Читать книгу Hope’s Daughters - R. Wayne Willis - Страница 54

Why do people get married anyway?

In the movie Shall We Dance? the character played by Susan Sarandon asks that rhetorical question over dinner and then gives her answer: “Because we need a witness to our lives.”

She elaborates:

There are billions of people on the planet. What does any one life really mean? But in a marriage, you’re promising to care about everything—the good things, the bad things, the terrible things, the mundane things. All of it, all the time, every day. You’re saying, ‘Your life will not go unnoticed, because I will notice it. Your life will not go unwitnessed, because I will be your witness.’

I came across a story that illustrated for me the truth of Sarandon’s words. It was about the Guinness’ Book of World Records marriage champs. He was one hundred and she was one year older. John and Amelia Roccio had been married eighty-two years. Asked by a reporter the secret of their marriage, the 101-year-old woman thought for a moment and answered: “He never put me down. He liked everything I did.”40 He served admirably—according to the one who knew him best—as her advocate.

Drs. John and Julia Gottman, perhaps the world’s foremost marriage scientists, for thirty years scientifically and mathematically studied over three thousand married couples. They became expert enough that they could analyze a fifteen-minute slice of conversation between a couple and with over 90 percent accuracy predict whether that relationship would last another fifteen years. One of their most important findings was that in marriages that last, the ratio of positive to negative emotion expressed is at least five to one.41

What we crave most—whether married or single—is someone to notice us. And care. And say so.