The
other day, I came across a casual statement that hit me like a
cannonball. On her Facebook page, Catherine Keddington Arveseth
mentioned that there are three stages of marriage:
Loving without knowing,
Knowing and not loving, and
Knowing but choosing to love.
Boy
howdy, do I wish I had heard this one thirty years ago! Fluffy and I
thought we were the only ones who had endured the long, arid years of
Stage #2. We thought that all by
ourselves, we had done something horribly wrong. We
had no earthly idea
that this was just a normal stage, and everyone else went through the
same stage that we had done.
I
learned this piece of earth-shattering news just as Fluffy was
loading the car for a two-day trip to Atlantic City, New Jersey. I
couldn’t wait till we got on the open road so I could share
this bombshell with him. He was every bit as gobsmacked as I had
been.
I
said to Fluffy, “Just think of it. All that time we couldn’t
stand each other, it was normal.”
He
said, “It’s a little too strong to say that we couldn’t
stand each other. It was more like a Cold War. Our marriage has
been tempered in the fires of adversity. But no fisticuffs were
involved. We never had to go to the emergency room.”
No
matter what Stage #2 is called, we had no idea that other people were
in our situation. We thought we were suffering alone. We couldn’t
talk with anyone about our marital problems, because we were certain
we were the only people in the world who were messing up.
We
had our honeymoon period, of course. Fluffy always was a cute little
fellow. It helped that he traveled about a week a month, and he took
me with him. We were always in one big city or another, staying in
an expensive hotel and eating in fancy restaurants on his expense
account. We had a pretty nice life.
Then
we moved to Virginia and had to grow a whole new support system. I’m
not going to sugar-coat it; it took a long time. For the first few
years, the only friends who presented themselves to us were not
people we both liked. They drove a wedge between Fluffy and me. The
Cold War had started.
We
found ourselves treading water, spiritually speaking and socially
speaking. It was dark. Eventually, however, Fluffy was called as
one of the executive secretaries of our stake, and we found ourselves
with a better class of friends. We also became temple workers in
1995. Things didn’t start getting better immediately, but we
started being able to feel the sand underneath the ocean.
We
no longer had to tread water. We started being able to walk toward
dry land. The best part was, we were walking together.
I
don’t know when it started, but people started telling us they
envied our relationship. They could tell we loved each other. The
first few times people said that, I thought, Boy,
do we have them fooled. But then I
thought about it and realized, I really do love that little fellow
and he seems to feel the same way about me. When
did that happen?
The
answer was that it sneaked right up on us without our ever knowing
it. For years his little habits drove me crazy. I got annoyed over
the smallest things. But eventually I started to tolerate them and
finally I started thinking they were cute. I guess he felt the same
way about me.
We
had reached Stage #3. We knew each other, but we chose to love one
another despite our flaws. The superficial love at the beginning of
our relationship had been replaced with a deeper kind of love that
could look beyond flaws and see the person we would eventually
become.
Fluffy
explains it to friends this way: “Eventually I learned she was
never going to change. I couldn’t fix her. I just had to
accept her the way she was.”
We
found ways to do this. He meticulously squeezes the toothpaste tube
from the bottom, and I squeeze the toothpaste tube wherever I pick it
up. After about twenty-five years of being annoyed with each other,
we just bought two toothpaste tubes. Problem solved.
He
puts the toilet paper roll on the roller so the paper comes off from
the bottom. Everybody
knows this is the wrong way to do it, but eventually I decided that
if he changes the roll, he decides how it’s going to be put on.
Problem solved, but again it took us about twenty-five years to
figure this out.
I
have never mastered the science of balancing a checkbook, and on the
rare occasions when I attempted it, I would usually end up in tears.
We solved this problem by having separate checking accounts, and
Fluffy cheerfully balances both of them.
We
also determined that the person who loads the dishwasher decides how
the dishes are going to be loaded; the person who makes the bed
decides how the bed is going to look, and the person who cooks the
dinner decides what we are going to eat. The person who sits on the
couch and waits for these things to be done does not get a vote. In
fact, she is extremely grateful that all these things are done at
all.
We
have friends who at this very moment are mired in their own Cold War,
only their Cold War is a noisy one. Until we learned about the three
stages of marriage, we have had no idea how to help them.
Each
of our friends has been everlastingly upset because the other spouse
has not been fulfilling his needs. What
they do not understand is that we are not supposed to go into a
marriage to be served or to have our own needs filled. We are
supposed to go into a marriage to serve our spouse and the family we
have created.
Instead
of going into our marriages with the expectation that we’ll do
fifty percent of the work and our spouse will do the other fifty
percent, the way we should go into the marriage is to expect to serve
as the Savior would serve. If each of us fully expects to do a
hundred percent of the work around the home, joyfully,
both of us will always be happily surprised if the other party does
anything at all.
In
addition, we grow to love the ones we serve. If we are each trying
mightily to do the lion’s share of the serving, we’ll
each be doing the lion’s share of learning to love. That alone
could shorten the time we spend in our own personal Cold War.
Too
many couples do not understand this. Like Fluffy and me, they had
never heard of the three stages of marriage. They mastered Stage #1
just fine. They went into their marriage loving one another without
knowing each other. Then, when they got to know each other, they
recoiled in horror. Now they are mired in Stage #2, wondering if it
ever gets better.
Husbands
chewed with their mouths open. They scratched in embarrassing
places. They did not leave the room when they had to pass gas. They
left the toilet seat up, and they did not even apologize when their
innocent brides fell into the toilet in the middle of the night.
They only took out the garbage sporadically. And oh, how they
snored!
The
wives did not look like the women in the fashion magazines when they
woke up in the morning. Their breath stank. They passed gas just
like the guys did. They cried sometimes for no reason. They
couldn’t do a simple home repair or squash a tiny spider. They
needed constant reassurance that they were loved. They expected
their husbands to work all day and then help around the home at
night.
This
was not what they bargained for when they looked at each other,
dewy-eyed, at the altar. But since
nobody had told the husbands or the wives about Stage #2, a lot of
husbands and wives felt stuck. And a whole lot of husbands and wives
have bailed out of their marriages, not knowing that things were
going to get better. They did not know there was a Stage #3 to look
forward to.
They
blamed the person they were married to, not the process. They
reasoned that their unhappiness couldn’t have anything to do
with themselves. It had to lie in their defective spousal units. So
they did the logical thing — they abandoned ship.
They
headed for greener pastures. They found husbands who, they knew,
would not chew with their mouths open. They found wives who, they
knew, would look good at 5 o’clock in the morning. They were
happy — at least, until they left Stage #1 of their new
relationships and found themselves mired in Stage #2 once again.
The
thing I can’t help but wonder is if people are warned ahead of
time that Stage #2 exists, whether they can avoid that stage
altogether. You should be able to sidestep it just as easily as a
person can sidestep a pool of quicksand if only it is posted with a
warning sign.
Perhaps
hundreds and thousands and millions of couples were forewarned and
were spared the misery that Fluffy and I endured, I thought. This
simply had to be the case.
When
we got home from Atlantic City, I looked up “three stages of
marriage” on the internet. I could not find these three
stages. Maybe it’s only Catherine Keddington Arveseth who
knows about them. I am infinitely glad she mentioned them when she
did. She has come across something I believe to be true.
Perhaps
nobody but Catherine knows about the elusive Three Stages, but there
are actual classes being taught within the Church for husbands and
wives who are just like us.
These
are great classes for getting you started. In fact, Fluffy and I
took this
one long after we did not need
help anymore, because friends of ours needed moral support or they
wouldn’t go by themselves. If you’re in your own Cold
War, seek them out and go to them.
If
you do not have access to a marriage class, persevere. Serve your
spouse as the Savior would do it. Once you make it to Stage #3, you
will be glad you hung on for the ride.
I
know from personal experience that Stage #3 is worth fighting for.
I’m living it now, and it’s so terrific I’m just
glad we had the patience and endurance to get here.
Those
of you who are struggling in Stage #2, persevere. After all, the
scriptures said it best: “But he
that shall endure unto the end, the same shall be saved”
(Matthew 24:13).
Kathryn H. Kidd has been writing fiction, nonfiction, and "anything for money" longer than
most of her readers have even been alive. She has something to say on every topic, and the
possibility that her opinions may be dead wrong has never stopped her from expressing them at
every opportunity.
A native of New Orleans, Kathy grew up in Mandeville, Louisiana. She attended Brigham
Young University as a generic Protestant, having left the Episcopal Church when she was eight
because that church didn't believe what she did. She joined The Church of Jesus Christ of
Latter-day Saints as a BYU junior, finally overcoming her natural stubbornness because she
wanted a patriarchal blessing and couldn't get one unless she was a member of the Church. She
was baptized on a Saturday and received her patriarchal blessing two days later.
She married Clark L. Kidd, who appears in her columns as "Fluffy," more than thirty-five
years ago. They are the authors of numerous LDS-related books, the most popular of which is A
Convert's Guide to Mormon Life.
A former managing editor for Meridian Magazine, Kathy moderated a weekly column ("Circle of Sisters") for Meridian until she was derailed by illness in December of 2012. However, her biggest claim to fame is that she co-authored
Lovelock with Orson Scott Card. Lovelock has been translated into Spanish and Polish, which
would be a little more gratifying than it actually is if Kathy had been referred to by her real name
and not "Kathryn Kerr" on the cover of the Polish version.
Kathy has her own website, www.planetkathy.com, where she hopes to get back to writing a weekday blog once she recovers from being dysfunctional. Her entries recount her adventures and misadventures with Fluffy, who heroically
allows himself to be used as fodder for her columns at every possible opportunity.
Kathy spent seven years as a teacher of the Young Women in her ward, until she was recently released. She has not yet gotten used to interacting with the adults, and suspects it may take another seven years. A long-time home teacher with her husband, Clark, they have home taught the same family since 1988. The two of them have been temple workers since 1995, serving in the Washington D.C. Temple.