Small Strokes Big Oaks

Tim signed up for the Chicago Marathon this week.  Guess when it is?  October 9.  Does that date ring a bell?  (Hint: white dress, big ceremony, happiest day of my life…)

Historically, this has always been a big weekend for us.  As the only 3-day weekend in our favorite season, we took our first weekend-away together the first year we met.  The year after that, we drove up to Madison to have my awesome cousin take our awesome engagement pictures.  This led us to choose our wedding date.  October 9, 2010.

So, naturally, I might expect some romantic, long-weekend getaway to celebrate surviving our first year of marriage.  And while I might be enjoying a nice Chicago hotel room on October 9, 2011, I’ll be enjoying it alone because my husband will be running 26.2 miles that morning, and probably sleeping most of the rest of the day.

If I’m going to be perfectly honest here, I did encourage Tim to sign up for the marathon.  He was a little back and forth about it, but I did give him a little push, as long as he promised a romantic long-weekend and a romantic hotel stay in Chicago.  To which he happily agreed.

But the reason I suggested this in the first place is because I believe a healthy amount of selfishness in a relationship is a key to success.  Not too much, but a little.  Is Tim’s desire to run this marathon selfish?  Sure it is.  He’s really the only one benefiting from the situation.  But is my desire to lock myself in the office and blog for hours on end selfish?  You betcha.  And these disparate desires allow us to spend some time apart and appreciate the time we have together.

The problem, as we’ve seen in all too many romantic comedies, is when the selfishness takes over.  Did you know that marathon training can ruin a marriage??

Newlyweds have long recognized the risks of potential sickness, infidelity and ill fortune. But few foresee themselves becoming an exercise widow. After all, the idea that one’s beloved will take the occasional jog sounds appealing—until two miles a day becomes 10 miles, not counting the 20-mile runs on weekends. “His dream of doing marathons happened just when I got pregnant with our third child,” Stephanie Beagley of Colorado Springs says of her husband, Michael, a purchaser for the U.S. Olympic Committee. “Now we don’t have tons of time with him.”

OH MY GOD.  You mean that Tim may become obsessed with his marathon training to the point that he completely ignores me and our future children?!  But, you know, as a wife, you need to be completely selfless in encouraging your husband to spend as much time as he needs away from his family:

And all along she has mixed messages of support with pleas for more family time. “I love my husband, and I’m happy he’s passionate,” she says. “A husband wants to come home to a wife who says, ‘I hope you had a good workout.’ “

That’s right, wifeys.  Take care of all of that housework and child-rearing so your husband can run in circles worry-free.  And be sure to smile and ask how his workout was when he gets home, along with getting that marathon-friendly dinner on the table.  And don’t forget to vacuum in pearls and high-heels, too!

Gross.

Here’s the thing.  We all know being too selfish can ruin a relationship.  Relationships are about compromise; sometimes you have to agree to your partner’s marathon and take a romantic hotel stay in return. (I can personally think of many, many worse situations!)  But too much selflessness can equally ruin a relationship.  I’ve spoken with quite a few older (read: grandparent-aged) people since our wedding, and their advice is generally the same.  Work together as one, give up yourself, realize that all that matters is the family and the happiness of your partner and that is the key to a long, happy marriage.

I call bull.  There may be a multitude of reasons why these couples have stayed together for 60+ years, but constant selflessness is not one of them.  Maybe the selflessness of the women played a part, but as feminists familiar with the patriarchal norms of marriage, I think we all understand that, so I won’t kick a dead horse.  Too much selflessness will eventually build up to resentment.  If one half of a pair is always cleaning, always cooking, always mowing the lawn, always taking the kids out so the other person can work in peace (or entertaining the kids so the other person can go for a long run), the other half of the pair will begin to resent the time he or she could be spending on his or her self if the other person would just chip in a little more, or spend more time on the family and less time on the self.

Just like anything in life, it seems like the best idea is to strike a healthy balance between the selfish and the selfless, and that can be tough to do.  In fact, I bet Tim and I are going to spend the next 60 years trying to figure out how to strike that perfect balance.  And if we are fortunate enough to spend the next 60 years figuring that out, I’ll be the happiest woman in the world.