Editorial: Romance in marriage

Sydney
21 July 2002

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Politics and prayers

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The icon of Our Lady of Kazan

Amnesty condemns attacks by Palestinian suicide bombers

Church unity theme for cardinal at Ryde mayor’s prayer breakfast

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Danger if teens are ‘running on empty’

Editorial: Romance in marriage

Letters: Jesus is the centre, not the clergy

Conversation: ‘Unreal’ love? Not if your love is real - Anne and Peter McGowan, family delegates

Reflections: Hunger – righting an imbalance

Becoming Catholic ‘a turning point’

Opinion: A return to the genuine ‘good old days’?

Schools fight to keep up with demand

Chaldean leader blesses new church

Helping hand for Sydney pilgrims

‘Big kids’ in new role as Seniors

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Editorial: Romance in marriage

Australia’s bishops have chosen a long-married but still romantic couple as their ambassadors to the World Meeting of Families in the Philippines in January.

Anne and Peter McGowan are long-time teachers of pre-marriage education (see a conversation on page 9), but they are also 37-years-married romantics, so romantic that they were told when they first took on their teaching role to ‘get real’ as nobody could be as romantic as that.

In their teaching they, quite rightly, emphasise the responsibility that marriage entails, and they certainly faced a lot of heavy responsibility early on when two of their four children were born, respectively, with Down's Syndrome and life-threatening asthma.

Perhaps because of this they emphasise the responsibility of marriage rather than the hearts and flowers – except when they laughingly speak of their own long romance.

It’s certainly true that taking marriage seriously from day one is a good idea; marriage education programs make this clear. Not surprisingly, those who attend such programs have a much greater chance of staying married than those who don’t.

Marriage is all about how you treat the other person – treat them well and they stay. Treat them mean and they’ll not stay keen. Too many people still seem to think that once the courtship is over nice behaviour is no longer necessary and it is okay to relax into rude, slovenly and uncaring behaviour – the romantic equivalent of the couch potato. It isn’t okay.

The McGowans talk about not giving up trying after getting married. A recent study by Relationships Australia put it more poetically saying those who stayed happily married indulged in long goodbyes and long hellos ... the stuff of old Paris in the Springtime movies, with smoochy goodbyes on misty platforms.

The two-decade-long study found that those who were nice to each other stayed together, while the nasty fell by the marital wayside. And the long goodbye is a part of this.

So is the ratio of nice to nasty things couples do and say to each other. Rows aren’t the problem; contempt and incivility are. A ratio of less than 5:1 nice to nasty things said and done and a marriage is in trouble.

The heavy, responsible side of marriage can – and should – be balanced by a lightness and joy.

A spoonful of sugar can go an awfully long way – as

long as the longest goodbye on the darkest, mistswirled latform between a girl with red lipstick and a man in a Bogart

trenchcoat.