Traditional Anniversary Gifts
Traditional Wedding Anniversary Gift Ideas
By Carly Wickell, About.com
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Traditional wedding anniversary gifts are chosen from a list of materials that are designated for each year. The first wedding anniversary is symbolized with paper, and from there traditional anniversary gifts become more precious or scarce to reflect the growing number of years a couple has remained together.
Wedding Anniversary Customs
No one is certain just when the traditional gift list came into existence, but it probably evolved over time. Calling years twenty-five and fifty ‘Silver’ and ‘Gold’ may have originated in medieval Europe, where wives were given a silver wreath to celebrate their twenty-fifth year of marriage and a gold wreath for their fiftieth wedding anniversary.
Diamond Wedding Anniversaries
Diamonds are traditional anniversary gifts in both the sixtieth and seventh-fifth years. Year sixty probably became a part of existing traditions when Queen Victoria celebrated her Diamond Jubilee after sixty years on the British throne.
The traditional list may seem somewhat boring for the early years, but it doesn’t have to be if you get creative. There are many ways you can turn each year’s anniversary theme into a special gift.
Anniversary Gifts for the First Years, Paper and Cotton
That’s the idea. There are plenty of personal and decorative gifts for each year and I’m positive you can come up with something special.
Anniversary Gifts with a Twist
You can celebrate the yearly tradition even if you want to break away from it — make that year’s theme material a carrier for your gift instead of the actual gift.
When a Traditional Anniversary Gift Won’t Work
Traditional Anniversary Gifts by Year
First: Paper
Second: Cotton
Third: Leather
Fourth: Fruit or Flowers
Fifth: Wood
Sixth: Candy or Iron
Seventh: Wool or Copper
Eight Bronze or Pottery
Ninth: Pottery
Tenth: Tin
Eleventh: Steel
Twelfth: Silk or Linen
Thirteenth: Lace
Fourteenth: Ivory
Fifteenth: Crystal
Twentieth: China
Twenty-Fifth: Silver
Thirtieth: Pearls
Thirty-Fifth: Coral
Fortieth: Ruby
Forty-Fifth: Sapphire
Fiftieth: Gold
Fifty-Fifth: Emerald
Sixtieth: Diamond
By VERONICA CHAMBERS
Published: February 19, 2006
DATING for me was always like that video game: you try to follow the dance moves, and the further you get in the game, the trickier the moves become, until you are just a flailing mess. I was clingy and desperate and wore my heart on my sleeve, falling madly in love repeatedly, only to meet with heartbreaking rejection at every turn.
Which is why it is nothing short of a miracle that two years ago I was swiftly and happily married.
Until then I was a case study in “He’s Just Not That Into You,” or so I’ve been told. I haven’t read that book: friends warned me that it would trigger too many unpleasant memories. Apparently it is all about women like me: women who wear blinders about the men in their lives, who come on too strong and fall in love with the wrong people over and over.
I’m sure there are many of you out there. And if you’re one of us, here’s what I have to tell you, what I wish someone at some point had told me: It’s O.K.
It’s O.K. to fall deeply for one loser after another. It’s O.K. to show up at a guy’s house with a dozen roses and declare your undying affection. It’s O.K. to have too much to drink and call your ex 20 times and then to be mortally embarrassed when you realize your number must have shown up on his caller ID. It’s O.K. to stand at a phone booth in Times Square on New Year’s Eve, drenched like a sewer cat in the pouring rain, crying your eyes out because the man you are infatuated with has decided that he needs some space.
It’s O.K. because I believe that all of these grand gestures and heroic attempts to follow E. M. Forster’s simple advice to “only connect” are not really about this guy or that guy. Making a fool of yourself for love is ultimately about you, how much you have to give and the distances you will travel to keep your heart wide open when everything around you makes you feel like slamming it shut and soldering it closed.
Not to digress into too much pop psychology, but I sometimes think that I never had a chance at being one of those girls who could play it cool. My parents’ marriage was a soap opera saga of dramatic exits and mind games and affairs. When I was little, my father would force me to choose which parent I loved more. If I chose my mother, he would react with fury. If I chose him, he would smother me with hugs and kisses, luxuriating in his victory, then promise to come back for me soon.
Soon could mean two days or two weeks or two months. I learned early on that love meant never having to follow through on your promises.
My mother, bless her heart, tried to keep me from becoming a desperate girl with a daddy complex. In seventh grade I got my first boyfriend: one very handsome junior high school star athlete named Chuck Douglas. We went to different schools, so our relationship consisted of long, meandering phone calls, most of which were initiated by me.
One day, when my mother could not reach me after school for three hours straight, she came home early with the intention of beating some sense into me. When she found me sprawled underneath the dining table, the phone cord wrapped like a bracelet (or a handcuff) around my arm, she took pity. She led me into her bedroom and asked me how often I called Chuck.
“All the time.”
“And how often does he call you?” she asked.
I shrugged.
“You can’t chase boys,” she said. “They don’t like it.”
I was 13. Chuck Douglas was dating me, a certified nerd, in a sea of buxom cheerleaders. My mother’s words meant nothing. I was already lost to the cause.
In college I discovered women’s studies and somehow managed to wrap the words of Gloria Steinem and Angela Davis neatly around my now well-solidified boy craziness. “I’m a feminist,” I declared. “I don’t need to wait for a man to ask me out.”
So I asked out guy after guy after guy: the very epitome of he’s just not that into you. I dated numerous gay men who were not yet out of the closet. It became a kind of service after a while, coaching ex-boyfriends out of the closet. I went out with a techno D.J. who invited me to go sailing with his parents. I hated his taste in music, and he was a terrible kisser, but I still cried a week later when he dumped me.
IN my 20’s I had two long-term relationships that nevertheless ended, and I found myself back out in the wilds of the dating world. At this time the hot self-help dating book was “The Rules.” There were many rules that were supposed to help you lasso a man, but the one I remember said that you should never accept a date for Saturday after Thursday.
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“The Rules” reminded me of that conversation I had with my mother about the swoon-worthy Chuck Douglas. I understood that the rules were good for me, but so is tofu, and I just can’t stand the stuff.
My friend Cassandra insisted that men are like lions; they want to chase their prey. She suggested that I smile at a guy I was interested in instead of barreling him over with conversation. “See what he does,” she said. “If you’re feeling playful, then maybe give him a little wink.”
Soon after, I was invited by a friend to take a trip to South Africa. One enchanted morning my friend and I were having breakfast in the hotel restaurant. Across the room I spied a charming man with the kind of friendly face that you feel you have known forever. Leaving the restaurant, I stood up and saw that he was looking my way. I smiled. He smiled back. Feeling bold, I winked, then tripped on a step and fell on my face.
The next few minutes were dizzying as I was surrounded by hotel staff offering me ice and bandages. Then I heard a voice amid the cacophony; it was the man I had winked at. I turned away, mortified.
“You should see a doctor,” he said.
I insisted that I was fine.
“Well, let me be the judge of that, because I happen to be a doctor.”
He took me out to dinner that night and every night for the rest of my trip. We exchanged phone numbers and even though I lived in New York and he lived in Sydney, Australia, I called and called him because I was so sure that what I felt for this man was, if not love, then certainly magic.
It wasn’t. To give the guy a little credit, we lived continents apart. Even if he was that into me, it would’ve been a hard row to hoe.
It was about this time, when I was in my late 20’s, that I read a nugget of advice, probably in a women’s magazine, that I took to heart. This article suggested that if you knew you were going to meet the love of your life in one year, you would really enjoy this year. This seemed reasonable.
So while I still tended to wear my heart on my sleeve and to commit too quickly, I also had some really fun one-off dates with guys I knew were never going to call. I went to the theater and to hip-hop shows and tried to relax about the whole dating and mating thing.
About a year later I met the man who would become my husband. The friend who kept reintroducing us insisted that, unlike the vast majority of men I was meeting in New York, Jason was a guy who could hold his own. He was not a “Sex and the City” Mr. Big, a type I was well acquainted with: the
New York Times
By TARA PARKER-POPE
Published: June 10, 2008
For insights into healthy marriages, social scientists are looking in an unexpected place.
A growing body of evidence shows that same-sex couples have a great deal to teach everyone else about marriage and relationships. Most studies show surprisingly few differences between committed gay couples and committed straight couples, but the differences that do emerge have shed light on the kinds of conflicts that can endanger heterosexual relationships.
The findings offer hope that some of the most vexing problems are not necessarily entrenched in deep-rooted biological differences between men and women. And that, in turn, offers hope that the problems can be solved.
Next week, California will begin issuing marriage licenses to same-sex couples, reigniting the national debate over gay marriage. But relationship researchers say it also presents an opportunity to study the effects of marriage on the quality of all relationships.
“When I look at what’s happening in California, I think there’s a lot to be learned to explore how human beings relate to one another,” said Sondra E. Solomon, an associate professor of psychology at the University of Vermont. “How people care for each other, how they share responsibility, power and authority — those are the key issues in relationships.”
The stereotype for same-sex relationships is that they do not last. But that may be due, in large part, to the lack of legal and social recognition given to same-sex couples. Studies of dissolution rates vary widely.
After Vermont legalized same-sex civil unions in 2000, researchers surveyed nearly 1,000 couples, including same-sex couples and their heterosexual married siblings. The focus was on how the relationships were affected by common causes of marital strife like housework, sex and money.
Notably, same-sex relationships, whether between men or women, were far more egalitarian than heterosexual ones. In heterosexual couples, women did far more of the housework; men were more likely to have the financial responsibility; and men were more likely to initiate sex, while women were more likely to refuse it or to start a conversation about problems in the relationship. With same-sex couples, of course, none of these dichotomies were possible, and the partners tended to share the burdens far more equally.
While the gay and lesbian couples had about the same rate of conflict as the heterosexual ones, they appeared to have more relationship satisfaction, suggesting that the inequality of opposite-sex relationships can take a toll.
“Heterosexual married women live with a lot of anger about having to do the tasks not only in the house but in the relationship,” said Esther D. Rothblum, a professor of women’s studies at San Diego State University. “That’s very different than what same-sex couples and heterosexual men live with.”
Other studies show that what couples argue about is far less important than how they argue. The egalitarian nature of same-sex relationships appears to spill over into how those couples resolve conflict.
One well-known study used mathematical modeling to decipher the interactions between committed gay couples. The results, published in two 2003 articles in The Journal of Homosexuality, showed that when same-sex couples argued, they tended to fight more fairly than heterosexual couples, making fewer verbal attacks and more of an effort to defuse the confrontation.
Controlling and hostile emotional tactics, like belligerence and domineering, were less common among gay couples.
Same-sex couples were also less likely to develop an elevated heartbeat and adrenaline surges during arguments. And straight couples were more likely to stay physically agitated after a conflict.
“When they got into these really negative interactions, gay and lesbian couples were able to do things like use humor and affection that enabled them to step back from the ledge and continue to talk about the problem instead of just exploding,” said Robert W. Levenson, a professor of psychology at the University of California, Berkeley.
The findings suggest that heterosexual couples need to work harder to seek perspective. The ability to see the other person’s point of view appears to be more automatic in same-sex couples, but research shows that heterosexuals who can relate to their partner’s concerns and who are skilled at defusing arguments also have stronger relationships.
One of the most common stereotypes in heterosexual marriages is the “demand-withdraw” interaction, in which the woman tends to be unhappy and to make demands for change, while the man reacts by withdrawing from the conflict. But some surprising new research shows that same-sex couples also exhibit the pattern, contradicting the notion that the behavior is rooted in gender, according to an abstract presented at the 2006 meeting of the Association for Psychological Science by Sarah R. Holley, a psychology researcher at Berkeley.
Dr. Levenson says this is good news for all couples.
“Like everybody else, I thought this was male behavior and female behavior, but it’s not,” he said. “That means there is a lot more hope that you can do something about it.”
From the New York Times
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By RALPH GARDNER Jr.
Published: June 8, 2008
LET’S say you and your spouse haven’t had sex in so long that you can’t remember the last time you did. Not the day. Not the month. Maybe not even the season. Would you look for gratification elsewhere? Would you file for divorce? Or would you turn to your mate and say, “Honey, you know, I’ve been thinking. Why don’t we do it for the next 365 days in a row?”
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FRESH START Doug and Annie Brown. The quest was her idea.
That’s more or less what happened to Charla and Brad Muller. And in another example of an erotic adventure supplanting married ennui, a second couple, Annie and Douglas Brown, embarked on a similar, if abbreviated journey: 101 straight days of post-nuptial sex.
Both couples document their exploits in books published this month, the latest entries in what is almost a mini-genre of books offering advice about the “sex-starved marriage.” The couples, though, are hardly similar. The Mullers are Bible-studying steak-eating Republicans from Charlotte, N.C. The Browns are backpacking multigrain northerners who moved to Boulder, Colo. The Mullers’ book, “365 Nights,” is rather modest and circumspect in its details. The Browns’ book, “Just Do It,” almost makes the reader feel part of a threesome, sharing everything they used to stimulate sexual desire (it’s hard to visualize and even harder to explain).
To many spouses, “married sex” may sound like an oxymoron. And “married-with-children sex” may sound like that elusive antimatter. Indeed, reigniting a couple’s desire for each other has fueled an entire therapeutic industry — from Kinsey to Dr. Ruth to Redbook. According to a 2004 study, “American Sexual Behavior,” by the National Opinion Research Center at the University of Chicago, married couples have intercourse about 66 times a year. But that number is skewed by young marrieds, as young as 18, who couple, on average, 84 times a year.
Either way, those statistics put the Mullers and Browns in Olympic-record territory. That they thought a sex marathon would reinvigorate their marriages might say as much about the American penchant for exercise and goal-setting as it does about the state of romance.
But the couples may also be on to something. “There’s a strong relationship between rating your marriage as happy and frequency of intercourse,” said Tom W. Smith, who conducted the “American Sexual Behavior” study. “What we can’t tell you is what the causal relationship is between the two. We don’t know whether people who are happy in their marriage have sex more, or whether people who have sex more become happy in their marriages, or a combination of those two.”
Do these couples provide any answers? Did sex every single night make them happier in their marriages and in life?
Charla apparently had no intention of writing about “the gift,” as she euphemistically refers to it. She was simply a homemaker and marketing consultant, who in 2006 wanted to give her husband a special 40th birthday present.
“This is something no one else would give him,” she said in an interview. “It didn’t cost a lot of money. It was highly memorable. It met all the criteria for a really great gift.”
Brad was less than fully enthusiastic, mostly because, he says, his wife often has big ideas and poor follow-through. After all, she hadn’t been especially generous in that department since they’d had their two children. He paid closer attention when he realized that she was serious.
The book idea came up serendipitously. Charla had lunch with a friend, Betsy Thorpe, a former book editor and her eventual collaborator, who had relocated to Charlotte. She saw the stuff of literature in the couple’s nightly trysts (the women met three-quarters of the way through the Mullers’ annus mirabilis).
While “365 Nights” was written from the women’s perspective, “Just Do It” was written by the guy, Douglas Brown, a 42-year-old reporter at The Denver Post. Yet the change in gender doesn’t seem to affect the point of view, perhaps because Doug comes across as a sensitive male, and because the sexual marathon in 2006 was his wife’s idea, a way to banish suburban boredom after they moved to Boulder two years earlier from the East Coast.
“I thought we don’t have anything else going on,” Annie said in an interview. “It might kick-start our marriage.”
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They changed venues frequently — a cabin on an ashram, a yurt in the Colorado Rockies, and in a hotel room in Las Vegas, where Doug was covering the annual adult-entertainment industry convention. “That’s why we scheduled all these little trips,” Annie said. “We knew it had the potential of getting monotonous.”
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SO HAPPY TOGETHER Brad and Charla Muller.
And were it not for her competitive zeal, their streak might have died well short of 100 days. Annie even forced her husband to have sex during a bout of vertigo. “I’m not a quitter,’ she said. “The night he had vertigo, I said, ‘I’m sorry, guy, but you’ve got to keep going.’ ”
Doug said in an interview that on their 101st day, he felt “sort of like you had some long-forgotten appointment to hear some tax attorney talk about estate planning.”
After that, he said, “I think we didn’t do it for a month.”
The Mullers, or at least Charla, hit a wall somewhere around the 10th month. In her book, she describes the gift then as “my stupid idea” and “a hidden cross to bear.” But they say they dropped out only a few days a month, mostly because of Brad’s business travel. They averaged 26 to 28 times a month.
“The spirit of the gift was not to keep score,” Ms. Muller said. “When he was traveling, we tried to make up for it, but it wasn’t mandatory.”
The women are regarded with admiration, if not always envy, by their girlfriends. “My first reaction was please don’t tell my husband,” said Sydney Coffin, a friend of Charla’s.
Annie Brown is now viewed as a de facto sex therapist by her peers. Her adventure even inspired her friend Diane Elliston to turn off the television in the bedroom. (The Browns had draped tasteful fabric over theirs.)
“We did it every day for three days in a row,” Ms. Elliston said.
APPROACHING sex as a marathon, with its own version of Heartbreak Hill, may not be the solution for every stagnating marriage. Lois Braverman, the president of the Ackerman Institute for the Family, cautioned against couples trying to keep up with the Mullers and Browns. “Some couples are totally satisfied with being sexual one night a week, some twice, some twice a month,” she said. “There’s no number of times that’s right.”
Shoshana Bulow, a psychotherapist and certified sex therapist in Manhattan, pointed out that sex is a lot more complicated than frequency. “There’s all sorts of reasons people lose interest in sex with their partner — disappointments, life cycles, financial issues,” she said. “Just having it isn’t going to resolve those.”
Nonetheless, sex every day seems to have worked for the Mullers and Browns. Charla Muller and Annie Brown both talk about how mandated physical intimacy created more emotional intimacy. “It required a daily kindness and forgiveness, and not being cranky or snarky, that I don’t think either of us had experienced before,” Charla said.
Annie said that she and her husband reached a place in their relationship that they have seldom approached since. “It was just this intense closeness,” she said. “We were so aware of wherever the other person was mentally and emotionally and physically.”
Today, the Browns report they have sex approximately six times a month, or double their frequency before their adventure. The Mullers decline to discuss their habits, except to say that they fall well within the national average. And, Brad said, the sex is better. “It made it much easier to be open to the idea, more spontaneous,” he said, “So you don’t go back to that always gaming for it and always trying to get out of it.”
Charla agrees: “It’s a lot better than it used to be. I may be slow to the take, but it was a really meaningful lesson.”
Douglas Brown suffers less stage fright than he once did. “There’s much less of a sense of having to perform,” he said. “After 100 days, that kind of melted away.”
All the same, he doesn’t recommend the experience to everyone.
“I’m glad we did it,” he said. “But as far as a practical message, nobody needs to do it 100 days. You don’t have to climb Mount Everest to understand alpine sublime.”
25th Anniversary Mark Elusive for Many Couples
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By SAM ROBERTS
Published: September 20, 2007
Don’t stock up on silver anniversary cards. More than half the Americans who might have celebrated their 25th wedding anniversaries since 2000 were divorced, separated or widowed before reaching that milestone, according to the latest census survey, released yesterday.
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For the first time at least since World War II, women and men who married in the late 1970s had a less than even chance of still being married 25 years later.
“We know that somewhere between 40 percent and 50 percent of marriages dissolve,” said Barbara Risman, executive officer of the Council on Contemporary Families, a research group. “Now, when people marry, everyone wonders, is this one of those marriages that will be around for awhile.”
But David Blankenhorn, president of the Institute for American Values, a marriage research and advocacy group, said he was struck that the percentage of people who celebrated their 15th anniversary had declined. “This seems to be saying more recent marriages are more fragile,” Mr. Blankenhorn said.
About 80 percent of first marriages that took place in the late 1950s lasted at least 15 years. Among people who married in the late 1980s for the first time, however, only 61 percent of the men and 57 percent of the women were married 15 years later.
Among currently married women, non-Hispanic whites were the only group in which a majority had marked their 15th anniversary.
The survey by the Census Bureau, in 2004, confirmed that most Americans eventually marry, but they are marrying later and are slightly more likely to marry more than once.
Those trends continued, although the latest numbers suggest an uptick in the divorce rate among people married in the most recent 20 years covered in the report, 1975-1994. The proportion of all Americans who have been divorced, about one in five, remained constant, however.
“Basically, it looks like we’re pretty much holding steady,” said Rose Kreieder, a Census Bureau demographer. “There are not radical differences.”
The survey of the civilian, non-institutionalized population found a number of disparities on the basis of race and ethnicity.
Among men over 15, the percentage who have never been married was 45 percent for blacks, 39 percent for Hispanics, 33 percent for Asians and 28 percent for whites.
Among women over 15, it was 44 percent for blacks, 30 percent for Hispanics, 23 percent for Asians and 22 percent for whites.
Among Americans married in the 1950s, about 70 percent were still married by their 25th anniversary. Only 49.5 percent of men and 46.4 percent of women who married in the late 1970s were married 25 years later.
In 2004, among people in their late 20s, a majority of men — 54 percent — had never married, and 41 percent of women had not. In 1996, the comparable figures were 49 percent among men and 35 percent among women.
In the latest analysis of people age 15 and older, 58 percent of women and 54 percent of men had married only once. In 1996, the figures were about 60 percent for women and 54 percent for men.
One statistical constant has been the so-called seven-year itch, as popularized in the 1950s play and film about errant husbands. Couples who separate do so, on average, after seven years and divorce after eight. The duration of first marriages that end in divorce appears to have increased slightly among men.
Among adults 25 and older who had been divorced, 52 percent of men and 44 percent of women were currently married.
On average, people who marry again typically do so in about three-and-a-half years. Second marriages that end in divorce last about 8.6 years for men and 7.2 years for women.
In 2004, 12 percent of men and 13 percent of women had married twice. Three percent each had married three or more times.
The oldest baby boomers recorded the highest divorce rates. Among people in their 50s, 38 percent of men and 41 percent of women had been divorced. In 1996, the comparable figures were 36 percent and 35 percent.
One factor that also affects the marriage trends is that people are living longer. As a result, the median age at which women in a first marriage were widowed rose from 57.8 in 1996 to 60.3 in 2004. Among men, the median age increased from 59.6 to 61.3.
Census results released last week also confirmed the finding by demographers earlier this year that more American women were living without a husband than with one. Among women 20 and older, 51.2 percent said that they were divorced, separated or their spouse was temporarily absent or that they had never been married when the American Community Survey was taken in 2006.
If you happen to be in Boston and you happened to pick up the Boston Globe on Sunday, then you may have seen a review of “This Old Spouse”. And, if you happened not to be in Boston and, thus, happened to miss the Sunday Globe, I’m here to say that I was there.
Actually, today I’m in Seattle preparing to teach my “72 Ways to Flirt” seminar along with a “This Old Spouse” seminar through Discover U. There’s still time…perhaps I’ll see you there.
After that, I’m off to Juneau on a solo bike trip…although a small part of me wants to chicken out!
“Sexiness wears thin after a while and beauty fades, but to be married to a man w ho makes you laugh every day, ah, now that’s a real treat.”
Joanne Woodward
Hello all,
On August 8, I will be flying to Seattle to teach two seminars at Discover U—one on the 9th (“72 Ways to Flirt”) and one on the 10th (“This Old Spouse). Believe it or not (I hardly can), I have been teaching the flirting seminar for more than twenty years.
If you want to stop by, go to www.discoveru.com and check out all their classes. I’ll also be doing some local radio.
After the classes I head to Juneau for a three week bike vacation touring via the Alaskan ferry along the Southern coast. If you see me on deck, wave.
I’ve spent years thinking about how people change—and whether they really change at all. I have found that most of us, even when we think we’re changing, keep doing the same thing we always did; sometimes louder, sometimes softer, sometimes gentler—but pretty much the same.
Years ago I heard an example of core change that I’ve tried to bring into couple therapy. I was in the Grand Tetons lodge listening to a ranger talk. The ranger, a Native American from that area, told the story of how his tribe tried to change the way they got the golden eagle feathers they used in ceremonies. At a certain point, they did not want to kill the eagle to get the feathers. They tried trapping the eagle n the morning, in the evening, with a net, but it never worked. They weren’t fast enough and the eagle flew off before they could get near.
One day, after months of frustration, they watched the eagle catch a rabbit and eat it. On that full tummy, they realized, the eagle could not fly. They trapped the eagle, took the feathers, and let the bird go. From then on, they simply left a full meal for the eagle, and they took the feathers they needed for ceremonies without killing the bird.
The way to apply the concept of core change to your relationship is this: Put an end to criticism. Try for a month to tell your partner what you want more of, instead of what you want less of. Like saying, “I want more time with you where we feel close” instead of “I don’t want you to come home late.” (You can’t say, “I want more of you not coming home late”)
You’d be surprised at the potential for change when your partner doesn’t feel criticized or like he/she is a constant disappointment. If you can do it for a month, the relationship may soften significantly. You may be dancing with eagle feathers on your heads.
As I was writing, “This Old Spouse” this article appeared in the New York Times. While I saw the phrase as a metaphor for the constant tinkering required to keep a new spouse thriving and an old spouse…well…keeping him running (or her) like a ‘63 Chevy may be a worthy goal, these couples were literally struggling through household renovations that were tearing them apart. Renovations (think ‘change’) in the house where you dwell and/or the house of love do tend to bring out the worst in each other.
From The New York Times
By PENELOPE GREEN
Published: January 11, 2007
SANDI SLONE and Bruce Ehrmann have been a love story for 25 years. She is a painter, he is a newspaper and television reporter turned real estate broker. They met in Harvard Square one afternoon — she had a show nearby, he was meeting a friend — and they have been together ever since. Where she is dainty and precise, he is expansive, voluble and quick to self-criticism. Their rapport is terrific, an affectionate, Nick-and-Nora-style back-and-forth, honed and polished to a glittering sheen.
Lately, however, there has been this one point of contention, a bit of a roadblock. Since 1987, Ms. Slone and Mr. Ehrmann have been living in a rough-and-tumble artist’s loft on the top floor of an old warehouse in TriBeCa. They purchased the roof rights when they bought the place all those years ago. And for years they struggled: there weren’t even proper floors or a ceiling when they first moved in. They added walls and a nice bathroom as their bank accounts allowed, living in what Ms. Slone called a “provisional” but perfectly happy style.
Then Mr. Ehrmann became a real estate broker — he’s now a vice president at Stribling & Associates, working mostly in the marketing of luxury developments — and their fortunes, along with their neighborhood, began to change. By last year, they suddenly had the means to expand, to literally move up in their world, and build another room on the roof. But whose room?
Mr. Ehrmann, after years of living in his wife’s studio, was desperate for his own private, paint-free aerie. And Ms. Slone, after years of living on top of her own work, craved a separate work space, with its own entrance so collectors might come for a showing, and, as she explained, “I wouldn’t have to ask Bruce to move his shoes out of the front hall, and so when we had guests over for dinner and I’m in the middle of work, which is very intense and very private, they can’t just walk out of the bathroom and see it all.”
Uh-oh, there it is. The impasse. The boulder in the path. The point at which a couple pursuing a renovation or decorating project disagree, and each partner veers onto his or her own road, the high road, driving quickly and emphatically far, far away from each other.
A few days ago, Mr. Ehrmann and Ms. Slone were on the phone together, each on a different extension, explaining the situation. “The conversation ranges from the genuine need to discuss the impasse in a nonthreatening way, to come to a resolution,” Mr. Ehrmann said, “to statements like, ‘I can’t stay in this relationship, I need to go rent an apartment, I’m going to TriBeCa Tower.’ ” And Ms. Slone broke in. “Honey,” she said, “that’s not a bad idea.”
Like moving, childbirth and death, renovation is one of the biggies: a huge stressor in a relationship. How a couple handles it tends to mirror or even amplify what’s going on between them, particularly the problems, blowing up slights to the size of a Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade balloon.
Third parties are frequently entangled. Contractors, architects and decorators become skilled at listening and conflict resolution.
“I don’t want to be a marriage counselor, I wasn’t trained to be one,” said Nancy Corzine, a high-end decorator whose work can be seen from Los Angeles to Manhattan. “But the personalities come out, they can’t help it.”
“And of course it’s about power,” she continued, “who has the ultimate ownership of the home. My job is to move it along. I won’t let there be an impasse, because I don’t get paid until it’s done. If you’re smart, you learn that she says one thing and means another, and you know who you have to please. The checkbook is the answer.”
Rob Rogers, a principal at Rogers Marvel Architects in New York, remembers with a wince a time during the last decade when the firm’s work was primarily residential — and marital.
“There was the couple our office nicknamed the Bickersons,” he said, “and the time we were so worn out we replaced the sign on our door with RMA Marriage Counselors in preparation for an evening session.” The great lesson he learned, Mr. Rogers said, was to try to get clients who had lived together for some period of time, or at least to make sure a new couple had hashed out some pretty basic issues.
