As Ben Franklin once said, "Keep your eyes wide open before marriage, and half-shut afterwards."

I am not sure if you were directing this at me, or not.

I agree with you in principal - marriage takes work and we should be doing everything we can to make it work over the long term. After all, that's what we said in the vows, right!

However, in practice and in real life, it obviously does not work out that way. I agree with you that many couples throw in the towel way too soon and we seem to be in a time and age when everything is disposable - marriages to. If you don't like what you have, just chuck it and get something shiny and new! But sometimes after all is said and done, and you have tried and done everything you can, things still get off the rails . . . what then?

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Steve Fleck @stevefleck | Blog

How's it working for her over the long term?

How's it working for her over the long term?

In what way?

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Steve Fleck @stevefleck | Blog

Fleck,

No, I wasn't replying to you specifically. You were just the last person on the thread to post when I started writing my reply so I hit the reply button on your post. Like I said in wasn't an indictment against anyone in particular but rather us, the 50%culture, as a whole. I know that marriages, like all relationships can deteriorate to being seemingly impossible (kind of like an Ironman, also seemingly impossible). I was just disgusted that the general tone in two pages of the thread was one of passive neglect towards marriage and like you pointed out, an attitude that it can just be thrown out when it no longer suits them.


Sorry for any confusion, Velo E

Your story was great and all, but what I'm dying to know is whether you've ever qualified for Kona.

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Mediocre Athlete: Stumbling across the finish line since 2008.
http://www.mediocreathlete.com

Fleck


As far as what then? Well, I am happily married, not divorced so I do not have a plan for and have not been faced with "what then"? Planning for it seems to me to be counter productive. I'll keep trying to plan against it instead if I can.

But still, what then? I say that you keep plugging away, loving your spouse the best you can, every day that you can. Am I man enough to do that in the face of brutal adversity? Well, I hope so. I hope I am that tough. I plan to be that tough. We won't know for sure if I am that tough until either she or I die proving it.

I will say this though, I work out about 10 hours a week, which I know is a low number for all the "animals" here on slowtwitch. Now if my marriage started to come apart and I spent those 10 hours just thinking about how I can make my marriage better, and acting on those thoughts, with just those ten hours I am sure I could turn it around. If I used those ten hours per week to show my wife why she was so special to me that I decided to commit the rest of my life to her, I'm sure I could convince her. I am sure that if we would put that same "never say die attitude" towards our marriages that we do to going 112 miles in a circle (which sounds kind of ridiculous when you put it that way), the divorce rate would drop dramatically. Especially in a crowd as tough as this one thinks it is!

"Over the long term it's been worth it for him, and for me."

In 'that' way.

Epic and awesome! Thank you.! I think Ill go do something special for my Wife and Kids tonight!
FTW!

Preach it!!

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"Alice laughed. `There's no use trying,' she said 'one can't believe impossible things.' `I daresay you haven't had much practice,' said the Queen. `When I was your age, I always did it for half-an-hour a day. Why, sometimes I've believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast!'"

What folks need to do is put Ironman in perspective for their spouses. I think the only time my wife's been systemically pissed at me is when I STOPPED IMs and IM training (or, really, any kind of training) for six months and played World of Warcraft non-stop instead... When I quit WoW cold turkey on Valentine's Day and asked her if she wanted to join my fat ass for a run (to start training for an IM 5 months hence), she couldn't have been happier...

Good points about "when the kids go off to college". I think a lot about that as my son is 2 years away. We were just meeting with old friends who had their youngest go off and we both asked, "are you missing the action around the house", and they replied along the lines of "yes, but now it is about us again. There are a lot of things that we wanted to do for us that we put on hold for many years, that we can go do together. We built something good with the kids, and now we can celebrate some that, just the 2 of us". Well, I hope that it us, when the time comes. My friends seemed and felt very fulfilled with that stage in life and raising a family had brought them closer together as they worked on many life goals together. Like a team it was like they won the Stanley cup and now they are doing the victory parade. I thought that was cool. We both admire that couple and their approach to life. Nothing in life is certain, but I guess it requires work every day in some way or another.

^^^^^^^^^
This - nothing comes for free, "work" for a marriage isn't always hard to do. :)

30 years in October, some bumpy spots, but the IM training hasn't been a negative at all, we (both) like to travel, and IM certainly creates a focal point to start a trip - then you make sure the rest of the trip is about the two of you.

You said it better than I could.

20 years together, married 16. We were out of shape when we got married, had kids, got in shape and have trained for our respective events alongside one another. As our children get older and break into their own sports, we share a love of watching them go and chase their dreams.

Love, respect and mutual admiration for what we hold dearest (our marriage and our children) will ALWAYS win out over a workout. Always.

Quote:

Now if my marriage started to come apart and I spent those 10 hours just thinking about how I can make my marriage better, and acting on those thoughts, with just those ten hours I am sure I could turn it around. If I used those ten hours per week to show my wife why she was so special to me that I decided to commit the rest of my life to her, I'm sure I could convince her.

I admire your attitude and conviction. Just don't be so certain that things would work out the way you think. You'd be doing this as your marriage started to come apart, and that's the onset of crazy time. There are lots of ways marriages can come apart, and in some of them even the most well-intentioned spouse(s) will not be able to stop the collapse, even if they want to.

Anyway, keep on enjoying your marriage and family!

for us (starting next fall), it will be more a case of "the swim is over, now we can get on with the easy, fun parts" :)

HAHAHAHAHA! Right on.

A strong relationship is built on trust, respect, support, love and of course fun. If a triathlete's relationship breaks down, it's not because of triathlons, it's because there was a loss of respect, support, trust, love or fun. Blaming anything other than that is just a smoke screen denying reality.

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The curious task of economics is to demonstrate to men how little they really know about what they imagine they can design.

Thank you, I need this reminder every once in awhile.

I think your post was well said. I will add, that many of the 50% of failed marriages fail because of nothing more complicated than run of the mill selfishness. Marriage is a partnership. The marriage partnership has interests of its own, separate from the individual interests of the partners. Thankfully, what is in the best interest of a partner is frequently in the best interest of the partnership, but not always. When one or both partners regularly put their own interests ahead of the interests of the partnership, the relationship breaks down. Both partners need to be willing to HTFU and sacrifice some of their own selfish ambition and pursuits at the alter.

4 kids and going on 18 years. My wife and I are total opposites. Marriage is hard to do. Suck it up buttercup.

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Panabax

We�ve heard that a million monkeys at a million keyboards could produce the complete works of Shakespeare; now, thanks to the Internet, we know that is not true.�Robert Wilensky

Totally disagree. I do not train together--wifey & I go two totally different paces. This is an unrealistic & unscientifically proven statement.

Thank you for this post.
And not to nitpick on OP, but everyone seems to cite this 50% divorce rate. It's really closer to 40%.

I think your very right ,I have seen 2 friends marriages end because of so called ironman but all us friends were well aware of the underlying issues.

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"Be your best cheerleader , not your worst critic.”

My post in the other thread (so you don't have to try and find it):
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I, as a womens who has been in this sport for 12+ yrs and who ended a marriage (his reason: Ironman; my reason: we grew apart and you didn't like who I became, fair nuff) pretty much here on ST, I am really torn by all the posts, especially the last one from the OP re: kids. I was going to ignore the whole thread but now I can't.

Triathlon is by its very nature a solo sport. We may train with others, but come race day, on the field of battle, it is every person for themselves. And while we are a welcoming bunch, we are also a very driven and competitive bunch, even if we only compete with ourselves. But when we are an A-type and our spouse is not, as soon as we discover this sport FULL of A-types like us, and we devote all our attention and efforts to this new thing, why are we surprised when they don't like it? or act supportive? It changes the entire dynamic of the relationship. Of course they aren't going to be supportive. Why on earth would you think they would be? Asking them to try and be supportive isn't going to work unless they are similarly minded, likewise constructed, and understand their partner for who they really are , well it just ain't gonna work.

Sometimes we enter relationships when we have a firm grasp of who we are, what makes us tick, what we love and what we hate. Many times we don't - we are naive, we think a chid or 3 will make it all work out, we hope that counselling or restricting activities we find truly satisfying will help carry the relationship.

It never does.

I honestly have come to believe that we end relationships often because we realize that we have been less than truthful about WHO WE REALLY ARE, instead being WHO WE THINK WE SHOULD BE. And triathlon, as such an individual sport, we find a space to find out WHO WE REALLY ARE. And if WHO WE REALLY ARE != WHO WE THINK WE SHOULD BE then whomever is our partner is bound to suffer. IN Japanese, we call it hansei, it is a time and space for reflection. This solo sport we all love affords us the time and space for such reflection. It also affords us the individual challenges against which we pit ourselves. Against which we test ourselves. Against which we find out just how strong, how powerful, how determined we are.

And this is how we find out WHO WE REALLY ARE.

Here endeth the lesson.

AP
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I stand by this.

AP

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"How bad could it be?" - SimpleS

So well put! Totally agree.