They Find Absence Does Make Heart Grow Fonder

They’ve lived apart for 13 years, yet they are still married. Still friends. And, in matters concerning their two children, still partners.

Marie and Bill separated because, after several years of counseling that seemed only to magnify their differences, they felt they couldn’t make each other happy.

But for this Orange County couple--who talked about their relationship in separate interviews after being assured anonymity--giving up on the marriage didn’t mean getting a divorce.

When they separated, they didn’t feel the anger or bitterness that so often keeps couples from making peace after they part. Nor did they need the clarity of a clean break.

So Bill moved out, Marie remained in their home with the children, and they went on with their lives, never imagining that they would spend so many years in this shadow land between marriage and divorce.

“It’s unusual,” Marie acknowledges. “There’s no agreement from the rest of the world that it should be this way. It stymies other people so I don’t talk about it much.”

But on this day, she talks about it for nearly two hours and the tears start to flow when she reflects on her bond with Bill and concludes: “This lifestyle is satisfying to me because I still love him. It’s that simple.”

Bill is more reserved but equally affirmative when he talks about his feelings for Marie: “I still care for her, and I’d do anything for her. But we get along better apart than we do together.”

If someone had told them when they married nearly 29 years ago that they would bring out the worst in each other, they wouldn’t have believed it.

Now in their early 50s, both Bill and Marie came from small Midwestern towns, and they were drawn to each other in college at least partly because they were raised with the same basic values. They also shared a fun-loving approach to life that made their early years of marriage light-hearted and harmonious.

The trouble started after the children were born and Marie, who had left her career to raise them, began to feel a vague restlessness that she didn’t understand and did her best to ignore.

“I was unhappy, but it was such an unnatural state for me that I could avoid it by not paying any attention to it,” she explains.

Not long after her second child was born, she found an outlet for her restlessness in community volunteer work. She was attracted to organizations that stressed activism, and she quickly became committed to the women’s movement. She also found an impetus for self-exploration in the “consciousness-raising” groups that were in vogue in the ‘70s.

Bill says a different person emerged after Marie started looking in these directions for the fulfillment she wasn’t finding in her marriage.

“She became very independent,” he observes during an interview at lunch spot where he sees people he knows but doesn’t seem concerned about being overheard.

He says he became aware of Marie’s discontent with him when she started criticizing him for spending time with friends who talked only about matters she saw as trivial and for playing golf when he could have been working to advance social causes.

“She wanted me to be someone I’m not--to be more like she became,” Bill says.

As Marie became more independent and assertive, both she and Bill began to see the basic differences in their personalities that weren’t obvious when they were busy establishing careers and starting a family.

For example: Bill is laid-back and even-tempered; Marie is intense and mercurial. He likes to stay home; she’s always on the go. He resists change; she welcomes it. He’s pragmatic; she’s a romantic. He keeps his guard up; she allows strangers to see her vulnerability.

It was Marie who insisted that they get some help building a bridge between their radically different approaches to life. They started with marriage counseling and, when that didn’t help, ended up seeing a sex therapist.

“The sex got better, but the relationship didn’t,” Marie says.

As a last resort, they decided to try a lifestyle wildly out of sync with their small-town Midwestern upbringing--an open marriage.

Marie admits it was her idea. Bill says he went along with it because nothing else had worked and he feared divorce was the only other alternative.

“It was a last-ditch thing. We both thought, ‘Why not?’ ” he says.

Both saw others--discreetly but openly--for a brief period that ended because, Bill says, “it didn’t feel right.”

It wasn’t jealousy, he insists. He just wasn’t comfortable coming home to his understanding wife early in the morning after being with another woman and slipping back into his role as a husband as though he had never left it.

For Marie, open marriage--which they explored under a written contract that required both to make their family their priority--was unsatisfying, too. But she feels it bought her some time to figure out what she was missing in her relationship with Bill while there was still a chance to do something about it.

She discovered that she had never felt a heart-pounding, head-swimming chemistry with Bill, not even in the beginning. She wanted something “thrilling, exciting, wonderful.” But, though she and Bill loved each other, “the magic wasn’t in it,” she says.

She also realized her marriage lacked intimacy on a deeper level, and she didn’t feel that Bill, who had always seemed uncomfortable expressing his love, would ever be able to give her what she needed.

“I’ve never felt as lonely living alone as I did living with him,” she says.

So, after 17 years of marriage and a lot of pushing each other to change in ways neither could, Marie finally told Bill, “I don’t want to do this anymore.”

They filed divorce papers but never acted on them because, once they were separated, they found they no longer had any reason to argue. And as the air cleared, they realized that their strengths--a longtime friendship, a deep commitment to their family and the ability to have fun together--were still intact.

Neither could conceive of marrying someone else, so they decided to postpone divorce indefinitely.

After one failed attempt at reconciliation, they settled into a lifestyle that brings them together with their daughters for holidays and birthdays and even occasional camping trips. Marie sometimes calls Bill when she needs a bridge partner, and he sometimes moves into her house to be with their youngest daughter, who is 17, while Marie’s on business trips.

They have even brought their new “significant others” along to some family gatherings. So far, they say, it’s worked.

Both believe that the lack of bitterness and hostility between them, and their ability to maintain a sense of family unity have made their separation easier on their daughters.

However, Marie acknowledges, it has also been confusing for them: “I think they feel it would be easier if they could say we’re divorced.”

But for Marie and Bill, it’s sometimes easier to be able to say “we’re still married.” Both like knowing that if they ever decided to remarry, they’d have to wait long enough to get a divorce.

“I’m a person who loves to fall in love, so I think it’s good to have a six-month protection to keep me from doing something foolish in one of those magical moments,” Marie says.

Marie and Bill acknowledge that the time for divorce may come, but they expect to remain friends no matter what happens.

“I feel I have a bond to her that will always be there. If we were divorced, I’d feel the same way,” Bill says.

Married or not, Marie hopes they will be able to turn to each other when they are elderly if they are alone and need the kind of support a spouse would provide.

She admits she’s trying to “have it all” and tunes out those who say she can’t.

“I’m excited about my life as I live it now,” she says, noting that she encourages her friends to “seek the life you love.”

“People aren’t accustomed to doing that,” she adds. “It’s not an either-or world. My life shows that there are a lot more ways to live than we commonly see.”

She’s not sure she could ever balance her needs for privacy and intimacy within a marriage, so she’s content with a life that allows room for romance when it happens but still gives her ample time to herself. And the freedom to maintain a close relationship with Bill.

“I wasn’t happy and I had to do what I needed to do to be happy, but I didn’t need to stop loving Bill,” she explains. “I was looking for a way to bring joy and satisfaction into my life, and I was able to do that without a divorce.”