Charles Handy describes how he and his wife, Elizabeth, have kept their marriage fresh for more than 50 years.
Charles Handy: 'Most couples need to rearrange their relationship in
midlife.'
It was our wedding day. We had made promises to each other, raised
glasses, cut a cake and waved goodbye to assembled guests. We were on
our way ... to what? We had never sat down and talked about it, about
what it would be like, who would do what and what the priorities would
be. We were good together. We would go on being good together. No need
to spoil it all with plans and job descriptions as if it was a business.
Fifty years ago, it was just assumed that my career would have
priority, would determine where and how we would live. Elizabeth would
have the main responsibility for the home, and for the children if they
came. Whatever interests and talents she developed would have to be
fitted into her domestic priorities. I assumed that she thought so too. I
don't remember asking her.
Looking back, it was incredibly selfish of me, particularly as my
career took me into ever more absorbing areas, from business to academia
to the church. What added to the problem was that each job came with
less, not more, remuneration than the last. That left Elizabeth to fill
the financial gap, which she always and valiantly did, running her own
interior design business and later leasing and letting out a succession
of small apartments, all while still managing the home.
I never gave her any money to buy food or household necessities. She
took care of all those out of her earnings, leaving me to look after the
regular outgoings, the mortgage, utilities, repairs. That was unusual.
My father had given my mother a regular monthly allowance, which she was
expected to account for. I remember her agonising over her accounts,
trying to remember what she had spent on what.
In that respect we had moved on, or society had. I was not the boss
in the home. I am ashamed, now, at how little I contributed to the
domestic scene, leaving early in the morning in our only car, returning
after the children had gone to bed, letting my wife take the children to
school on her bicycle, to do all the shopping and housework and still
find time for her work. But that was the pattern of marriage among our
friends and colleagues.
Why did we not discuss it more formally? Like almost everyone else,
we made it up as we went along. As we did so, we began to realise that
we each had different notions. Because we had never spelled these out,
unspoken resentments smouldered and occasionally flared up.
Every relationship is based around an implicit contract, a balance of
expectations. Unless these are spelled out, misunderstandings are
inevitable.Moreover, the contracts need to be fair to each party. Many years earlier, in the course of my business career, I had to negotiate a contract with a Chinese agent in Malaysia. We agreed the terms, shook hands and shared the traditional glass of brandy. I then took out the official company contract for him to sign. He was indignant. "What is that for?" he said angrily. "Don't you trust me? The contract will only work if both of us get what we want out if it. A signature should be unnecessary. In fact, it makes me suspect that you think you have got a better deal than me and want to lock me in to it."
I persuaded him that it was only a company formality, but I took his
point. I have never forgotten it. If both parties don't feel the deal is
fair it won't stick, in business or in relationships.
We would have avoided much unhappiness had I remembered my Chinese
contract and made a series of deals as we went through life, deals that
gave both of us enough of what we wanted. That Chinese contract was also
time limited. It had to be renegotiated in due course. So it is with
implicit marriage contracts. Circumstances change. Jobs change. Kids
grow up. People die or fall ill.
When I was 50 I ran out of jobs. There were none I wanted that might
want me. Too early and too poor to retire, I became a self-employed
writer and lecturer. The freedom was exciting but the income precarious
and I found it embarrassing to ask for it. My wife came to the rescue.
She became my agent and business manager and was very good at it. So
good, in fact, that I got busier and richer. Until the day when she, in
effect, gave in her notice. Her life, she said, had become submerged in
mine. She had recently graduated with a degree in photography after five
years of part-time study, and now wanted to fulfil her dream of
becoming a professional portrait photographer. My life was now in her
way.
This time we did sit down to a proper contract negotiation. We agreed
to split the year in two. For the six summer months her work would have
priority in our diary. I would concentrate on research and writing and
take on no outside commitments. The winter months would be free for my
speaking engagements, with her help in organising them. Furthermore, we
decided to split the cooking and catering, with each doing half, she in
our London apartment, I in the country cottage. We were fortunate in
that we were both independent workers, the children had left home and we
were free to organise our lives as we saw fit.
Not everyone has that degree of freedom, but most couples do need to
rearrange their relationship in mid-life as circumstances change. Too
often one party makes a unilateral decision to change the contract
without discussion, even in some situations to look for another partner
altogether. We were lucky. We were able to help each other and to share
our work and that brought us together in a new relationship
That contract lasted for more than 20 years. They were fruitful and
enjoyable times. Then circumstances changed again. I was approaching 75.
I did not need to earn as much as in the past. I had a pension of
sorts. At the same time, our children belatedly began to produce
grandchildren. I had not realised how rewarding, but also how
time-consuming, these little people can be. Paid work no longer
dominated our two lives, but retiring was not how it felt. We were
busier than ever, but differently. A new contract was needed.
As we no longer needed so much money-making work, we could afford to
do more voluntary work in addition to the continuing rota of lectures
and articles. We began to combine our skills and interests, making photo
documentaries for voluntary organisations. No longer did we split the
year in two because we now worked together, even when the grandchildren
came to stay. Instead we crossed out, in the diary, all the days of
school half-terms and holidays so that we could be available to help
with the grandchildren. Living now on a fixed and probably declining
income we also needed to simplify our way of life, downsizing and
discarding instead of accumulating. So much that we had once done now
seemed unnecessary, even pointless. Life moves on and leaves a lot
behind.
People turn philosopher as they age, wondering what the purpose of it
all is, whether it was all wasted effort, what is still left to do.
Energy may be declining but you hope that wisdom, or rueful experience,
has increased. These last years are precious and we needed to make the
most of them. The new contract needed careful thought. I have long seen
the shamrock as an important symbol, its three leaves combining to make a
whole. I have used it in a variety of contexts but now I wanted to use
it to describe how it might define our purposes at this stage in our
lives. The three leaves would be body, mind and spirit. Together they
would make for a fulfilling life, the whole shamrock, with money
providing the stalk, the essential support that we would be stupid to
ignore.
The body is crucial. When the body crumbles everything stops or
changes. We resolved to eat less and exercise more. Easier to say than
to keep to, but we try. To have regular check-ups was another
resolution. Troubles spotted early are more easily dealt with. Body and
mind interact. An active mind both needs and makes a healthy body. Work
keeps one fit. A recent study by the Institute of Economic Affairs found
that those who described themselves as fully retired, doing no active
work, were 40% less likely to describe themselves as having very good
health compared with those still working. More worrying, the chance of a
diagnosed medical condition rose by 60% if you were not working, and
depression by 40%. Work exercises the mind.
Work also provides us with a social network that is important to the
spirit. The Chinese have a saying that happiness is having something to
work on, someone to love and something to hope for. These three
ingredients are, to us, what makes life worth living. It gives us a
purpose, a purpose that for us is increasingly focused on the next
generation and our hopes for them and their descendants, both in our
family and wider. Life without others seems meaningless, so we have
resolved to give as much time as we can to seeing old friends and
family. Loneliness is the new poverty of the developed world. We are
determined that we shall not suffer from it but we have to invest in
others if we are going to matter to them.
Of course, we are the fortunate members of a fortunate generation.
Many will envy the apparent ease of our lives, although it did not seem
easy at the time. Not everyone will have the freedom to make the choices
we did.
But whatever our circumstances we all have choices. If we are lucky
enough to be in a relationship, those choices have to take account of
the other person. And they need constant revision as our lives change.
Otherwise they won't work. We learned that the long way, often the hard
way. But it was worth it. I sometimes say, half seriously, when others
are talking of their second or third marriages, that I, too, am on my
third marriage. But, in my case, they have all been to the same woman –
and that has made all the difference.
