The art of marriage

Sept. 25, 2008

Dear Leslie,

Today is the 15th anniversary of the day DC and became married. Married is a becoming, I reckon, more active verb than adjective.

You were there in the glow of Carmel Valley, preventing us from jittering off into the canyon yammering that we didn't know what we were doing. We didn't, of course. I wonder if anyone going in has any notion of the intricacy in this dance of intimacy.

Sometimes it has seemed more like a martial art.

The differences in the other person you're living with can make you feel combative at times, as if your way of living and being were under assault. That's ego, of course, protecting against an invasion of "otherness."

The better you grow to know yourself, though, the less necessary defenses become, the less afraid of another's will imposing on your own. You become more willing to dance.

A kind of surrender can occur without the white flag.

The martial art aikido is based on the concept of blending with your opponent rather than combating him. The Japanese baseball slugger Sadaharu Oh hit 868 home runs, a hundred more than anyone in the American major leagues. But he was only a mediocre player until he discovered first aikido and later took samurai training.

Aikido taught him to anticipate the pitcher's intent, to blend with the pitcher's rhythm so that subconsciously both were attuned. When he batted, Oh remained perfectly balanced even though he lifted his front leg off the ground.

Samurai training taught him the discipline necessary to be great at anything. He swung the bat like a warrior.

I have come to see that in marriage blending works better than samurai yells.

In the kitchen, DC used to bump into me if my body came between her and the task she was intent on, whether watering a plant or mopping the floor or slicing and dicing tomatoes. "I'm very busy," she would say, hardly ever "Excuse me."

Blending means anticipating your partner's next move. Physically and emotionally, you get trampled much less often when you do.

In a broader sense, blending with your partner makes possible a kind of flow between the two of you, a timing of conversation, a rhythm of movement. If life is a journey of transformation, surely marriage is one of the ways home.

If DC and I had married younger perhaps each of us would have been more malleable, more naturally aikidoists. We have had to learn this dance, this marital martial art minus the flexibility of youth.

Our parents are bearing down on 60 years in both marriages. DC and I look at them and know we are still mere amateurs.

Love, Sam

Sam Blackwell is a former reporter for the Southeast Missourian.