Uncoupling by Dr. Juan Harrison
Uncoupling
In my Sunday school class the other Sunday I went around the room from the podium as I’ve done for decades getting health updates, prayer requests and an occasional blonde joke from my father-in-law. When I came to a couple I knew well visiting my class, I committed a faux pax. My wife crawled under her class secretary desk. The class chuckled and gasped. I had mistakenly included my friend’s “old” wife’s name in my address of, “How’s ————- and ————?” We all laughed, including the couple. After 30 plus years of addressing or mentioning a couple as if it’s one name, old habits are hard to break. Seems like my wife and I regularly mention our friend couples as if they’re one person. The Bible says we’ll become as one, so I don’t feel so bad. Such is life for old timers.
We can’t all be as fortunate as Ozzie and Harriet, Jim and Margaret Anderson, or Rob and Laura Petrie. I’m happy for people who experience Frank Sinatra’s croon, “Love is lovelier the second time around.” Life happens. Sometimes I almost think it’s harder on us old guys as we constantly battle change and try not to get run over like the running of the bulls in Pamplona, Spain. I survived the picadors on horses dragging a dead bull under the colosseum in Barcelona, Spain after a bull fight, but that’s another story.
If dealing with new couples verses old friend couples is hard on the rest of us, imagine the challenges for half the country who are divorced. Ever felt bad after running into an old friend only to learn they’re no longer part of the old couple. Maybe they’re now part of a new couple. Maybe the ex has moved on and remarried, and your single friend hasn’t been able to do the same. In the background we hear Michael Martin Murphy singing, “Doesn’t anybody ever stay together anymore?”
Life is no fairy tale. It’s messy. Our choices, sometimes influenced by circumstances at the time, might be different today than those of our youth, before we ran into physical or mental abuse, unfaithfulness, alienation of affection, and a whole lot of drug, alcohol, and pain issues. Just hanging in there during those hard skinny days raising babies and working at two or more jobs or not working at times was bad enough. Throw in a complication or two and it all can blow to Hades.
Fortunately, life is also about renewal and regeneration. Things we thought dead or dying, like relationships, can be revived. New unions can be created with a deeper appreciation for faithful love without the tangling vines that choked off the last relationship. If we helped kill the last union with our human foibles, maybe we can be honest and make the changes so we don’t crater again. Better yet, maybe we could stop the boat before it goes over the falls the first time. If not, plan on people like me struggling with old names and new unions.
By Dr. Juan Harrison
