While Delores and Bart are a very romantic couple, they describe their relationship in pragmatic terms. Bart suggested that:
marriage is certainly different from anything I thought it would be like when I was a kid. I always figured it was like, you know, in the fairy tales. You got married and if you were compatible then things would work themselves out and it would be real easy. And it’s just not that way . . . I mean, you have to really make a commitment . . . and be willing to go through some bad times sometimes, for what is wonderful most of the time. When it’s effortless it’s wonderful, and when you have to work at it it’s really hard . . . you have to really keep in mind how much you love that person.
Thus, a process of frequent remarriage need not reflect a bad marriage. Rather, this process may suggest that the two partners are committed to working hard on the relationship, despite its ups and downs.
Send in the Clowns
In some instances, there are frequent or at least quite dramatic remarriages because the partners have adopted a lifestyle that includes frequent separations, independent life paths and periods of reacquaintance and readjustment. This seems to be the case with the two major protagonists (Fredrik Egerman and Desiree Armfeldt) that are portrayed in a musical written by one of my guides for this book. He is Stephen Sondheim, who writes both music that lingers and lyrics that require thoughtful reflection. The musical in which these two protagonists are featured is called A Little Night Music.
In a now-well known song from this musical, Sondheim portrays two people who take turns swinging high on a trapeze and stuck firmly on the ground. The trapeze is set very high for Frederik and Desiree as two ambitious characters (one a successful lawyer and the other a successful actress). Thus, the transition from trapeze to ground is dramatic—especially as Frederik and Desiree pass each other on the way up and down. If both members of a couple are always “on the road”, and are highly ambitious regarding their career, then the remarriages might be infrequent, but they are often filled with considerable trauma, inaccurate assumptions, and foolish decisions. Both members of the couple are truly “clowns.” Sadly, the “clowning” is not very entertaining for anyone and there are few reflective moments (or a poignant songs) to bring successful closure to this tumbling relationship.
The Bulitts (Bulitt and Bulitt, 2020, p. 161) identify a similar dynamic in what David calls the CraZanity ride. “People are strapped into a huge pendulum machine that swings from one side to the other. At the top of one, you are upside down, and at the top of t he other, you are looking straight down from fifty feet up.” One of the couples we interviewed, Ted and Velia, exemplify this in-out and up-down clownish pattern in real life. They decided to own a home in Wyoming where Ted would live full time. Velia decided to pursue an advanced degree at an East Coast graduate school. While Velia comes to visit Ted as often as possible, they spend as much as one third of the year living separately. According to Ted, “last year, we were apart for three months. . . . I didn’t like it! It’s difficult.” Velia added that their frequent separation “seems very unnatural. We can do it. It’s not as much fun. Definitely lacking. Feel a need for the physical and emotional connection.” As in the case of other forms of remarriage, however, Ted noted that “when we do get together, it’s like falling in love all over again like a honeymoon.”
Ted later notes that their marriage has remained vital precisely because of these separations and because of the new ways in which they relate to each other when they come back together. These are new ways both because they have had time apart and because every time they are apart both of them go through their own mini-growth period. In offering advice to other couples, Ted urges partners to “try and create their own romance and not with props, etc., but to create circumstances that are romantic.” Ted notes that “most couples grow tired of each other; they don’t create new spaces for each other. One of the biggest reasons couples break up. . . .they become used to each other. They look for new stimulation.” As painful and disruptive as their life pattern is, Ted and Velia at least have the joy and challenge of constantly reinventing their relationship and going through a series of remarriages that keeps their relationship alive and never predictable or tiresome.
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