ThirdAge: You both come from very loving, caring, high functioning families, who were heavily involved in their communities. How do you think people who come from less enlightened and caring backgrounds, people who have maybe had one or two divorces, are going to receive this book? What would you say to people who say that you're congratulating yourselves on having had such a good marriage, and who might react to it with sour grapes?
Cokie: We were very aware of that. We were very careful to not be smug. And to make it very clear that we're not preaching here. What we're doing is telling stories. And we're telling our story, and we're telling a lot of other stories, and I think some of the other stories are some of the most moving stories that you'd ever want to read.
TA: Yes, a few of them made me cry.
Steve: Only a few? [Laughs]
Cokie: What we're talking about here is the impulse to be married, the impulse to be together, to form a couple. In every civilization on earth, that impulse exists and is carried out. Of course there are people who will say, "Easy for them to say." Nothing's ever easy for anybody to say. You always have to go through a lot of trial and error, a lot of hurt, a lot of learning the hard way.
TA: In your lives, you've had your fair share of tragedy, as well. I mean, you didn't get off easy.
Cokie: Right.
Steve: But everybody's life is shadowed by tragedy. We talk in the book about how six weeks before our son was married, my father died. My father had been waiting for years and years and years to attend a grandchild's wedding and he never lived to see that. We had to walk down the hospital corridor supporting my mother on either side so she could see him for the last time. They had been married for 57 years. And six weeks later I was walking down the aisle with my son at his wedding. Both of those are profound parts of marriage. You can't have one without the other. You can't have the walk down the aisle without the walk down the hospital corridor. They're both parts of marriage and they're both parts of living together and learning about each other and helping each other...
Another motive for this book was my students. I remember writing a column that I gave to my writing class on the theory that it's a good idea to let the students criticize the professor occasionally.
They read this column and said, "That's really very nice, but I can't relate to that. My parents are divorced. I fear marriage. I fear not only marriage as an institution but I fear the whole notion of getting married, because my parents will argue with each other and it will be awful."
I was stunned and saddened by that conversation. So I'm very much not naive about this, but part of what we wanted to do was just tell some good news. So much of what the popular culture says to young people is the dark side of marriage, the trouble, the divorce rate. And it's real. But there is another side. We're not saying to people--we're smug, we have a magic formula. None of that. We're saying here are some stories about good marriages and here is some encouragement.
Back to Intro
ThirdAge: You both come from very loving, caring, high functioning families, who were heavily involved in their communities. How do you think people who come from less enlightened and caring backgrounds, people who have maybe had one or two divorces, are going to receive this book? What would you say to people who say that you're congratulating yourselves on having had such a good marriage, and who might react to it with sour grapes?
