I don’t know if you were a fan of Star Trek, the original one from the ’60s that had the famous trio, Kirk, Spock, and McCoy. I would always enjoy them getting into a tight spot and Captain Kirk would propose something really “off-the-wall” as a solution. When he did, you could always count on Spock to say, “Captain, that is highly illogical.”
And we would all chuckle knowing that even though Spock was right about it being illogical, it was probably going to work.
When it comes to saving your marriage, life isn’t the starship Enterprise; playing the dispassionate Mr. Spock not only cuts you off from your feelings but also subtly tells your spouse that his or her feelings don’t count either.
In an article by Jocelyn Noveck,
Al and Tipper Gore are a famous political couple, but their split after 40 years of marriage apparently stemmed from a much simpler, more mundane cause, according to friends: They simply grew apart. And in that, experts say, they’re no different from many Americans. Such late-marriage splits are much more common than we think.
“We tend to mistakenly believe that once people reach a certain point in marriage, they just stop splitting up,” says Betsey Stevenson, an economist at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School who studies family trends. “But that’s simply not true.” In fact, Stevenson says, though marriages are more likely to fail in the first 10 years, once you get past that, “the percentage of those divorcing each year is very similar throughout the years of marriage.”
Of course, there’s no getting around the shock factor surrounding the separation announcement by the Gores, which came in an e-mail Tuesday to friends. Unlike many political couples, they’d spoken openly of their feelings for each other and seemed to share an easy affection, not to mention four children and three grandchildren.
That affection was apparent even without The Kiss — the go-for-broke liplock between the vice president and his wife at the 2000 Democratic convention that made so many blush, and is probably doing so again, on YouTube. Was it impulsive or calculated? Either way, it was still quite a kiss.
Here is a marriage that had endured 40 years of the some of the worst circumstances that could happen. And to say that “we simply grew apart,” doesn’t really cut it for me. We know from history that Tipper was a very passionate woman. We also know that Al Gore was probably one of the most passionless campaigners in recent election history. SNL parodies were filled with his wooden style of speaking… overtly logical and programmed. I can’t help but think in the later years Tipper just got tired of Al’s calculated approach to everything.
In marriage, there are times, many times when passion needs to be the order of the day. The freedom to share passion and it not be discounted because of circumstance, finances, or reality must become normal in any relationship. It is that kind of passion that will bring creativity into solving many marital dilemmas. It is that kind of passion that says, “I love you and I accept you.” And it is that kind of passion and sharing that kind of passion that will save your marriage.
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