To Love, Honor, and Scrutinize

“Keep your eyes wide open before marriage, and half-shut afterwards.”
-Benjamin Franklin

Some of us have that backwards. We marry without duly scrutinizing our perspective spouse, then we scrutinize like bloodhounds after the fact. And worst of all, the spouse doing the scrutinizing often thinks she or he is doing what’s right, with the purest of motives, and can’t be criticized.

Which is too bad, because lots of marriages are suffering from one partner’s habit of spending way too much time correcting the other, and the others’ habit of silently withdrawing as a result. With time, the union develops an undiagnosed but serious malady, all because somebody couldn’t cut somebody else a little slack.

Not that correction isn’t sometimes called for.  For any partnership to work, you’ve got to speak up about things that genuinely bother you, and you’ve got to shout out when your partner’s behavior isn’t just irritating, but morally and seriously wrong. Those are givens in a marriage; no problem there.

But the question becomes: Am I to correct my spouse every time she/he does something technically, but not significantly, wrong? And does the fact that I would do something differently mean the way she/he is doing it cries out for my wise counsel? And given the fact that we should both be helpers to each other, am I really helping, or just hovering?

Classic and somewhat petty example: Man courts woman; couple marries; woman has post-marital revelation that man cannot dress himself. Never mind that he never showed up naked when they were dating, nor did he mix stripes with plaids, so there’s evidence he can dress. No, he needs help, she’s the answer, so “Are you really wearing that tonight?” becomes a routine question.

(I love Tim Allen’s response: “No, I just put this on so I’d have something to wear while you decide what I should really wear.”)

That’s when Professor Henry Higgins’ cynical take on marriage, lyricized in My Fair Lady, comes to mind:

“Let a woman in your life and your sabbatical is through.
She’ll redecorate your home from the cellar to the dome,
Then go on with the enthralling job of overhauling you!”

But this isn’t a woman’s problem, it’s a human one which men aren’t exempt from. Natalie Cole lamented, describing a man from whom nothing was enough:

“I wish it was enough for you, all the love I had to give
And I did my best to keep you satisfied
I guess you’ll never know how much I tried, I really tried”

Her exhausted final remark is, “From now on, you’re only someone that I used to love.” Sad, sad way to end it all.

But OK, where do we draw the line? Is honesty really incompatible with respectful, reasonable sensitivity? I doubt it, so here’s my basic take on the problem of super-scrutiny:

1. If something I’m doing seriously bothers you, let me know.
2. If something I’m doing is an irritant but not a wound, cut some slack.
3. If I’m driving too slow, chill. If I’m driving us off a cliff, speak.

Fair enough?

Because really, the hearts of spouses often close when their partners are too free with their corrections. Even if the corrections are right, the fact they presume the role of Instructor at the expense of Partner and Lover is such a turnoff, the corrected spouse becomes the dejected spouse. After all, we get married to complete, not re-do, each other. If I make my partner’s life harder with my ongoing observations, no matter how well intended or right, then I shouldn’t be surprised when my partner becomes more remote, less reachable.

I think we marry more for safety than transformation, hoping to build a place of security and ease in which we can relax, love, enjoy. Lose sight of that and your marriage is, I’ll bet the farm, in trouble.

So I ask myself this morning: Do I make life easier or harder for the one I pledged a life partnership with?

There’s an important question to pose, and to answer. Often.