To Love, Honor and Downton Abbey

Every Tuesday we’ll post something to do with strengthening marriages. Hope it helps.

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To Love, Honor and Downton Abbey

I’d been conked out for nearly an hour when Renee’s outraged cry jolted me upright. A scream in the house usually means there’s been an accident, and in this case it was severe.

Matthew had just been hit by an oncoming truck en route from his wife and beautiful newborn son, leaving the estate’s financial affairs in question since he had been such a stabilizing influence, and adding untold pressure to Lady Cora and Lord Crawley’s already tenuous marriage which was recovering from his poor judgment which may well have led to his daughter’s tragic post-childbearing death, placing new weight on reliable Bates already burdened shoulders, having just been released from prison where he suffered under trumped up charges, and possibly causing Edith to reconsider her growing bond with poor Michael who cannot remarry given his wife’s insanity, all of which coincides with Jimmy’s tentative friendship with homosexual Thomas who may well have evil plans for Sarah who set him up for a mortifying encounter, but since all that happened downstairs one wonders if it really matters.

Well, of course it does. Anything happening on Downton Abbey, which I now affectionately refer to as Downer Abbey, deserves notice, and this week’s jolt – Matthew’s untimely death (or not?) – seems to have everyone buzzing. As someone initially enthusiastic about the show, I’ll admit it’s become gradually less interesting to me, with Sunday’s installment actually boring me into a nap, hence my absence when the blow struck.

But Renee saw it, reacted, cared and continues to process the loss.

“We need a Downton Abbey Facebook page” she declared just this morning, “where we can demand he survive! How can they, a public supported program, take his life without our input?”

I made an off the cuff remark about contract renegotiations, suggesting that maybe the actor had asked for a raise so they decided to cut expenses. Wrong move.

“That isn’t funny, and even if you’re serious they don’t just kill people who ask for raises, and he’s a critical part of the plot, and what’s going to happen if Lord Grantham goes back to handling the finances if Matthew’s out of the picture and nobody else recognizes that in this economy you have to cut back?”

I am not stupid enough to point out that these folks aren’t dealing with our current gas rates. But I am stupid enough to be flippant when somber mourning is called for.

“Have them bring Shirley MacLaine on for another episode. She’ll channel them all back to one of her past lives, and they’ll start over again as Little Downton on the Prarie.”

Icy stare, mad wife, dumb man.

Dumb not because I see humor in our reactions to televised fiction, but dumb because part of my job as husband – a big part, no less – is to validate. Renee wants to be heard, and that’s not a “woman” thing, because so do I and, I suspect, so does everyone. In fact, a sign hanging on my office wall proclaims “What People Need is a Good Listening To.”

And I believe that, especially as it pertains to marriage. We want to know that if something matters to us, it matters to our partner as well, and we want our experience validated by our spouse, who is the one person whose response to our hurts, hopes and peeves should be constant and clear. If a tree falls in the forest and no one hears it, was there a sound? Great and debatable question, but on a more personal level, if my wife feels something deeply and no one reflects, empathizes, or processes with her, then did her feelings count?

That’s the point. An assignment we’re given when we vow to love honor and cherish is validation. When you married your spouse, whether you articulated it this way or not, you said “I will be here to validate what you experience, and you will henceforth never be alone in your pain, joy, bewilderment or outrage. I’ll be your audience, your witness, united with you in whatever you experience.” And that’s a job description which means more, not less, as the years pass.

I’m not worried about Matthew. Hope he makes it but I’m not stressed. Bates is my man, a great guy who suffered horribly and behaved honorably through it all, so I cheerlead for him each episode. After all, his first marriage was an endurance test as he patiently bore deplorable treatment, and finally, having found a worthy and lovely mate who he legitimately weds after suicide, he’s victimized yet again by her bitterness, a bile reaching from her grave and nearly strangling him but ah! he soldiers on, displaying grace and courage under the worst sort of fire.

I’ll be patient as Renee stresses over tv characters, loving her through it, and quietly grateful to be above such nonsense.