LBBs and the Urge To Run for the Hills

Okay, I realize that lately I have been lobbing books, podcasts and articles at you a bit much. But, I can’t help but throw another one on to the pile. Time magazine recently published an article titled Is There Hope for the American Marriage? Before reading, I thought, great, another article about the demise of marriage in America and how we are all going to hell and a handbasket for it. But, I took the plunge anyway.

Basic question it poses: Do we have far too many “outs” to stay “in?” Of course, famous marriage mix-ups from Jon and Kate (of the Plus 8 fame) and ridiculous governor of South Carolina, Mark Sanford, are held up as recent examples of marital meltdown. And, how it was just so durn easy to take the path not recommended, from affairs to feeding one’s own discontent.

Made me ponder. (Surprise!)

This urge to run may not be unique among marital partners. But, I’ll tell ya’ late bloomer brides may be fighting this battle even more than our younger married counterparts. 

You see, LBBs usually come with an interesting trait. The proven ability to live all alone, perfectly happily. Also, if you add a number of years of bad (or at least wrong-for-you) boyfriends and dates, and you’ll find most LBBs have developed an intricate web of escape routes. I mean, we had to. If not, I would have been married to either T. or (shudder) R. right now. Husband would not have been on the menu at all. So, the ability to run was necessary in order to avoid mistakes.

However, now as a happy LBB, we sometimes find old habits die hard. Things get tough? The adrenaline rushes, the imagination goes wild (Hmmm, if I was single, I really could just buy that chair he hates), and plans begin to be mulled over. All this happens in a nano-second, of course. We then are snapped back into reality. Do we really want to leave? Of course not. I have found that most LBBs are, if anything, hopeful.

But, LBB’s fantasy life was at center stage a lot when single, and this has made the desire to change things that are less than perfect, very, very strong. (See posts on fantasy and movies to better understand this desire to split when things aren’t perfect.)

The urge to run also can get ingrained because it feeds our desire to stay independent. We don’t act on it. But, it pounds on the heart nonetheless. Perhaps another skill an LBB might want to consider working on is putting these “running” thoughts in their proper place — on the back burner. We want to marry men who would find it easy to be faithful to us. But, shouldn’t that also mean we are women who would find it hard to run?

(For the record, Husband knows that I’m with Jon Bon Jovi’s wife. Jon was famously quoted as saying that the secret to his long-standing marriage is that his wife declared that if he ever left her, she was going to come with him.)

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