lance Armstrong, spoke heartfully of how she left her career to build her husband’s life and dream. Then, four years later, slammed with celebrity, a toddler and twins, in a foreign country, without defining work of her own, she no longer knew who she was. She and Lance divorced.

Kristin spoke of how important it is in a marriage to keep a sense of one’s self and not to give it up for a marriage or a man.

She was missing a big fat piece of information.

Psychologist Robin Smith then presented her new book and told her story of young marriage, loss of self, and divorce. She and Oprah interviewed two young brides-to-be, fiances in tow, on their doubts and fears about their upcoming weddings. One of the brides broke down, saying that maybe she wasn’t at all ready for marriage. The other said that she and her fiance agreed that they would deal with whatever problems they had now after the wedding. That really fired Robin and Oprah up. How could she go into marriage like that?

My response was, “Hang in there, girl!” As if doubts and fears in life don’t keep coming. As if we stop growing in marriage. As if the issues of who I am and how life is going to work aren’t continual throughout marriage. I wanted to give both girls my book.

Oprah was absolutely right when she said that doubts and fears are signals for some serious reflection on what is going on. But truly beautiful and wise Oprah is missing an important piece.
Your “self” is not a fixed thing that you have and lose. Your “self” evolves. Loss of self is part of evolution, the breakdown and chaos that occurs inevitably before emergence of a new form.

You’ve experienced it before. It’s inevitable whenever you take on increasing complexity and responsibility: childhood to adolescence, high school to college, college to work, work to marriage (and work), marriage to motherhood(and work?), motherhood to empty nest (to your real work), empty nest to retirement (or different work), retirement to aging/disability.

At each stage there’s a loss of the old self, chaos, and a reorganization to a higher level of consciousness, an increasing ability to handle the new demands and complexity of the new life stage. It’s physiological, often hormonal. The brain takes on more complexity by growing more brain connections. Estrogen and oxytocin levels that make us mothers and nurturers clash with our professional educations and beliefs about independence and work. The internal and external are out of sync for a while as the internal catches up.

In the chaos of transition, you think that your marriage is the problem, but it’s not him and it’s not the marriage. Your relationships to all of your relationships are changing. Relationships to your mother, to work, to children, to the world. For a while, before it all falls into place, nothing is right and nothing works.

My heart goes out to Kristin. A marriage, three children in three years, culture shock, and all while dealing with celebrity. How could she not have been in chaos? And what kind of support could she get? Who would have sympathy for a woman in her situation–rich, privileged, married to a hero?

Like childbirth before Lamaze and death and dying before Kubler-Ross, we live through transitions in fear and ignorance. “Support” comes in the form of diagnosis and treatment of symptoms or, worse, legal advice.

My advice to brides is: Definitely you should ask questions of each other before you marry. But don’t expect to find compatibility in everything. You won’t. And, even if you do now, it will all change with time, circumstances, hormones, and interaction in a big world.

Every time you up the ante in life, expect to lose yourself. Whether married or single, childful or childless, with or without a career, at times in your life, nothing will be right. But this chaos is good. In losing your self you have the opportunity to discover a new integrated higher-functioning self, one more capable of handling the complexities of this fast-moving, demanding life.

When you know the signs and symptoms, when you know that it leads to a higher level of functioning, you can relax. You have perspective. You experience the wonder of it.

If you make it through it all with a partner, then you’ll both look back together and laugh. Whew. You’ll be that much stronger for the next remarkable, wondrous onslaught. And, then, when your husband, friends, children, and parents go through it, you’ll be there for them.

But so much for blog as sermon. The joke is that I’m in the middle of a huge life transition. Menopause. Empty nest. I just want to work. For me work is play. My near-retirement husband just wants to play. For him play is play. It’s a mess. 30 years of marriage up for questioning. But at least we see the mess for what it is and we have a sense of humor about it. It’s making me more curious than crazy. What next? We don’t know. But how interesting is that?

To the bride who said that she is marrying despite her doubts and fears, I say: Jump. Jump into it with your eyes open. Yes, there’s risk. You can’t possibly know what it is until you do it. You will change. He will change. But that’s life. Expect chaos. Embrace it.