Not one happy marriage... but it ends here

I have written before about my own family history but I had this epiphany the other day - it's not just my family, it's my in-laws too. 

There are no happy marriages. Not one. Misery comes in many shapes and sizes, they are not all the same, but what all the marriages I know of in this family have in common is that not one of them was happy.

My parents on their wedding day, August 1980. I was born in October 1980.

Looking through, here's a brief summary of the marriages that led up to our family...

My parents

My father was married before my mother, his wife left him. I never met her. His version of events was (of course) that he was the completely innocent victim of a wicked woman, but I think she got out while she could - and good for her. My mother had known my father from their late teens, had seen his marriage end, and in the words of an old family friend, 'took pity on him'. He was drinking heavily, got her pregnant, and she refused to abort me; at that time, the only other 'respectable' option was to marry. She did that, despite pressure from all sides - including himself and his mother - to abort, partly because she thought that maybe she could fix him. She could not. His personality underlying the drinking - a womaniser who would bed any female that remotely allowed it, who saw it as his God-given right to own his wife and children, and who was forever the victim - remained. 

She drilled into me to never, ever be dependent on a man. She was trapped by her love for us, her children, as he would have taken us away from her with his greater resources: and I learned that children are a trap, that my life and autonomy would end the moment I had them. 

Coming out of that childhood, it took me a decade of being completely rebuilt from the inside (having become a Jesus follower at 21) before I got to a place of even considering getting into a relationship. And when that time came, and I met Mr., I was still absolutely allergic to any signs of manipulation, victim mentality, dishonesty - and for that, I am grateful. I was too broken to even consider compromise; as I've said many times, I'd much rather be single than in a bad relationship. Mr. has been God's provision here, an upright, kind, open man who has never tried to manipulate me but respects me in every way.

Mr.'s parents

This is something I didn't realise until recently, as they are getting older and I'm given more insight into their relationship. Mr. has mentioned incidents from his childhood, but only in passing, and I didn't see quite how deep these things went.

These two married, like my parents, because she was pregnant. The difference is, they were both very young, only just 20. Her (step-)father refused to attend the wedding. Mr's dad is extremely controlling and jealous of Mr's mum; even if she speaks with the 90-year-old male neighbour for five minutes, he will shoo her back into the house saying that's enough now. She has no freedom - keeping house is her role, and he is by her side 24 hours a day, every day. It was only recently when we went out for dinner together, and Mr's dad went to the toilet for a few moments, that Mr. slipped his mum a phone and enabled her to make an unsupervised phone call to her own sister: the first in two years! 

So what looked from the outside like a happy marriage is basically an arrangement of control and coercion, keeping Mr's mum dependent and unable to leave - not just in practical ways, such as that she has no access to their money and cannot drive, but also by not-so-veiled emotional blackmail along the lines of, 'Well if you leave I'll kill myself because what's the point in being around then.'

My grandparents - father's side

My father's parents didn't have the longest marriage, because his father died in his 40's of a heart attack. My grandmother never remarried. It is only in recent years that I learned how their marriage looked from the inside, from deep conversations I've been having with my aunt. 

Like my father, my grandfather was a womaniser who would bed any female he could get. He would take my aunt (his little daughter) with him to some of these women's homes, to legitimise his presence there, so that my grandmother - who was aware and jealous - wouldn't know; but she did. My aunt would be told to play quietly in the front room for a little while; that became normal for her. He would tell her not to tell her mother they had visited 'aunty so-and-so'; and she, from a young age, knew to keep his secrets which drove a deep wedge between her and her mother.

No one in that family was happy. After my grandfather's early death, my grandmother clamped down on her son - my father - and he never became independent of her. I remember in my own childhood, my grandmother would let herself into our flat and do deep cleans (to humiliate my mother) and once, we even got home from holiday to find the entire place had hideous new wallpaper!

In the wider circle, I know that my grandmother's older brothers who were in their late teens / early 20's during World War 2 came back from the war 'changed' and she had distanced herself from them so much that I barely knew that side of our family. I learned recently that they were brutally violent against their wives, who always envied my grandmother who at least didn't have to contend with that.

My grandparents - mother's side

My grandfather on that side was an enthusiastic Nazi (he was older than my other grandfather, who was only 16 at the war's end) who fought in Russia, spent some time as a prisoner of war, and came home profoundly damaged. I don't know much about the marriage, but what I know of him - deep misogyny that affected my mother so much she refused to get involved with any household or cooking duties for the rest of her life - doesn't fill me with confidence that this was a happy marriage. My mother told stories of how desperately she wanted to learn the accordion, which her younger brother was allowed to do but she wasn't because she was only a girl, and how her mother would smuggle her out of the house for accordion lessons while the father was out or asleep.

Mr's grandparents - father's side

Mr's father had a brother, whose marriage and social relations were very similar to his own: they had no friends, and lived completely isolated lives. While I don't know much about their parents' marriage, the fact that the two brothers who came out of it ended up with much the same type of marriage where they basically clamped down on one woman and never let her out of their sight again, while completely cutting off (or never building) any friendships outside, tells me a lot.

Mr's grandparents - mother's side

Mr's mother and her sister were fathered by an American GI, who did marry their mother and moved her to the States. But the marriage was so bad that their mother packed herself and both daughters back off to England - a huge, incredibly courageous step at that time, all on her own. This must have taken incredible strength, and speaks to how dire the marriage would have been. Her mother later remarried a man who dominated her, often violently. Her sister got out of this situation by enlisting to the military, whereas she herself married young - perhaps partly to get away from this violent stepfather, but landing herself in a situation that wasn't that much better. Although, it must be said, there's never been violence there.

Other relatives

I have mentioned wider family throughout, but there are definitely other marriages I saw while growing up that affected me deeply.

My aunt - whom I lived with after my mother's death - was married to my mother's older brother at 16, because she was pregnant. He was 27 at the time. She married him to get away from her own brutal family situation, he was never faithful to her, and after three children she divorced him. She remarried twice, both times into violent and turbulent relationships, and after the divorce from her third husband she reconnected with my uncle and they remarried in their 40's. By that time, my sister and I were living at our aunt's already (one major reason they legally married again was to defend our placement at their home from any court challenges my father would bring); they had a strange, co-dependent relationship where he basically paid for everything - she was extremely manipulative -  but never lived with us. 

My generation - my oldest cousin was the only person I ever knew who seemed to have a long-term, stable marriage. Until I saw it from the inside, I would have said it was happy enough; but living with them it became quite clear that these were simply two parallel lives lived in the same home. She was happy enough with that; but he eventually had an affair and left her. She never understood. 

Another cousin lived with a much older man for many years, caring (physically in every way as she is a trained nurse) for his elderly mother, and basically just being useful to him as his workhorse until he finally decided he had no other realistic prospects, and married her. 

Another cousin has been married three times (I think?) and is in a new relationship every few years, desperately looking for love but always choosing the same type of man - who will leave. 

And then there's my sister. I see myself in her, she's living exactly the kind of life I would have chosen if it wasn't for being completely changed by encountering Jesus. She has a dog and travels the world on her own, completely independent, holding down a job and having many friends but never letting anyone close. 

It ends here

The unhappy, dysfunctional, broken lives that led up to us could carry a legacy forward - but this is where it ends. I can't take credit for it; it's all God's provision. I marvel daily that I get to live the way I do, able to love freely and being loved - without being taken advantage of. That is what my children see, and what they think of as normal.

I want them to know what love, true love, from another person looks like because I certainly didn't know it. Like the bank tellers who are famously trained to recognise fake money by touching lots of real money,  my prayer for my children is that they will instinctively recognise unhealthy patterns in any potential partners, and avoid them. They get this immense privilege of growing up loved by both parents, in a stable home - this isn't the norm, not today, nor has it ever been I think. Because while splitting up and divorce are much more commonplace now than they ever were in the past, our family histories spell out clearly that just because divorce doesn't happen, this does not mean that a marriage is stable or healthy - let alone loving.

Love like this is a privilege beyond words. I am grateful. And I know where it comes from.

Deo Gratias.