Op-Ed Submission: THE MARRIAGE COUNSELOR

During my lifetime, I heard about marriage councilors. These services are primarily known for those married couples having problems and seeking ombudsmen with professional credentials. Their goal was to save a marriage by focusing on the positive elements, measured against and out weighing the negative conflict. The investment in family challenges and humorous anecdotes that make up a fruitfully varied life with children is promoted. However, pre-marriage counseling was usually available and administered by the Catholic Church to condition a couple for future responsibility. Indeed a recent film was made featuring Robin Williams in such a counseling role. It was quite a humorously entertaining movie. A preamble to marriage is my lesson today.

Having been married for fifty years to the same woman, I now reflect back on the most positive single aspect of this miracle. There were many glorious, and I confess traumatic crossroads with stoplights, to allow contemplation during the living marriage. I am a widower now and recall the words in Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s famous Sonnet 43 that starts with, “How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.” It ends with,” I shall but love thee better after death.”

Does that mean together, after ‘both Browning partners’ are dead? Is it in a heavenly setting? Think about her various endings. Here is my interpretation regarding my experience.

My love after my wife’s death is to ‘love thee better’ because I now discover how incredibly lucky I was during her life. Moreover, because of that gift of her being, I was not fully aware of that magnitude of love I now hold. Thus, when the details of life’s daily events are subtracted, leaving ‘love’ remaining as the focus of that day, the lose of your partner proves love after death as “better,” becomes… true. “Absence makes the heart grow fonder,” is the closest analogy.

Getting back to counseling, here is my take and philosophy on the most important aspect of marriage lasting more than two years...or seven. First, let me focus on the importance of the honeymoon. It is centered within the subject of sequestering. Sequestered is; to shut up the participants to maintain little influence from the outside world. US Constitutional arguments took place in a sequestered environment. Jury deliberations require sequestering. Thus, the ‘Honeymoon’ is required sequestering.

To refine this sequestered condition, leading to a successful marriage is to understand once and for all the most important ‘tested under fire’ that welds the couple to everlasting compatibility. It is the ‘test’ to be sequestered and living successfully with one bed and one bathroom for enough time to seal the bond. That’s it folks.

Unless all councilors present this early test of ‘bed and bath sequestering’, to be fully understood, they will not have met my test.

The Old Sailor, San Diego, Ca.