Our Letter to the Editor about the article in The Atlantic titled "Don't let love take over your life."

 The article:

 

Here is the article:

Love-life balance 

From the article:

"If you build a life with your relationship at the center, everything else gets pushed to the perimeter. There’s a way to maintain what I think of as “love-life balance,” to preserve your identity and autonomy while nurturing a caring partnership. Losing that balance can be damaging for a person, for a relationship, and for society."

The rest of the article elaborates on this argument.

We read this article going "wow."  

Very little of the article is actually about "love."  It is mostly an argument that one should cultivate a meaningful life outside of one's love interest.  And to not do that is dysfunctional.

The author also makes the specious claim that to absorb yourself with your love means abandoning your "identity" and "autonomy."  Really?  

And is "damaging...for society."

So we wrote a letter to the editor.  Won't get published (I don't think The Atlantic publishes letters to the editor), but we felt better pointing out the flaws in Faith Hill's argument.

For one thing, she never mentions something that people who fall in love want--

AND THAT IS TO STAY MADLY IN LOVE.  

Look at movies, at music, at poetry.  There is basically one theme:  Love.  Either acquired or lost.  How many movies and songs are about the excitement of feeling a need for "outside" relationships?" Or about preserving "your identity and autonomy while nurturing a caring partnership?"  

A "caring partnership?"  That's what a marriage is?  That's what falling in love and feeling the power of love is?  A partnership?  How many Valentines say "I want you to be in a partnership with me?"  That sounds like a couple of people forming a small company together to sell shoes or something.

So, with that, here is our letter:

It is interesting that in an article on "Love-life balance," that the major issue isn't even addressed:  How to keep the love in a marriage.  Instead the article focuses on how to develop your life outside of marriage so you won’t be “dysfunctional."  

We are in our mid-70s.  Married 12 years.  We do everything together.  Everything.  We don't even make a trip to the grocery store alone.  We can even make a trip to the grocery store for milk fun.  We wear matching shirts....always (by the way, people LOVE it!  We make so many people happy that way).  Every day we review what we did 12 years and X months ago during our courtship…to remember and feel again what it was like falling in love.

What we see is that people are fine with developing outside interests/friends during their marriage, but that the reason is that they have lost that "intensity of experience" of falling in love and therefore of being madly in love.  We haven't lost it a bit.  It is still as alive and strong as it was over 12 years ago.  

Issues such as autonomy, etc., don't come up.  We both do what we want to do.  We just want to do things together.  So, in our "senior" years we have traveled 55,000 miles in our pickup camper, camping in dispersed sites all by ourselves (not campgrounds....around other people...yech!), cycled 31,000 miles, hiked 4600 miles (mostly off trail), and have become decent if not better ballroom dancers (we even have our own Youtube channel showing two old people ballroom dancing to the "oldies.").

Our "outside" relationships are our children and our AWESOMELY WONDERFUL grandchildren.    

We are role models of a marriage for our children, and even our grandchildren tell their parents how much Grandma and Grandpa are in love.  

It really struck us that in an article about marriage nowhere is addressed the idea of how to maintain that intensity of love that people have.  It's what most people desire above all else.  Yet not even any of the "experts" who are cited talk about it.

It's about being in love.  IN LOVE.  And if you are, then you are never bored around your spouse.  You can't get enough of them.  

Sincerely,

Dan and Vicky Graybill

 

 

 

.....so, because there aren't any songs that have been written about how powerful the feeling of having interests, friends, and activities outside of marriage are, we are proposing some wonderful old love songs be "modernized" and re-recorded:

 

Outside interests is a many splendored thing… (Ray Coniff Singers)

You’ve lost that outside-interests thing  (Righteous Brothers)

I just called to say I friend you  (Stevie Wonder)

Greatest friendship of all (Whitney Houston)

I Can’t help falling in friendship with you (Elvis)

She wants you (as a friend) ya ya ya (Beatles)

I wanna dance with someone (who likes me) (Whitney Houston)

Outside relationships will keep us together (Captain and Tennille)

Roses are Red, my friend (Bobby Vinton)

To know him is to be friends with him  (the Teddy Bears)

Crazy little thing called outside-friendships (Queen)

I can’t stop liking you as my friend (Ray Charles)

 

This Magic Moment (of bowling with my friends!)  The Drifters

I will always be friends with you  (Dolly Parton)

 

Be my friend (The Ronettes)

 

My Friend (the Temptations)

 

When a Man is Friends with a Woman (Percy Sledge)

 

I only have eyes for you...my friend (The Flamingos)

 

My Baby just cares for all his friends (Nina Simone)

 

It had to be you....and you....and you...and you  (Harry Connick, Jr)

 

Hallelujah I like my friends so!  (Ray Charles)

 

Sea of Liking Friends (Phil Phillips)