Free Marital Advice

From 1986:

Was reading that close to half the marriages in America today end in divorce. That kind of figure seems shocking, even though there is a lot of talk and writing about young couples making the adjustment to getting along better in the age of women’s lib. I have been observing marriages for as long as I can remember and have naturally noticed a few obvious trends along the way.

Too many of the marriages before women’s lib only survived because of the dependent status of women. Those hardy souls “MADE” the marriage work. If they happened to get a husband who granted them some independence through sharing family decisions, some separate power in spending matters, and the right to her own friends and outside interests, then so much the better. Of course, there have always been those marriages where the woman yelled “jump” and the husband yelled, “How high?”

While in the banking business in early ‘60s, I saw more families than you might think, where the male rationed out all money. Often I could plainly see resentment in the woman as the couple sat at my desk working out plans for purchasing their home. I could sometimes sense the man’s feelings that to let his wife play a major role in handling the family budget was some sort of reflection on his masculinity.

It was a pleasure to see couples where those matters were shared, with neither feeling any loss of face. I also saw, too often, situations where something happened to the male and the woman had to face a new world where she had never paid a power bill, been in on the purchase of a car, or signed a note at a bank. Deliberate or not, the husband had endangered his family by setting his wife up with an inability to manage.

The worst days at my banking desk were the ones I tried to find answers for weeping widows.

There are fewer marriages like mine, where the husband brings home what money he can and turns most of it over to his wife because he hates doing book work. I have on occasion seen a power bill, or a “balance due” note, but mostly this arrangement has allowed me to concentrate on finding food for my family in the streams and forests.

This isn’t a flawless arrangement but it’s close. There have been those times brought on by a moment of human impulsiveness, when I’ve had to come home and explained we will have to dig up an extra two hundred dollars a month to make payments on a bargain piece of land I’ve purchased up in the mountains. This has sometimes required a family conference when she reports we were already running on a tight budget. But! Knowing she has the check book frees me from most of the worry and gives her a heightened sense of responsibility … and control. These things are important to women and make the husband work harder.

Another area for potential tension in a marriage is dishonesty. One time when Iris saved enough money to take us to Hawaii, she also sandbagged enough to buy me one of those wild Polynesian shirts. A lot of husbands would have lied and said they liked the shirt and that would have set off a long run of the wife buying shirts the husband hated. Eventually such hidden resentment can produce distress and four displeasing shirts might cause social withdrawal. It was very tough on me, but I bit the bullet and told Iris I didn’t like the shirt. It hurt but it worked out okay.

Because of my experiences and a desire to help cut down the divorce rate. I am considering writing a book about these things. There is a chance it could turn into a family project because Iris says she would like to do a … fairly long “Introduction.”

G. George Ostrom is a national award-winning columnist for Hungry Horse News. He lives in Kalispell.