The Marriage Book (9 page)

THE HONEYMOONERS
, 1955

The three-word refrain (“to the moon!”) was featured in many an episode of the legendary TV show starring Jackie Gleason and Audrey Meadows. There were alternates (“Bang, zoom!” and “Pow, right in the kisser!”), always greeted by Meadows’s perfectly deadpan face.

Audrey Meadows and Jackie Gleason

EDWARD ALBEE

WHO’S AFRAID OF VIRGINIA WOOLF?
, 1962

Winner of the Tony and New York Drama Critics’ Circle awards for best play,
Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?
was later immortalized in film with Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor playing the middle-aged, sulfurous, and alcoholic George and Martha. Edward Albee (1928–) created a portrait of modern marriage that was received as both shocking and admonitory, with one reviewer calling it an “incisive, inhuman drama.” The following passage, from the second act, finds the two characters alone onstage, blaming and taunting each other not for the benefit of the younger couple who have been drawn into a hellish visit, but rather because they seem to have no other choice.

Martha’s father is head of the college where George is an associate history professor. The ellipses are the author’s.

GEORGE BACH AND PETER WYDEN

THE INTIMATE ENEMY
, 1969

Clinical psychologist George Bach (1914–1986) is credited with originating the concept of “fair fighting” in the 1960s as part of his unconventional work at the Los Angeles group therapy institute that he founded. “People come to us to learn how to love,” Bach wrote of his institute, “and we teach them how to fight.” An advocate of greater sexual freedom, he nonetheless didn’t share the view of many sixties’ therapists that marriage was a failed institution not worth saving.

Coauthor Peter Wyden (1923–1998) was a prominent journalist and author.

The best way to get constructive results from intimate hostilities is to fight by appointment only. This may sound silly, but the more calmly and deliberately an aggressor can organize his thoughts before an engagement, the more likely it is that his arguments will be persuasive; that the fight will confine itself to one issue instead of ricocheting all over the intimate landscape; and that the opponent will feel compelled to come up with calm, constructive counterproposals. It’s like negotiating a labor dispute well before the deadline, not after the union has voted to strike.

Surprisingly few couples realize this. . . .

Far too many fights become needlessly aggravated because the complainant opens fire when his partner really is in an inappropriate frame of mind or is trying to dash off to work or trying to concentrate on some long-delayed chore that he has finally buckled down to. Indeed, there are times when failure to delay—or to advance—the timing of a fight can have cataclysmic consequences. . . .

Making an advance appointment for a fight is particularly useful because mutually favored fight times are rare. There are morning fighters and evening fighters; partners who prefer to fight at cocktail time or bedtime or dinnertime, or only with (or only without) the children or others present. . . .

People tend to place fights where they feel territorially at home. The wife may fight most comfortably in the kitchen, the husband from behind the big desk in his office-fortress, the young man in his brand-new car.

A boat is a superb place for an intimate encounter, especially if one of the partners is fight-phobic, because fighting goes best where the combatants are isolated and find it hard to get away from each other. . . . Once partners are better informed about the why, when, and where of fighting, they are ready to consider what to fight about.

JOAN DIDION

O, THE OPRAH MAGAZINE
INTERVIEW, 2005

Author Joan Didion (1934–) was married for thirty-nine years to the author John Gregory Dunne. His sudden death in 2003 inspired her to write a brilliant meditation on time, love, and mourning:
The Year of Magical Thinking
, which was published in 2005.

Didion has written novels including
Play It as It Lays
and
Democracy
as well as collections of essays and columns on social, political, and psychological subjects. Dunne wrote nonfiction books including
The Studio
and novels including
True Confessions
. Together they collaborated on screenplays. The interviewer was Sara Davidson.

JAMES CARVILLE AND MARY MATALIN

CNN INTERVIEW, 2009

Democratic consultant James Carville (1944–) was known for his Cajun cockiness and his deft handling of Bill Clinton’s 1992 presidential bid. Mary Matalin (1953–), a longtime Republican adviser, was his adversary on the campaign of incumbent George H. W. Bush. Separately, each was a political force to be reckoned with. Once they married (the year after the election), they were a walking (and frequently talking) example that ideological conflict need not be an obstacle to marital harmony.

Carville and Matalin have been frequent television and radio presences; both also teach and lecture. Carville consults on international campaigns. Matalin edits a Simon & Schuster imprint. The interviewer was John King.

PHIL M
C
GRAW

“MARRIAGE MELTDOWN,”
DR. PHIL
, 2011

Starting in the late 1990s, when Oprah Winfrey introduced him as a regular guest on her talk show, Phil McGraw (1950–), a.k.a. Dr. Phil, dispensed relationship advice to TV audiences with a homey and straightforward, if occasionally scolding, air. The daytime
Dr. Phil
show, which began in 2002, proved extraordinarily popular in its own right as McGraw took on parents and children, siblings, in-laws, and of course husbands and wives. With episodes like the three-part “Marriage Meltdown,” Dr. Phil joined a pop-culture tradition of finding, airing, and sometimes provoking marital blame.

MTV’s
The Blame Game
(“Where broken-up couples go on trial to find out whose fault it really was”) began in 1998 and ran for four seasons. The syndicated
Divorce Court
began in 1957 and has run, albeit in different incarnations, ever since.

IRONYDESIGNS, 2013