Ruminate, going over and over what you coulda, shoulda done

This is rare. But rarer still is the friend who feels brave enough, engaged enough, safe enough, to share what they see. My uncle had died suddenly of a heart attack at the tender age of fifty-six. Not just any old uncle. It was my favorite uncle, William VanDemark Crothers--Uncle Bill, my mother's only brother. That people across classes aspire to sustain marriage, yet are impeded by social and economic realities, clearly deserves more concerted attention and resources than we as a country are willing to give it. It might seem that even to contemplate the kind of fine-grained emotional communication I advocate in these articles is a luxury that most people can't afford. However, in the dynamics of marriage, people's subjective experience of how economics relates to emotional satisfaction is neither simple nor self-evident. On the one hand, the impact of objective economic hardship is sometimes primarily emotional. For example, divorce risk rises in cases of spousal job loss but not spousal disability. Layoffs and disability both result in financial instability, but when a spouse loses his job due to a layoff, it prompts doubts and anxieties that focus on personality or character, and catalyzes doubts about the fitness of one's spouse. These emotional responses then render the marriage more fragile. On the other hand, even when couples command economic resources, emotional scarcity can obtain. Researchers have hypothesized that marital dissatisfaction in our era arises from the gap between the amount of time and effort that's required to approximate our ideal of an emotionally rewarding marriage, and the amount of time and effort that people actually put in. This trend is not only a problem for the economically disadvantaged; But is this not new? It seems not. People in previous centuries formed friendships via writing letters, and then might subsequently meet. Take the poet Emily Dickinson, who exchanged many missives with Thomas Wentworth Higginson over several years. Brenda Wineapple has written about it in her article, White Heat.

Their communication is not just similar to the internet friends of today, but arguably has something to teach us too. Togetherness and distance. If it is right to think of the web as a network of communication around the world, then it is but a particularly sharp reflection of the processes of urbanisation and globalisation that has long being taking place in other spheres. There too, good accompanies bad. In particular, there appears to be a causal link between urbanisation and individualisation - which paradoxically may well run in tandem with a sense of collectivity too. Rennie still carries an index card to meetings. Stan complained for months about being shut out of his foundation before he could serenely accept his new family landscape. It's true they had the benefit of an outside agency - namely me - pointing out the environment's malign impact on their behavior. But that kind of insight, which explains why we act the way we do, can take us only so far. It illuminates our past more than the way forward. Executing the change we hold as a concrete image in our mind is a process. It requires vigilance and diligent self-monitoring. It demands a devotion to rote repetition that we might initially dismiss as simplistic and undignified, even beneath us. More than anything, the process resuscitates an instinct that's been drilled into us as tiny children but slowly dissipates as we learn to enjoy success and fear failure - the importance of trying. I hear this so often, I shouldn't be surprised anymore. One minute he was sailing his small blue boat on Lake Ontario, chuckling at the ham-handed seventeen-year-old nephew handling the sail. The next moment he was clutching his chest. Within a few days we were burying him--my handsome, fun-loving uncle, who had played trumpet in the Navy jazz band, could steer a car with his knees, and had taught us kids to whistle with our fingers. After the funeral, I dragged myself home to my newly purchased house in Boston, the triple-decker I had just bought with David, my then-partner of four years, in the tough Irish neighborhood called Dorchester. The Sunday after I got home, still needing to grieve, I donned the funeral suit again and found my way to the local Episcopal church, an imposing American-gothic landmark called All Saints' Church, Ashmont.

As I've said, David and I had just moved to this particular 'hood, so I hadn't yet had time to check out the church. Seeing it, though, had already been on my to-do list. It was, according to a snooty Harvard friend of mine, a pillar of high Anglican fervor in the middle of our Irish, working-class neighborhood. The church more than lived up to my friend's description. It was gothic, indeed. it exists across the socioeconomic spectrum. The phenomenon has cultural causes, as well as emotional and psychological ones. Human beings are complicated, even when they are economically secure. They don't always act in their own best interest, they don't always see the big picture, and they have maladaptive relational patterns that get in their way. Whether rich or poor, developing an intimate, trusting marital bond takes place in the fullness of time, as we work through our fears, vulnerabilities, bad habits, and old scripts. Taking our time is essential for emotional deepening of every kind, but for both practical and emotional reasons, paid work can stand in the way of taking that time. Across social classes, people agree that time is their most depleted resource. The emotional economy of marriage is such that people invest time, energy, and resources with the expectation of a return on their investment. We downplay this underlying dynamic due to its unromantic connotations, but morally, the issue is one of fairness and justice. It's a painful rough-patch moment when people start to feel that their investment isn't paying off, or that the trade-offs aren't fair. For example, there are many polls which suggest we are losing friends. And typically, urban life is blamed, of which wired, mobile living is a part. One suggests that in London, over two-fifths of people drift away from their close friends. Urban lifestyle and work brings individuals within the orbit of a wide range of amiable people. Witness the crowded pubs after work.

But they are good only as acquaintances; they leave one stranded when it comes to real intimacy. On the other side of the Atlantic, some sociologists are tracking similar trends. The American Sociological Review has carried research showing that the average American now has only two close friends, and a quarter don't have any at all. The number of people who say they have no one with whom to discuss important matters has risen in the years since the turn of the millennium - that is, during the years in which the internet has blossomed. But I am. It's the main reason I host several What are you going to do with the rest of your life get-togethers at my home for my clients. They're not thinking about it. They're not in creation mode. In my coaching I have only a handful of magic moves. Apologizing is a magic move. Only the hardest of hearts will fail to forgive a person who admits they were wrong. Apology is where behavioral change begins. Asking for help is a magic move. Few people will refuse your sincere plea for help. Soaring, both outside and in. The sanctuary was all stone and polished wood, gold leaf and silver chalices--quiet and still but for the soft reverie of the organ, preparing the spotty congregation for the high mass. It was dark, and that suited me. I sat in a little pew next to a pillar in the back of the sanctuary. It felt safe and warm.

I knelt down on the red-leather kneeler at my feet and closed my eyes. The service began with the words I knew well: Almighty God unto whom all hearts are open, all desires known, and from whom no secrets are hid - I made the sign of the cross out of habit, and bowed my head. I felt remarkably at home. I had a surprising, but welcome, moment of relief. It was almost physical, as if I had deeply exhaled some great burden. Social-exchange theorists have applied to marriage the concept of the comparison level for alternatives. In this framework, relational commitment is calculated by comparing the rewards of the current relationship to the rewards one might receive in another (imagined or real) relationship. The more favorable the comparisons, the more commitment. The more unfavorable the comparisons, the less commitment. Anyone talking about his or her marriage this way in public would be viewed as a superficial, heartless ass. But people do have to feel that the investments and returns in their relationship are fundamentally fair. Partners feel closer, and luckier, when each partner pulls his or her weight. There are many ways to uphold fairness, and many forms of valid caretaking. What works for one couple might not work for another, and ultimately what's fair is a personal, subjective evaluation. But if partners feel they are giving more than they are getting, they may, over time, find their feelings of love eroding. Similarly, both Save the Children and The Children's Society are increasingly worried that technology is damaging young people's ability to socialise, often leaving them lonely, disruptive and prone to bullying. Taking a step back from the figures, such confusion is surely only to be expected. Cities have long brought people together with mixed results. It seems likely that before long, more people will live in cities than live outside of them, as will be the case with being online. That sounds good for community, were it not that cities simultaneously create a sense of isolation.