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  Family - Weekend Effect

No Couple is an Island

Jerry & Tippy Case

(Excerpted from 1981 October-November Worldwide Family Spirit magazine)

"We have a stake in other marriages." This was the concept we would not believe on our Weekend. This was the one where we folded our arms, thrust out our chins and said, "no way." Other marriages don't have anything to do with us. We go our own way, do our own thing and live our own lives. We don't need them and they don't touch us.

It took a long time and lots of convincing for us even to open the doors a crack to peer out and say, "Well, maybe-maybe we don't hold hands because 'they' would think it looked funny."

And once the door was open that little crack, all sorts of realizations came tumbling in. How the minute I walked into someone's home my eye quickly traveled around the room, noticing things like furniture, decorating and dust. I tried desperately not to care, but the impulse was there, to measure and label what they were like by how their home compared to our own.

And we discovered jealousy-not gnashing, snarling envy, but little twinges that we'd sheepishly admit to each other, about this one friend, see, who never seemed to work very hard, but who, with his wife, seemed able to go gallivanting off on vacations, keep up with each new fad and fashion, and in general, give the image of beautiful people.

Maybe we weren't as beautiful as that couple, but we were certainly more beautiful than that other one. We were okay, we were average, there was no need to change-we'll stand pat.

Or sometimes, we'd quietly set about trying to emulate others in small, unobtrusive ways; quietly set about the job of trying to be someone else and live someone else's values.

I discovered a tendency to be a joiner. The people I most admired in our community were the ones who made things happen, offered their services, did the jobs and went to the meetings. I wanted us to be like them, and to be respected and liked by them.

It's a deadly game called comparing, and either we try doggedly to keep up with those around us, or we rest smugly on our laurels, delighted that we're not like the rest of men, those other poor devils we rub shoulders with.

That's the attitude that haunts us most now. We do sit with each other at parties, we do work for our Church, how come all those others don't?

And it's still a relief to find that it was another child who broke that window, another bunch of kids "hanging out" up at the stores, because then we can shake our heads and click our tongues and rest easy; smug.

But none of those things present very high standards: holding hands, chipping in, respecting property or even having kids who stay at home. We're still letting the world set easy standards for us, still proud of getting 100 percent in a first grade exam.

Sometimes we find ourselves, in our own minds, too far "behind" or "ahead" of other people, and even envy or smugness fails.

We'll never be as clever or popular as the Joneses, so our defense is to say, "Who cares?" and withdraw from them to our comfortable tree house. Competition has raised its ugly head, and if the Joneses do happen to be more intelligent than us we'll find a reason to judge them colder or less caring; sufficient reason not to see much of them.

Or if they happen to be less intelligent-well, who wants to be around less intelligent people (or less spiritual, or less caring, or less anything)? We bemoan the fact that the whole world isn't just like us, and fiercely defend our own stances and standards to each other, logically going through the steps that leave us right and everyone else wrong. And who wants to hang around wrong people?

Who needs the Joneses, or the Smiths, or the Browns-who needs people, who needs anybody? The drawbridge is raised, the piranhas are put into the moat and we hang out one of our signs, "Out to lunch," "By appointment only," "Closed for vacation," or, finally, "Keep out."

One of the pleasant surprises after our Weekend was going to meetings and seeing how the couples behaved with each other.

It wasn't just that they held hands. They watched each other, and listened to each other. They talked about things that the other cared about, laughed at each other's jokes, picked up a pencil the other had dropped.

It no longer seemed so great to us to support each other's independence. It wasn't enormously funny to put each other down. It wasn't so important to dress like Princess Grace or speak like JFK.

Suddenly we wanted to be like these new people we had met. They were living the life our teams had spoken about on our Weekend, living proof that it wasn't pie in the sky, and we knew that we could be like that too.

They showed us it was possible, and that affected us. We could talk about our dreams and nightmares and joke about our masks with them in an uncomplicated and childlike way, free of the postures of the modern world. It was good to be the Cases again.

As our sense of self-worth grew, the need to measure and compare faded. We recalled other social affairs we had attended, and the normal litany of "Where do you work, who do you know, how does your garden grow?"

These new people were more concerned with who we were than in the traditional baggage of our lives. And we might sit and say nothing, or we might self-consciously shoot our mouths off for half an hour, still saying nothing; either way the eyes of these new people shone with delight when they looked at us. And we got better.

Yes, our dialogue got better, our discussions and our sexual relationship got better, our prayer life got better-a lot of neat things got better.

But we got better, and that was really important, and we wanted more and more to be with these couples because we liked us getting better, feeling better, living better.

A close friend told us that we'd never be independent again, and we didn't want to hear that. We stuck the old chins back out, still sure that someday we'd have it all together; someday we wouldn't need other couples.

We still resist it, just the way we still resist depending on each other. Yet we know when we sort through it all and allow ourselves to bend, that we're wrong.

We do need other couples-we have a stake in them, and depend on them to be the best couples that ever walked the earth, because we'll never have it all together; we know how strong the world's pull is.

We are backsliders of Guinness Book proportions-and we need other people to love us and help us and urge us on. We need support and challenge and an occasional kick in the buns. We need people who blow it, admit it, laugh at themselves, and start all over again.

We need people with whole truckloads of ideals and visions and hopes. We need the "Rocky's" of the world, and the Mets' fans. We need the two guys in the cartoon, arms and legs outstretched and in chains, and one saying, "Now here's my plan."

We can edge toward cynicism and despair, and we need that couple from Blue Point to display faith to us. We can drift into grimness and hardness, and we need that couple from Rehoboth to show us what humor and gentleness can accomplish.

We can get act oriented-lists and charts-and we need that couple from Lynnfield to show us that it's possible to accomplish things without putting aside care and understanding. We can settle into a martyred "Why us?" and we need the couple from East Northport to show us courage and acceptance.

We've met regular Yellow Pages full of people and they've made our lives different than they used to be. If those people stop trying, we may stop too. We truly have an enormous stake in them.

Our stake in others' lives goes way past our own goals and ambitions. We say on the Weekend that marriage is personal but not private, that the Church is depending on us to be a sign of Christ's love.

That means that the Church has a stake in us too, that all those couples who delight us and challenge us aren't just couples, they are our Church.

And it goes further still. It's great to have other couples have a stake in us. We know that we've helped other couples through tough spots, just as we have been helped.

But there are still all those people who haven't, and may never, go on our Weekend. We have just as much an obligation to be ourselves, and share our story with them as we do with the couples with the cute red and yellow stickers on their cars.

The whole world has a stake in the way we live our lives-we can show them an alternative to the emptiness of the world's plan.

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