Woman’s understanding of ‘selfhood’ saves marriage

I have more than a few times in this column said that the significant majority of divorces in America are clinically unnecessary. By that I mean there is no inherent pathology in the union itself, and certainly no problems, injustices or conflicts that aren't utterly common to all marriages. By clinically unnecessary, I mean leave the marriage if you must, but you'll find that it doesn't solve or resolve much regarding what it takes to live a life of meaning and satisfaction. More likely it will complicate and burden the equation. Plus, you can rest assured that the issues and feelings that argued within you for divorce are guaranteed to duplicate themselves if and when you should fall in love with a new life partner.

In the majority of marital crises, one or both partners have stumbled upon a particularly rigorous and uncomfortable call to personal development -- the work of selfhood. It feels like you're married to the wrong person. It feels like you're no longer in love. But, in most cases, these feelings can't be trusted. In most cases, these feelings are symptoms of a crisis in selfhood.

Laura Munson is a writer who lives in Montana. Until recently, I had never heard her name. But a friend sends me a link for an article that was published in The New York Times, "Those Aren't Fighting Words, Dear" (www.nytimes.com/2009/08/02/fashion/02love.html). Munson's story simply blew me away. It is a story of courage, commitment and resolve beyond words. She just published the book "This Is Not the Story You Think It Is: A Season of Unlikely Happiness." I have not read it.

Munson's husband of 20 years announced to her that he didn't love her anymore, that he wasn't sure if he ever did, that he didn't like what her life had become, and that he had decided to move out. He told her the children would understand, that they would want him to be happy.

She was, of course, shocked, afraid, hurt. She is and was a normal human being having all the normal human feelings. But it is precisely there she astounds me, surprises me, inspires me.

Laura Munson doesn't react out of fear or hurt. Essentially, she looked her husband right in the eye and said, "I don't believe you." He might as well have said, "There's an evil leprechaun in the master bedroom closet, so I'm leaving."

She didn't rail against him. She didn't beg. She didn't threaten. She calmly rejected his every premise, and then asked, "What can we do to give you the distance you need, without hurting the family?" In her own words:

"I met my husband's disaffection with our marriage with a gut response: 'I don't buy it.' I felt his was a crisis of self, one I'd experienced after the loss of my father coupled with the stress of my own failure in my career. So I decided to simply get out of my husband's way and be responsible for my own well-being despite his actions and sentiments."

Munson's marital saga ends in redemption, transformation and celebration. Her husband doesn't move out, instead spending a summer being distant, unreliable, unavailable, not coming home after work, etc. She spent that same summer holding on tightly to herself. Loving her children, living her life, and loving her husband "from afar." Slowly, surely, in bits and pieces, he comes back. Something reconciles inside himself, making it possible for him to return to participating in the marriage.

Munson's credibility with me was sealed when she admits that, privately, there was a limit to the time she was willing to give him: six months. I assume she kept that boundary to herself because she could not have articulated it to her suffering husband without it sounding like a threat. An ultimatum. No, she did not set that boundary for him. The boundary was for herself. It was a way to measure the difference between an authentic act of sacrificial love and commitment as opposed to a destructive act of sacrificing authentic selfhood. The latter never produces a good outcome.

Laura, yours is an important story, and it has added to my thinking and my worldview. My meager thank you is to share a bit of lyric from a song I wrote, years ago:

So here you stand together, battle-scarred and worn/ The locks of fairy tales have fallen, long-since shorn/ Love has chose you, blessed you, crucified you/ See what you've become/ Love's Purple Heart is won.

Steven Kalas is a behavioral health consultant and counselor at Las Vegas Psychiatry and the author of "Human Matters: Wise and Witty Counsel on Relationships, Parenting, Grief and Doing the Right Thing" (Stephens Press). His columns appear on Sundays. Contact him at 227-4165 or skalas@reviewjournal. com.