Now that my grandmother is gone, the grandfather I once knew is missing as well. A man who was quick to laugh and share funny stories has become more subdued. A man who worked well into his 70′s and prided himself on his excellent health is now slowing down quickly. He complains about the everyday life of living in an old man’s body. He can’t sleep and he doesn’t enjoy the same things he used to, like even a walk on the beach. That was something he and grandma would do together everyday. As we walked along, it was evident that all he could think about was her and their life together.  “My partner is gone” he told me as we looked out across the ocean, “it doesn’t matter anymore.”

I didn’t ask him to elaborate what “it” meant. I knew.

His pain is the kind of pain that only the luckiest people in the world will ever know. It’s the kind of pain that I can only hope either the Dude or myself will actually experience one day, hopefully not until many many years down the road. To know this pain means that you have known a deep love that only partners in a very long and loving relationship can possibly experience.

To get to the place where my grandfather is doesn’t only take luck. Luck is simply meeting someone special. He’ll be the first to tell you that. My grandpa often tells us that he was the luckiest man in the world when he met my grandma on the beach of Coney Island back in 1940. It was also my luck when I canceled a date and instead met up with my sister at her friend’s house – that friend being the Dude. But luck doesn’t get you through 68 years of marriage. Or, in my case, even 5 years.

I often asked my grandparents about the secret to their exceptionally long marriage. My grandmother would joke that she stayed married so long because he kept her feet warm at night. My grandpa would say it was her beautiful legs. In reality, they were simply compatible and they complemented each other well. They brought out the best in each other. They enjoyed the same things, had similar values, and shared many goals. They laughed together. Often. They could keep up with each other, both sharing a keen wit and honest (sometimes brutally honest) perspective on things. They were also of the same religion and, more importantly, also shared a similar level of faith. Sure, they fought like any other couple and disagreed about many things, but they were always able to move past their disagreements. There were moments when they did not treat each other as kindly as they should have, but neither of them let those moments go unnoticed. One thing was for sure, when one was upset with the other, they would know it. And then they would move on.

People often wonder what it means to be truly compatible with someone. Does your partner have to be the mirror version of yourself? No. That would be boring and boring doesn’t make for a good relationship. Successful and healthy relationships must have three essential components that most of us already know: trust, communication, and respect. But there are other things that help sustain a lasting union and most of those things fall into the compatibility department.

When it comes to compatibility, the recipe is quite simple: similar interests, values, expectations, and life-goals. Chances are, those are some of the same things that draw you to your friends. I strongly believe that a great friendship is key to a happy marriage.  When asked who is the first person you want to talk to about something or the person you want to spend the most time with, I would hope the answer is your husband/wife/partner. Now, do the two of you need to be BFF’s that do everything together? No, of course not.  It’s highly unlikely that a couple shares every interest. With that said, it’s important to support outside interests and hobbies and maintain and nurture other friendships. However, what I find to be key for long-term relationships is that there are things that the couple loves doing together. Just like walking the beach everyday was my grandparent’s “thing”, it’s important to have at least one “thing” with your partner.

Most of what I know about marriage comes from my grandparents. They didn’t tell me how to have a happy marriage, they showed me. My grandparents certainly didn’t live some kind of fairytale life. No one has a perfect marriage. But there are those as-good-as-it-gets type of marriages, which I think easily sums up their union. We should all be so fortunate to meet someone that complements us so well and brings out the best in us. And, when we do, we should all be so dedicated to our partner and our marriage. If we’re lucky enough one day, many years down the road, some of us will fully realize what my grandfather now knows: Our life doesn’t have the same meaning without that person in it.

No one knows you better than yourself, unless you’ve been married for as long as my grandparents.

Theirs is a love story that spans 70 years. She is 88 years old and he just turned 90. They lived together for nearly 68 years, up until a matter of days ago. They were rarely apart. Now she lies in a hospice bed, exhausted and weak from the dying process. My grandfather visits her, holds her hand, kisses it softly and tells her he loves her. He calls her “sweetheart”, a term of endearment I’ve never heard him call her before. He is very gentle with her, even when she asks him to go away. He won’t go away. He never has and he never will.

Their marriage is far from perfect, and some have even questioned how they managed to stay together so long…including me. I would see them fight. I would see my grandmother in tears or my grandfather’s frustration and anger. But I also saw a very fierce love. It is the type of love that only comes from years of practice. They didn’t always get along, but they always loved each other and respected one another.  They love sharing stories with one another and bring up many fond memories of the past. They often talk about how they met, share stories of raising their two boys, leaving New York for California, and all their travels and adventures. They love talking about their children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren. In essence, they constantly remind each other of all the things that brought them together and kept them together over the seven decades of their life together.

Too many couples forget about the good things that brought them together in the first place. They ignore the things that are essentially the glue to their relationship and the roots to their foundation.  It takes years to cultivate a truly deep connection and commitment. It takes work and practice. Far too many people throw in the towel when it become too challenging. If you ask my grandparents, they would tell you that it’s the challenging stuff that really makes you love and respect your partner. When it’s too easy, it’s simply boring.

A few months ago, I asked my grandmother how she managed to stay married for so long. What was her secret? She replied, my feet get too cold at night and I like having grandpa in bed to keep them warm. I laughed when she said that and found it very endearing at the time. It’s only just recently that I have come to the realization that there was actually a deeper meaning to her humorous quip. The best kind of love, the deepest kind of love, is when your partner is simply there for you when you need him or her the most. The challenges, the joys, the tears, the laughter, the warm days and the cold nights – these things are meant to be shared with those who love us. And the best love is the love that endures through all of it.

My grandparents’ love story is not over. It will always endure, even when they pass away. It is a story that is meant to be remembered and passed down to the generations. In a time when marriage seems to be as disposable as the paper used to sign a prenup agreement, theirs is the kind of  love story that is truly valuable.

I should only hope to be that fortunate.

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Another celebrity with “indiscretions” is in the news and the chatter online and at the water-cooler is abuzz.

Scandalous! Exactly how many women were involved with him?!? His poor wife. He liked to do what? He did what where? He says he loves her?!? If that was my husband, I would….

We all hear about the (insert celebrities, pro-athletes, politicians) who cheat on their spouses. It makes front page news and fills the 24/7 news and gossip cycles. Their personal marital problems become subject to our opinion, judgment, and fodder.  It’s also apparent that there are people who get some sort of sad satisfaction knowing that even the “perfect” people and couples among us are not so perfect after all. These stories humanize them. The reality is, they deal with the same problems that many of us will face in our own relationships. The only difference is that our relationships are not typically available for public scrutiny.

Extramarital affairs are a common occurrence. Why is that? People claim all sorts of reasons: biological urges and impulses, revenge, avoidance, to get attention, a need for independence, to feel special or desired, etc… There are varied reports, but studies indicate that about 60% of married men and 45% of married women report an extramarital affair (Glass & White, 1992).  In a 2001 study, one researcher noted that 70%  of marriages experience an affair (Brown, 2001). And in case your head isn’t spinning yet, here is another statistic out there – 90% of first divorces included some form of infidelity (Pittman and Wagers, 2005).

That is staggering.

There are many variables to studies such as these, but one important component is to recognize what actually defines cheating. What it means to me doesn’t necessarily mean the same thing to you. How do you define cheating? How does your partner define cheating? If you don’t know the answer to those questions, you should figure it out. Ask your partner. It’s best to be on the same page when it comes to appropriate boundaries within your relationship.

The simple definition of an extramarital affair is almost universally accepted. It is usually defined as when a partner gives his or her sexual and/or primary emotional needs to someone other than their partner. In some relationships, cheating is identified with something like flirting or having a non-business related lunch with someone from the opposite sex (or same sex depending on the orientation). On the other extreme, giving sexual or emotional needs to another party is accepted or, at the very least, ignored.  Boundaries differ in every relationship, but it’s crucial to know what boundaries apply to your own relationship. There should be absolutely no confusion between you and your partner and the earlier you talk about it in your relationship, the better. 

An extramarital affair is not always about sex. In fact, the increase in reported extramarital affairs is due to another component known as an Emotional Affair. An emotional affair has the potential to be even more devastating to a relationship than a sexual affair. Do we all give some of our emotional needs to someone other than our partner? Yes. We confide in friends. We confide in our sisters and brothers. We confide in our moms and dads. Those are typical emotional attachments. What can be problematic is when there is the potential for an emotional affair.  A heterosexual married woman might be able to confide to her best girlfriend about anything and everything, including personal confidences, and most people don’t bat an eye. But what if her best friend is a heterosexual man?  What if they regularly go out alone or communicate via e-mail or phone to discuss private matters, matters that might not even be discussed between the woman and her husband. There is no sex involved, but the woman is giving time, energy, and intimacy to another man. Would you consider this scenario an emotional affair? Many people, including myself, do.

The aftermath of exposed infidelity, sexual or emotional, is a challenge for everyone. For therapists, affairs are often one of the most complex issues to deal with in marriage therapy. At least 50% of couples headed to marriage counseling do so because of an extramarital affair. Most affairs are considered a crisis within a relationship and it is a very delicate process to work a couple through the situation. Even after the couple has addressed the affair, the issue will emerge again and again. For some couples, it is much easier for them to end the relationship rather than deal with issue. But not everyone calls it quits, at least not right away. In fact, many couples are able to work past an affair and stay together for years to come. They may eventually divorce, but the initial crisis of a revealed affair does not usually break them up.

Anything you would like to add or share? Please comment below.

What’s in a name? That which we call a rose
By any other name would smell as sweet.
— Romeo and Juliet (II, ii, 1-2)

The oft-quoted passage from Shakespeare obscures Romeo & Juliet’s real lesson.  While a rose by any other name may indeed smell equally sweet, I’m not sure that Signores Montague and Capulet fixated on scent.  It was pedigree and genealogy about which they worried, and, to that end, names disclosed and meant quite a bit.

Names come to define and signify us.  More than just labels, they also become laden with emotion, identifying information, and meaning; giving up a name means forfeiting a portion of our identity.  People have come to know me as my name, and to know my name as me.  I wasn’t willing to give that up when I took my vows, and I didn’t expect that Aimee would be any happier to either.

Our Story
As loyal AYMB readers, you already know the punchline: When we married, Aimee took my last name, jettisoning her birth middle name and replacing it with her maiden name, sans hyphen.  This decision — one that she drove, but that we made together — flew in the face of our liberal upbringings, education, and beliefs.  That my partner would tend the house and children, while I tended to our income seemed just as crazy as the prospect that my partner would bear my name like a possessive.  Fast forward a half-dozen years, and both have occurred.   I joke that we’re the accidental traditionalists.

To be clear, I never asked Aimee to change her name, nor would I have asked.  I imagined that she would either keep her maiden name or hyphenate our names together.  We both found distasteful the concept of a woman giving up her name in order to take her husband’s. (Let’s shamefully assume heterosexuality here.)  It’s an unfortunate tradition that smacks of uglier times when women were treated like property, and when their parents (read: fathers) bartered them into marriage.  But, as Churchill famously said about democracy (it being the worst possible form of government…except for all the others), we found name-changing to be the worst possible and least likable option, besides all the others.

The Alternatives
So, what options are there?  Well, the obvious alternative is for wives to keep their maiden names.  I was fine with this.  But Aimee wanted to have the same name as her children.  (Again, traditionalism sneaks in.  Even as we were open-minded about name-changing, we just assumed that my name would pass on to our children.)

How about hyphenating?  Not a bad alternative, we thought.  But what if we hyphenated the kids’ names, too, and then they married hyphenated kids?  Four surnames?  And then what if their kids married four-surname kids?  The prospect of exponential hyphenation seemed silly and simply impracticable.

How about I take Aimee’s name?  It wasn’t something I wanted consider.  Besides that people knew me by my last name, that name is so rare that my brother and I are the only males (assuming our female cousins cling to tradition) potentially to pass it on.  I couldn’t countenance a situation in which my family name would disappear in a generation.  “Hypocrite!,” you shout.  No, not at all. That I so vehemently opposed giving up my name only made me anticipate and accept that Aimee likely would would not give up hers.  (That she ultimately did shows the power of tradition as tie-breaker.)

How about the clever and trending practice of merging names into a new one?  This also has the added attraction of having both parents share their name with their children.  But for all the equity in this approach, it also doubles the “harm” of name-changing:  Now two people would be cleaved from their past identities; two family names would stop being passed to future generations.

Because we both found ourselves early in our careers, we did not much consider the option of using a maiden name for professional reasons and a married name for personal reasons.  That practical option allows the wife to preserve her past identity (somewhat), while also allowing children to have the same (legal) name as their mothers.  But it also plays right into tradition, again, by assuming that children should take on their fathers’ names.  Worse, it prevents children from being associated with their mothers’ professional successes.

‘Til Death Do Us Part
So there we were as newlyweds, two feminists fully aware of the irony of Aimee taking on my name.  We realized it was an imperfect choice, but accepted it as the least imperfect (for us) of the alternatives.  By making her maiden name into her middle name, Aimee honored her family heritage while also preserving her past identity.  By taking my name, though, her family name will not continue down our branch of the family tree.  That is regrettable.

Each couple needs to choose the option that works best for it, hopefully honoring the wishes of the bride (who so often is the one most affected by it).  Our own decision has worked well for us.  We just thank our lucky stars that my name was not Montague…

I took my husband’s last name.

The Dude never asked me to take his name, nor did he assume I would. After we got engaged, I had a full year to think about whether or not I would change my name. It was a good thing I had that kind of time since it took me about a full year to come to my decision. I went back and forth quite a bit but, in the end, I decided that taking his last name was the best thing to do for logistical purposes. It didn’t matter to me whether or not I shared the same surname as the Dude, but I did want the same surname as our future children.

These days, it’s not necessarily expected for women to take a husband’s last name. I know plenty of wives that never took their husband’s last name and I know plenty more that hyphenated the two surnames together. Some couples are getting creative with sharing a family name. I know couples who adopted both surnames and then hyphenated while others simply combined the last names to create a new name. I’ve even known a few husbands who took the last name of their wife.

As appealing as some of these options were, none of them really seemed like the ideal fit. The Dude liked his name and, considering where he was in his law career, it would have been difficult for him to make a name change. Although I had an established career of my own for many years, I was about to embark in a whole new direction shortly after the wedding.  A few months before I got married, I had quit my job in preparation of starting another graduate program and a new career. From that perspective, changing my name was not going to be  a problem. I figured if I was going to change my name, there was no better time. It would be a fresh start with everything: new name, new career, and new husband. What’s the big deal about giving up my surname. It’s just a name. Right?

Not really.

I didn’t realize how attached I was to my name until I actually changed it. I decided to keep my maiden name as my new middle name, a strategy that I figured was just as good. It wasn’t. It was one of the biggest adjustments of my life. How do you just go from being one name to another, especially after nearly 30 years? I felt like I had become a new person and, in many ways, I was a new person. I had a new name, a new husband, and I was about to start a new career. At the same time that I gained a new husband and family, I also never felt so lost in my life. I was no longer the single and career-focused Aimee. I was the married and jobless Mrs. Aimee.

What made matters worse was that shortly after I received my new social security card and drivers license, I was the victim of real identity theft.  A woman who had a fake drivers license with my former name on it went to my bank and started cashing fraudulent checks and withdrawing money. The fake Aimee did this a number of times before she was caught. I would get phone calls from the bank saying ” we spotted the fake Aimee at this bank in Florida”  or “we now have the fake Aimee on video from a bank in Oregon.” It was surreal, to say the least. I gave up my former identity, only for it to be used by a thief. When she was finally caught, I felt a huge relief and not just because a criminal was going to be brought to  justice. I felt relief because in order for me to fully let go of the former Aimee, I needed her to quit robbing banks so I could put her to rest. If I wasn’t going to use the name anymore, no one else could either. Especially for criminal activity.

I’ve grown accustomed to my new last name. For me, it’s much more meaningful to share a name with my husband and child than to hold on to a name given to me at birth. I am still attached to my former surname and I’m glad I choose to keep it as part of my full legal name. However, my surname did not truly identify who I am and the new name doesn’t change that either. In the end, it really is a just a name. A label of sorts. Of course, sharing a name with my husband and child is also a label. It labels us as a family, a family I chose to be a part of and help create. That reason alone makes a name change worth all the money in the bank.