Kasha marks the turning point in their remarriage not in terms of Tally’s gradual reconciliation with his mother’s abusive behavior, but rather as a specific time when she saw herself and Tally on national television:
Recently, I was able to see Tally again, as I had seen him that first time [when they first met.] We had become very involved in a parenting class. Because of our different approaches to parenting, we wanted to get some outside help. Tally was one of the few fathers, actually the only one, to stay with the class. When the producers of the [national daytime talk show] called around looking for couples for the show, we were asked to be on it. They flew us to New York. It was when I saw us on TV together — it was like seeing Tally again for the first time. Suddenly I realized I had been [in love] all this time, but I’d forgotten what he was like.
Tally and Kasha had some real strengths going into their marriage. They were a good match culturally and religiously. These values supported them and gave them a clearer identity as a couple in the larger, more heterogeneous American environment in which they had chosen to live. They were able to break through the barrier of Tally’s childhood abuse by personal work and by working together. Tally spent several years in therapy dealing with his relationship with his family. As a couple, they invested in some common tasks outside themselves, most notably their children and their parenting skills. This hard, daily work (the vernacular work of the soul) paid off, leading to a refocusing of the marriage and to a successful remarriage at the point when Kasha saw them together on TV.
Frequency of Remarriage
Usually, a remarriage is infrequent in an enduring relationship. A couple may move through this painful and frightening process only once or twice in a lifetime. Most couples we know will acknowledge that they have gone through at least one remarriage, but usually they report no more than three or four. However, in some cases, remarriages frequently occur and are a regular part of the relationship because the partners repeatedly go through major conflicts, readjustments, and renewed vitality in their relationship.
A fabled celebrity relationship comes immediately to mind: the remarkable relationship between Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor. They were married twice, but apparently went through a host of remarriages in between and after their two formal ceremonies. In this celebrity case, as in many, the remarriage process centered on substance abuse. Yet we suspect that many other issues were interwoven in their relationship. What about in the case of a much more recent remarriage between Ben Affleck and Jennifer Lopez? What drove them apart in the first place and what has brought them back together? Is it the fame (and accompanying narcissism) or something more common for all of us—time away from one other, diverting interests, and perhaps someone else who attracts our interests. Remarriage rarely rests on a single problem (even if identified as such), addressing instead a broad range of problems for which both partners must assume some responsibility.
Delores and Bart are not celebrities. However, they reported during their interview that even though their current relationship was remarkably satisfying, they had, in fact, already undergone two remarriages during their time together, and were undergoing a third such transition at the present time (despite the apparent lack of major conflicts in the description of their current relationship). It seemed quite clear to the interviewer that the ability of Delores and Bart to weather these periods and to confront them honestly was in large part the strength of their relationship.
Early in their marriage, Delores and Bart confronted troubles powerful enough to find them—like many other couples—considering divorce. Seeing a therapist, they discovered tools that allowed them to better communicate with one another. As Delores explains it, the two of them “decided to see if we couldn’t work better together. And we did and that made the relationship ten times better.” owed them to better communicate.
Five months ago, they began to drift apart again, as Delores became more focused on her work. They seemed to have less and less in common and disagreements seemed more frequent. Largely at Bart’s prodding, they sought out couples therapy again, and began to confront issues that had been building. The result is that, as Bart explains, “in the last couple of weeks we’ve made some major shifts about how we perceive the relationship and have undergone a kind of reevaluation of values that led us to enter into this marriage.”
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