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“What is a good relationship? That’s what I want to know.” This question encapsulated the point of the spirited discussion in the third session of parenting classes I was leading at a correctional facility in Boston. Everyone got thoughtful and quiet after that question.
Finally, one of the less talkative women broke the silence. “Yeah, what is a good relationship? I’ve never seen one.”
We moved into a brainstorm about characteristics of a good relationship. This was a technique we’d used in previous sessions. It allowed participants to share their own ideas/knowledge about a topic rather than being passive listeners. The discussion got spirited again. Everyone had ideas about what a good relationship should be, even if they’d never seen one up-close. And, of course, the discussion quickly turned from parenting to romantic relationships just as the session was about to end. The women, ranging in age from 25 to 50, instructed me to come back with some information about love, romance and marriage.
“Remember, no staples, no clips,” one of them said on her way out, referring to the fact that none of the articles could have staples or paperclips, things that could be turned into weapons.
Like these women, I spent a good part of my adult life not knowing what a good adult relationship was. I knew what being a good parent meant. I knew how to be a good student. I figured out how to get my work relationships right, but love, a positive, working, committed relationship with a man? That was difficult.
Growing up, the marriages and romantic relationships between adults, including my parents, were invisible to me. I saw couples mostly in their parenting, household and church roles. I don’t remember seeing romance or much affection at all. In fact, many of the adults seemed to tolerate each other rather than truly like each other. Occasionally, I’d see bouts of passion around anger, mostly about money and sometimes about a betrayal of some sort. Most of the details about these outbursts are fuzzy because the adults in my orb were private, I kept my head in books to escape the frenzy of my surroundings, and my memory tends to squelch unpleasant memories from my childhood.
Whatever the case, I survived teenage crushes only to crash into an ill-fated and, in retrospect, entirely inappropriate first marriage in my early twenties. Anyone else could have seen that it was ill-fated but not me.
Though I was a reader, it never occurred to me to read about relationships and marriage. I didn’t get on the self-help reading bandwagon until I was separated and had been alone for a few years. While piecing together bits of advice from various books, I can’t remember one book that taught me what a great and good love was from any of the reading I did in my thirties and forties. That was my goal – to learn what a great and good love was, not just what a positive relationship was or how to work out conflicts in relationships.
I have found memoirs to be better source material for me in giving me clues about what a positive, loving relationship is. So, when I heard about Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert, I nearly inhaled the book. It crystallized a journey for self-hood that involved passion, faith, and romance and love. While I loved that book, even through those times I felt it was just a wee-bit indulgent, it is my second favorite source for an up-close and personal look at romance and love.
My favorite example of a positive, loving, romantic relationship was not a book at all. It is a documentary by Leah Mahan, Sweet Old Song (now available on DVD), originally broadcast on the PBS series, “P.O.V.” in 2002. As far as I’m concerned, it ought to rebroadcast every year.
Sweet Old Song features the extraordinary 20+ year love affair between artist and singer, Barbara Ward Armstrong, and her beau/husband, the late musician and artist, Howard “Pache” Armstrong. Theirs was a great and good love, the stuff Hollywood romances are made of, only it’s better because it was between real people, both of whom it was my privilege to meet.
I won’t give too many details of their story – you really have to see it for yourself. Age is a central component. This quote is from the second of several articles about Mr. Armstrong on the NPR website.
“When the vibrant and dashing Howard
