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Are Marriages Made to Last?
ThirdAge: Cokie and Steve, your book describes the challenges you've faced as a family where both parents actively pursue successful careers. You must have a lot to say about what makes marriages last. Cokie, so I was impressed that you say toward the end of the book, "All marriages are not made in heaven." And sometimes, they're not made to last.
Cokie: Right.
TA: How do you reconcile that with your view of marriage as a sacred institution?
Steve: We're saying that there's a goal, there's an ideal.  But we're all flawed people. None of us lives up completely to the ideal. At our wedding, Arthur Goldberg helped preside. We tell the story in the book of something that he said then that I repeated at my son's wedding, which is, "Never cause a woman to weep, because God counts her tears." Well. It's a lovely sentiment, which I believe in deeply. But have I totally lived up to it? Of course not.
Cokie: Has anybody?
TA: Are you saying you've made her cry?
Cokie: [Laughs]
Steve: Oh yeah.
Cokie: What a shock.
Steve: There's a goal here. You keep everyday, trying to reach that goal. But inevitably, you fail and...
Cokie: In some cases, people should fail. They got married for the wrong reasons. If you're in a hurtful, awful relationship, obviously, if you're in an abusive relationship, that just goes without saying. But if you're in a relationship that's psychologically abusive, where you can't be the person you should be, I think that you shouldn't be forced to stay in that relationship. The difference is do you say, how do I make this relationship work, and is it worth it to me to work, or do you say--I'm unhappy, I'm out of here. [Laughs]
Steve: We both believe marriage is a sacrament, we both believe it's a holy commitment. We also believe that we're flawed people. What we object to is the notion that marriage is a disposable institution, that at the first sign of trouble, the first sign of failure, the first sign of unhappiness, someone says, "Well, I'm out of here because this isn't meeting my needs." That's a recipe for disaster. But if you give it your best shot, if you stay with it, you try and try, and in the end conclude this is not the right relationship, it takes a lot of courage to get out of it.
TA: It's good that you have a very forgiving attitude. Usually most religions do not encourage such a compassionate attitude.
Steve: Actually, we're just trying to be realistic. [Laughs]
Cokie: The Catholicism these days in America is totally hypocritical about it and yet I totally approve of the hypocrisy. On the one hand, it's saying, we want to value the institution of marriage and make it hard to dissolve it. And we don't believe in remarriage after divorce. On the other hand, they give these annulments, and we all know that there's a wink and a nod going on, but I actually think that this is one of those cases where it's compassionate hypocrisy. [Laughs]
Steve: [Laughs].
Cokie: Because you do want institutions in the society saying, "Marriage counts, it's important. We value it very highly." But you also want them to have the compassion to let people out of it if it's really not working, as opposed to just, "I'm not doing good today." Next: Pleasures of Marriage >
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