Marriage May Evolve, But the Song Remains the Same

Marriage May Evolve, But the Song Remains the Same

The soundtrack of my childhood is straight from Broadway. When I was I kid there was always a musical coming out the speakers on long car trips and one of my favorites to this day is Fiddler on the Roof.

Fiddler is the first Broadway production I ever saw, a touring company at the old Packard Music Hall where I grew up in Warren, Ohio.

Toward the end Tevye, sings to his wife “Do you love me?”

Theirs was a marriage of the times, 19th century Tzarist Russia, arranged and bought and paid for. No choices.

“You’re a fool,” she sings.

“I know,” he sings. “But do you love me?”

“For 25 years I’ve cooked for him, cleaned for him, sewed for him. Twenty-five years my bed is his. If that’s not love, what is?”

“Then you love me?”

“I suppose I do.”

“Then, I suppose I love you too.”

I got to thinking about that show, that song, the other day. I was reading a story that weighed the pitfalls of marrying for love against the wisdom of marrying for practical reason, say financial security. How the shift from the historic later to the former have fueled divorce.

And I suppose it’s true. But here’s a key factor the story doesn’t hit, never even mentions. Historically, marriage was about survival, as individuals and as a species, we needed marriage to make it. Marriage itself was a practical matter and love was frivolous, no choice involved.

Mid-19th century philosphers predicted marriage would crumble when we began marrying for love. They said 50 percent would fail. Dead on with current American statistics.

But that’s not the whole truth. Marriage isn’t only crumbling because people fall out of love. The bigger thing is, we no longer need marriage to survive.

Society has changed radically in the last 150 years. Technology and modern living have created a world where we’re comfortable enough, safe enough, to focus not just on survival, but also fulfillment. It’s evolution.

I’m not talking luxury. I’m talking getting by, just like our great-grandparents before us. Survival always comes first any many of us can do it solo.

How many times have I heard the women on this site and the real women in my life agonizing about their situations, but remaining because survival depends on it? Or so they think.

I ask myself all the time, am I married for survival or for love, and the answer is always changing. Sometimes one, sometimes the other. Right this minute, my relative happiness isn’t the priority. I don’t see a feasible way to survive with my kids on my own.

And I’ve done it before. Two years in a one-bedroom apartment, struggling but happy. Sometimes my husband infuriates me. We circle the same problems with the same tensions and anger constantly, and sometimes I can say honestly that I don’t feel love for him, I hate him.

And sometimes, I'm not mad at him; I’m mad about him. Crazy stupid love 16 years in and even with all the shit between us. Comes and goes just like everything in this life.

But when it comes down to it, in the end, if survival is a given and marriage a luxury, I’ll choose to live the healthiest, truest life I can. My marriage will have to be malleable enough to meet the needs of my life, not the other way around. The way it has been for thousands of years. Most of human history.

And I suspect given the same freedoms to choose, Tevye’s wife would have said the same.