Pluses to Bill. At the ripe old age of twenty, he could distinguish, at least at an intellectual level, between lust and love.

An activity this past week brought that occasion back to mind. Three mornings a week I exercise at the CardiacRehabilitationCenter. A primary activity requires walking on a treadmill. This is probably the most stupid and boring task of ever invented. It would be intolerable if we didn’t have some fun conversations and a television going.   One morning my neighbor on an adjacent machine and I paused our conversation to attend to two curvaceous young women in minimal clothing who appeared on the television screen. When that vision disappeared, I asked my neighbor, “Do you think they can cook?”

That is the heart of our current problem with the divorce rate. Too few people recognize the difference between lust, love and marriage. We all know what lust is, let’s jump beyond that. Love is something more, it is a caring which goes beyond friendship. We all have many friends whose successes please us and whose difficulties cause us to grit our teeth, but love goes beyond that. A loving relationship is one in which you stand ready to assist and make sacrifices for someone else in times of trouble in addition to rejoicing in their successes. You are concerned about them, and your concern goes beyond words.  People have many friends, but relatively few loves.

Marriage is a step beyond love: it is a partnership. As a partnership, it does not necessarily include either lust or love. Two sisters lived a block from me: one a year younger, one a year older. I thought of asking the younger for a date, but never did. I was surprised when their parents divorced following the departure of the last daughter from home. Later I learned that for years those two people had never spoken to each other. It was a working marriage, but a loveless marriage. Such marriages, I hope, are rare. 

In marriage, first comes friendship, then comes love and, finally, if we are lucky, then comes marriage. Lust is mixed in there also. Sheila’s showed signs of irritation on our way home following our two minute wedding ceremony - I invited my son Bill and Sheila’s two friends who had attended the wedding to go to dinner with us. When I quizzed Sheila about her slightly concealed unhappiness as we were driving home, she said, “I didn’t marry you to go out to eat.” 

Unfortunately, even good marriages fall apart. During the years I taught at college, too many older students said to me, “I had a good marriage, but I blew it and it’s too late to go back to it now.” At the time I attributed their failures to the fact that for the first time these young people were living on their own, irritated at and blaming the other for the often dreary tasks that accompany adult life. But I now think such problems are a minor cause of divorce.

I believe that our society, as it has evolved, bears a responsibility for the high divorce rate. In today’s world, both men and women are employed, rarely in the same workplace. In the morning, the man gets in his automobile and drives off to his job, the woman does the same. They each spend the day doing different things. Each has workplace acquaintances and friends, largely unknown to the other: not out of any deliberate act, but as a consequence of their working lives. Young couples who, as a consequence of living in the same area, attending the same schools or attending the same church and evolved through the pattern of lust, friendship and love become strangers to one another. Or, if not strangers, at best acquaintances. 

However, this estrangement provided by modern society can be overcome, and overcome happily. In this, I’ll defer to my bride, who has provided me with the happiest thirty years of my life.

Let us begin by saying that I have loved to swim since my brother Joe taught me how when I was nine. I swam at every opportunity. When I first came to know Sheila, she confessed that she didn’t know how to swim. I taught her. Since then we have swum together at all opportunities. We worked in different offices, but used our lunch hours to swim. In fact, we were on our way to the swimming pool when she told me she would rather go to the hospital. The result was Stephen. 

Early in our marriage, a former student challenged me to take sign language, which she taught. Sheila joined me and became considerably better than I at communicating with the deaf. 

Since then Sheila and I have taken courses together in computer programming, automobile mechanics and Korean. Even when I was taking a course which did not interest Sheila, she often took a class at the same place and time so that we could travel together. (Incidentally, taking courses together was not only profitable personally; it was also much less expensive than going to night clubs or movies.)

Our non-class activities included camping together, attending business meetings together and going to church together. Not all of our “together” experiences were items of first choice to me, and probably the same was true of her, but it gave us a common ground of experiences which solidified our relationship AND our marriage.

We also spent, and spend, time in household activities together, both before and after we had children. When I was cutting wood, there was Sheila, dragging the limbs through the snow to the house where I could cut them up for firewood. My bride insists that I include our cooperation in household tasks. She mentioned washing dishes and laundry. I am more appreciative that she is always there with glasses of ice water and warnings about my over-doing things when I am digging in the garden or pushing the lawn mower.

My point to all this is that despite different primary duties, married couples can overcome the separations imposed by our economic society and enjoy activities that continue and enhance the friendship and love – and lust - that brought them together in the first place. But it requires consideration and cooperation from both.