"Leave it alone" vs. "always room for improvement"

Julie is such a good reader and friend – not only did she remember my blog entry about enjoying advice from long-married couples, she also emailed me this perfectly relevant column by Colbert King of the Washington Post! In it, he offers marriage advice based on 50 years of marriage.

He argues for an approach of benign neglect:

For those still curious about how we managed to last all these years, I offer this advice: Once the knot is tied, leave it alone.

Marriage is like baking bread, roasting a chicken or whipping up a dessert. Once it’s prepped, and starts cooking, no testing, tasting or stirring. Don’t poke or flip it once it’s on the grill. When it’s done, let it rest.

Too many folks get married, only to end up worrying their marriages to death.

I don't want to worry anything to death! (But for the record, doesn't cooking usually require some testing, tasting, stirring, and flipping?? Maybe I'm just an anxious cook, as well.) King sounds peaceful and secure...pretty appealing, no?

But King's argument stands in direct contrast to today's "always room for improvement" marital culture, which, as far as I can tell, pervades at least the NYT's Style Section. Case in point: Elizabeth Weil's NYT Magazine 2009 cover story on marriage improvement, which itself was a teaser for her recently published book (which I have not read). Here's the premise for her endeavor, which apparently involved reading various marriage-advice books, attending marriage-improvement classes and therapy, and having new kinds of fights with her husband.

And as I lay there, I started wondering why I wasn’t applying myself to the project of being a spouse. My marriage was good, utterly central to my existence, yet in no other important aspect of my life was I so laissez-faire. Like most of my peers, I applied myself to school, friendship, work, health and, ad nauseam, raising my children. But in this critical area, marriage, we had all turned away. I wanted to understand why. I wanted not to accept this.

There's been plenty of discussion about Weil's book by people more articulate than I, and this is just a quick blog post. Bottom line: she sounds insane, and really bad at constructing an experiment. And also...far too relatable? Because I too am Type-A, love projects, enjoy research, and am generally anxious about my relationships. Furthermore: let's just say, for the sake of the argument, that I turn out to be "less successful" in my academic career than I had hoped. Let's say that I decide it's not worth pursuing this career through years of frequent moving, temporary positions, low remuneration, and constant uncertainty, and decide to leave the field. This may enable me to find a line of work with greater security, actually live with D. in the same house, and/or start a family! But can I envision myself coming to view my marriage as "a project," perhaps in compensation for all the, I don't know, Classics articles I thought I'd be writing? [Euripides' Helen re-enacts the Trojan War! You heard it here first!] Um, yes.

Ultimately, at least as of today, Weil did not in fact worry her marriage to death. After all of that "work," she came to the following, non-earth-shattering conclusion:

...the “good-enough marriage” is characterized by its capacity to allow spouses to keep growing, to afford them the strength and bravery required to face the world.

I agree, but question whether she needed to go through (and put her husband through) all of that hullabaloo to understand this.

So, which approach do you think works best? Is this a case of "to each his own"? Some couples will be more successful by letting things be; others will thrive with conscientious effort. I usually fall back on two platitudes: every couple is different, and the truth likely lies somewhere in the middle. But if this is where I inevitably end up after attempting to evaluate diametrically-opposed ideologies, is it possible that this whole effort to glean wisdom from other couples is not so meaningful after all?