Front Page  sage

Sunday, January 2, 2005

Why Do Independent Women Choose Marriage? The Answer Is Love.

By Donna Olmstead
Sage Staff
    Bonnie loves George. George loves Bonnie. It's that simple and that complex. The Hights have been in love for more than 60 years.
    But Bonnie Hight wasn't thinking about marriage when she met George in 1942. She had resisted marrying early, an accepted social practice in the Oklahoma and Texas panhandles where she grew up.
    "I won a scholarship to Texas Tech," she explains. "I imagined I would get married someday, but I wanted a career and to be my own person. Where I grew up most of the girls were married by the time they were 17. I knew that wasn't for me."
    Julia Church Hoffman, 41, was in her early 20s when she met her future husband, Jeff, in 1985. "It was love at first sight. I saw in him someone who would encourage me to be me. The feeling was mutual."
    Hoffman wasn't sure when she graduated from a small liberal arts college in Ohio what her career would be, but one thing she was absolutely certain of was that marriage wasn't in the plan. Eighteen years and two sons later, she says her marriage is rewarding in ways she couldn't have imagined when she was younger.
    For her, marriage is the commitment that supports her relationship with her husband that is more than that of any other partnership. "There is a significance to marriage which puts the relationship on a higher, more solid ground," she says.
    Count Hight and Hoffman among the many women who didn't map out their lives with marriage as the end-all, be-all. Though they come from two different generations— Hight before the women's movement, Hoffman after— neither set out in life with holy matrimony as a requirement. Hight was pursuing a career, working in the engineering department at an aircraft company, when she met George. Only reluctantly, when she realized she loved him and he was tired of waiting for her, did she agree to marry.
    Both Hight and Hoffman are independent sorts. Still they say they find sharing their lives with someone they love more rewarding than they could have imagined. Both would choose marriage again in a heartbeat. They are not alone. Dozens of other independent women flooded the SAGE Magazine mailbox with their stories of how they "got sold" on marriage.
    One universal theme through their stories is love. Natalie Miller had a rewarding career and a thirst for travel— two factors that fulfilled her so much she didn't see how marriage fit into the picture. But love changed her mind.
    Joyce Freiwald had been married before and was reluctant to try it again, but she found unconditional love with her husband, Dave, who is now deceased. After two difficult marriages, Jean Block has found "true oneness" with her third husband, "where joy for one is joy for the other." And then there's Denise Gianopoulos, who did have the pressure from her (big fat) Greek family to marry but stubbornly resisted until she met her husband, Ignatios, in whom she says she found "instant contentment in my soul."
    These independent women were not starry-eyed about love, yet they were open to falling in love— many say they knew right away they had met someone special. They are lawyers trained in rational thinking who use terms like "love at first sight." They are nonprofit management consultants and parochial school teachers. And they use words like "marriage made in heaven."
    Still, they aren't starry-eyed about marriage, either. Each knows it takes effort to maintain and renew a relationship. Gianopoulos, for one, points to the "sanctity of marriage" as a source of fortitude through their tough times with infertility. Marcia Bloom, for another, renews vows with her husband every five years as a way to keep their focus on making their marriage a priority.
    "We always put each other first," says Bonnie Hight, who will renew vows with her husband in June of this year on their 60th anniversary. "We do things together. We like to cuddle. And we never go to bed angry."
    "We've been through it all," says George with a smile. "Three little words make a marriage work. And it isn't: 'I love you.' ''
    "It's: 'You're probably right,' '' Bonnie chimes in, finishing her husband's sentence.
    Julia Church Hoffman says "the higher ground" of marriage is created through the effort. "We communicate, and we compromise. We find shared meeting ground. We keep our humor. We don't expect perfection from each other."
   
Lighten up
    Not expecting perfection is key to finding happiness in a marriage relationship says Greg Baer, a physician-turned-lecturer who teaches relationship workshops across the country.
    Referring to the women who responded to the SAGE appeal, Baer says, "These are people who have found unconditional love. Maybe they've stumbled upon it together. Perhaps one person in their past— a grandmother or someone from their childhood— gave it to them. So they knew it again when they found it."
    For more than a decade, Baer has been counseling couples and individuals. He has recently conducted relationship workshops for couples and singles in Albuquerque. He has written 10 books on the theme of unconditional love in which people accept each other, "warts and all," without fighting or withdrawing when life's upsets rock their marriage boat.
    "Real love is caring about the happiness of another person without any thought for what we might get for ourselves," he says. "With real love, they're not disappointed or angry when we make foolish mistakes," Baer writes in his book, "Real Love in Marriage."
    A typical argument might be over dirty socks on the floor. The couple argue about who should pick them up. "The subject is not socks," he says. "The subject is I don't feel loved by you when you don't care enough about me to pick up your socks. The subject of the argument is love."
   
Autonomy for all
    But it's also vital to have your independence within the relationship, and that's what these women were seeking. Until they knew they could find love and independence, too, they weren't looking to marry.
    Independence as a requirement for a successful marriage is a relatively new concept for women. Gail Houston, director of women's studies at the University of New Mexico, teaches a class on the Victorian era, and she reminds us that 150 years ago, society told women in the middle and upper classes that marriage was their career. Women who were between age 20 and 40 and weren't married were considered "redundant or superfluous," she says.
    "As Virginia Woolf said, women need a room of their own, a space to themselves that will not be interrupted or imposed upon," Houston says.
    American women now have edged closer to maintaining independence within marriage, says Houston, who has been married for 18 years and has that for herself. Everyone benefits from the long-term intimacy and companionship that marriage provides, she says, "(it) makes us better people."
    At Hoffman's wedding, her grandmother, well-known New Mexico poet Peggy Pond Church, read a sonnet that describes the way two independent individuals weave their lives together. "Love is not gazing into one another's eyes, finding another fair, nor being found ... Love is two faces set toward one star..."
    Hoffman says she didn't truly understand this sonnet the day she said her vows. But now that she has shared 18 years with her husband, she understands how two individuals share a journey of separateness and togetherness. "It has been, and continues to be, a journey of opposites on shared and separate pathways of reflected light and whirling flight."
   
Love first: 'Our union is more than the sum of him and me'
    Denise Gianopoulos is trained to be a lawyer and a rational thinker. She also is Greek.
    That combination meant, logic or not, she faced strong cultural expectations that every young Greek woman marry and have children. She laughed them off.
    That was until she met Ignatios "Igg" Gianopoulos at a Greek Orthodox choir conference at age 25. It was love at first sight— an idea she would have totally discounted with her logical mind. But, she says, "I know it is absolutely true because it happened to me."
    Now 42, Gianopoulos says their love has grown stronger because they have faced infertility together.
    "The sanctity of our marriage is itself a fortification between us," she says. "We believe and live by the precept that our union is vastly more than the mere sum of him and me.
    "When I found Igg I experienced instant contentment in my soul," she says. "Even during our defining marital crisis of years and years of infertility, we were pulled together, rather than steered apart because the soul knows where it belongs."
    The couple adopted twins, Evyenia and Katerina, now 8, from Russia. "You should see us now: Two swarthy Greeks raising two cherubic Russians on fiery Mexican food."
    Gianopoulos decided against practicing law, because in her heart she knew she wanted to teach. She teaches developmental English at Albuquerque Technical Vocational Institute, often to immigrants who have little or no English. Her husband, who goes by Dean Gianopoulos in his professional life, is in graphic arts and advertising.
    Denise says the common culture— faith, language, history— she and her husband share strengthens their marriage. However, neither of them is perfect, "but our love is," she says.
    "When we lead with love, all uncertainty settles down," she says. "If we put ourselves individually in front of our marriage during a time of conflict, then the vision of how to resolve the conflict is clouded by the selfish wants of the individual, and our whole household suffers. We have learned to get ourselves individually out of the way and focus continually on what we need as a partnership and as a family."
    She says any other "configuration of our devotion" was out of the question because of generations of strong traditional values that recognize marriage. "We both believe our communities need strong marriages. The strength of marriage and common interests contributes to the healthy perpetuation of good things in the world."
   
True 'oneness': 'Life is so good now'
    Jean Block wonders about marriage experts who say you have to work hard at a marriage.
    "I only wish that others could share in a relationship where there is true 'oneness,' where joy for one is joy for the other, where immense pride is taken in each other's accomplishments, where the ready shoulder doesn't come with paybacks, but with welcome and where each is truly incomplete, without the other," says the national nonprofit management consultant and speaker.
    Block knows a lot about marriage. She was married twice previously. Each marriage lasted about eight years, and her two adult children are from her first marriage. She was done with marriage and relationships, she says, but then she met John.
    "I had sealed my heart up against disappointment and hurt," she says. "I was afraid to believe this wonderful man could love me unconditionally. I was afraid that if I loved him unconditionally, he would disappear or not be as he seemed."
    She believes that the difficult circumstances in her previous marriages make her a better partner and more appreciative of her husband's love.
    Block is 11 years older than her spouse. But 20 years into her marriage, she says, "Age doesn't exist. Differences don't exist. Life is so good now."
   
One and only: 'He was and always is my own true love'
   
    In 1942 Bonnie Hight was recruited right out of college to work in an aircraft factory in Fort Worth, Texas. She was an engineer in the B-36 power plant (that's a fuel delivery system). George, also a college recruit, was a photographic coordinator who assembled instruction manuals for the airplanes.
    She wasn't looking to get married so she and George dated for more than two years. Still, she knew he was the "one." He was different than the boys she knew in her farming community.
    "Many of the boys I dated— and they were just boys— didn't know how to ask me out for a date or how to treat me when we went out. George always had a plan. He always made plans before asking me out. He always had tickets to a concert or had a restaurant in mind or suggested an art gallery," she explains. "He is kind, loving and thoughtful and has elegant manners. He's outgoing and I'm rather shy about meeting new people.
    "He was and always is my own true love," she says.
    The couple moved to George's hometown of Gallup after World War II and raised three children. George had his own photography studio after a few years. She never found a job again in engineering. "In Gallup?" she asks. But before working in the family portrait photography business she was a Welcome Wagon hostess and had other jobs to help support her family.
    The couple retired to Albuquerque's Sandia Heights in 1991, where they garden and paint together. Bonnie does mostly floral watercolors and George paints oil miniatures, which he shows at the Yucca Art Gallery in Old Town.
    The couple plan to renew their vows on their 60th wedding anniversary in June.
   
Soul mates: 'We were able to look at our relationship and modify our behavior'
    Joyce Freiwald had been married before. So had her husband, Dave. They were determined not to repeat their previous mistakes.
    What they created together was the most powerful experience of Freiwald's life. They were married for 26 years, until he died a few years ago.
    "What Dave gave me was this sense of security I had never known before," Freiwald says. "He loved me as a person. I had my faults, but that's not the issue— it was never the issue. I felt like I was truly loved and I believe he felt the same. I believe it was mutual.
    "We were soul mates— well-suited intellectually, psychologically, sexually, et cetera."
    Together, they made their marriage a priority. "We were able to look at our relationship consciously and modify our behavior."
    Freiwald says that until she started dating Dave, she was determined to live a happy life as a single person after an unhappy marriage of nine years. Now a widow and a woman who has experienced a "match made in heaven," she is dubious about whether she will marry again. "I deeply miss the rewards of a good marriage, but I am beginning to enjoy most aspects of my single life," she says.
    Still, before Dave died, though neither knew his death was imminent, he asked her to promise she would marry again if something happened to him. She agreed, but says, "That would be a challenge to find someone like Dave."
   
Meant to be: 'I just love everything about him'
    Natalie Miller, 45, says she never thought marriage was in her future. She taught parochial school for 19 years in Colorado, California and New Mexico, and she found her life very satisfying. She could travel and have adventures that her married friends could only dream of accomplishing.
    "It was great. I thought I had it all figured out. This is what I had planned for me," she says. "I would be single the rest of my life."
    But about five years ago, a man named Chuck asked her on a date. "He swept me off my feet. I've never had anyone love me the way Chuck does. I just love everything about him. He is kind, generous, gentle, humorous, talented, understanding and supportive."
    Miller says she wouldn't have traded her single life, but she knows her marriage was meant to be. "I am overwhelmingly thankful that marriage was in my future."
    She credits God and a common faith with her husband for her marriage's success. "We are both Christians," she wrote in an e-mail to SAGE. "We treasure our relationship with one another because we put God first in our lives."
   
We would again: 'It's like getting married for the first time'
    Marcia Bloom and her husband reaffirm their vows every five years.
    Twenty-three years ago, they were married before a judge in Albuquerque. Over the years, they have recited a variety of vows to honor their different faiths— he's Jewish and she's Presbyterian. They have said their vows with a rabbi in San Francisco, a Samoan minister in Maui, a Presbyterian minister in Marcia's hometown and a judge in Leadville, Colo.
    Bloom says it keeps her relationship fun and fresh. "It's like getting married for the first time— the excitement, the planning, the actual ceremony."
    The couple have conflicts, of course. There have been times they have disagreed about child rearing, she says. "I'm fiercely independent and he wants to spoil me, and we do have conflict over that at times."
    But they knew from the beginning that "growing together takes work on both sides— something we both realized from the start and is a constant in our daily lives," Bloom says.
    "So we do and we would and will again and again and again."