Reflections on Marriage Jubilee

It's hard to believe: when April 16, 2017 rolls around, Annette and I will have been married for 50 years. According to Google, only 5-6 percent of marriages last that long. By anyone’s calculations, it’s a long time. Think about it. That’s half a century!

On our Silver Anniversary, I wrote about my first fateful meeting with Annette Kagan. She was, and still is, the most spectacularly beautiful person I have ever met. We went to a college basketball game on our first date. She had a loquacious, effervescent quality that I especially loved. Annette and I were both from the Midwest, both from fatherless homes, both committed to similar values, and even both Kohanim and from the priestly clan in Judaism (indeed, the name Karan originally derived from Kagan which means "priest"). But, oh, how different we were! Bottom line: she and I were as polar opposite as two people can be.

               

The psychologist John Gray has written that men are from Mars and women are from Venus; I think if he were describing our marriage, he would say that I am from one universe and Annette is from another! Is it possible to find two people who are more opposite? Possibly, but I doubt it.

               

So although our differences were and still are monumental –whether it be taste in music, taste in food, traveling styles, you name it—our marriage has survived and, I believe, thrived.  Longevity in relationships, it seems to me, has little to do with things we don't have in common and more to do with the desire we have to find shared interests, to make the relationship work, in short, to dance in step and in love.

               

What, you ask, is the secret to a long and happy marriage, particularly of opposites? What were the steps we took to avoid constant conflict? Luckily, we found an activity that involved couples moving in opposite directions yet deriving pleasure with each other. That activity is…(drum roll)...dancing! You see, over the years Annette and I have discovered that dancing is actually one of the few activities that we both enjoy doing together.  Make no mistake, we are far from accomplished dancers; when it comes to the “light fantastic,” we’ve had our share of trips and falls! In fact, Annette’s compound fracture at a friend’s retirement party and my broken ankle at a synagogue dinner furloughed our dancing for many years. So while age and infirmity have weakened our joints, they have not diminished our joint devotion to dancing. What better way to celebrate our Jubilee Celebration, we agreed, than to have a dance party—featuring ballroom and Jewish dances—with our family and closest friends?

Health Benefits of Dancing

Consider this: psychological and medical research has revealed that dancing can do wonders for your mental, physical, and emotional health; it also improves your brain function on many different levels.

· Studies have shown that dance can decrease anxiety and boost mood more than other physical outlets.

· The physical activity is a great stress reliever and the positive feelings about the shared experience make couples excited to carve out alone time.

· Dancing greatly improves your balance and relieves the fear of falling. Professional dancers are able to suppress the signals from the balance organs within the inner ear linked to the cerebellum. This is why ballet dancers don’t get dizzy while performing pirouettes. Dance practice can dramatically soothe feelings of dizziness that affect many people at some point in their lives.

· For those suffering from mild bouts of sadness and depression, dancing regularly and getting out among others can boost mental and physical energy, can lift the spirits and can build confidence and self-esteem.

· A major study added to the growing evidence that stimulating one's mind by dancing can ward off Alzheimer's disease and other dementia, much as physical exercise can keep the body fit.  Dancing also increases cognitive acuity at all ages. 

Dance as Metaphor for Life

Harriet Goldhor Lerner is one of my favorite writers and thinkers in my field. Dance, she says, is an appropriate metaphor for all relationships. At their core, relationships are an energetic dance between you and your partner. When you connect well together, you experience the joy of the dance of love. Not surprisingly, Lerner has written several best sellers on how to improve interactions, most with the word “Dance” in the title: “Dance of Anger,” “Dance of Intimacy,” “Dance of Connection,” “Dance of Fear,” and “Dance of Deception.”

               

What is the beautiful paradox of dance? You have two very different people who are cheek-to-cheek or usually facing each other in a closed stance. The partners do not need to hold on tightly: the heavy hand, the clinging arm, only arrest the pattern and freeze the movement, checking the endless flow of communication. Dancing is, in the main, two people, with different roles, moving to the same rhythm, poised on the beat, living in the moment, leaning in toward each other. Is there a better description for what happens in life?               

As I did when I proposed to Annette, at the outset we pick our partner with hopes of synchronizing and having a good time. But as time goes on, and life’s demands increase, the dance gets harder. There are different needs for space and closeness. The steps become more complicated. Couples become stuck in ineffective patterns: for example, the behavior of one partner, who either over-functions, overreacts, or pursues, only provokes the other partner to do more of the same undesired behavior, such as under-functioning, under-reacting, or distancing. Efforts focused on trying to change the other achieve nothing and can even make things worse. We end up stepping all over each other’s toes with self-defeating moves and unchecked insecurities. We even discover that other dance partners look better, stronger, safer, and more appealing. In short, just like in a dance, if you move ahead faster than your partner, or go slower than him or her, you will end up struggling with each other or dancing alone.

               

What advice does Dr.  Lerner and other counselors, myself included, offer to couples in distress? Above all, never fear those moments of tension in your marriage. Rather, see them as doorways that lead you to a deeper connection. In the dance of love, the good times bring you close, but the tough times can bring you even closer.

What We Can Learn from Dance

You see, each dance is a new start, a chance to adapt yourself and find a new beginning. If you see that your partner can’t keep up with you or has a different interpretation of the song, you need to adjust. So although you can’t change another person, you can, nonetheless,  influence your partner. Fundamentally, you are dancing for yourself. But your response affects how a conflict plays out, whether for better or worse.

As a metaphor for life, dance helps you enlarge your repertoire of moves in a relationship. Often in different ballroom dances, there are different styles and different ways to hold each other. Dance allows you to use choreographed sequences; but there are also plenty of opportunities for lots of improvisation. Dances such as rumba, bachata, and tango teach us to use sexy steps, light touch, gestures, twists, flirtatious and provocative moves and hips swaying to engage our partner and keep him or her in step with us. Remember, there is no script to follow: you just have to go with the flow of the music and with the space that’s available to you on the dance floor. Throughout it all, there’s no talking or analyzing; there’s no bossiness, rigidity, manipulation or force.  As a famous choreographer once said, “To touch, to move, to inspire. This is the true gift of dance.” 

You can also use different dances to reflect changes in mood, different stages in a relationship, special occasions. Although Jewish tradition generally frowns upon mixed dancing, except for married couples, dancing before the bride at a wedding is a mitzvah. At Jewish weddings, sometimes people stand facing each other in two lines, and then run toward each other and meet in the middle, and then run backward to their original places, only to do it all over again. This dance symbolizes the rhythm of a healthy relationship. In any loving alliance, a couple experiences moments of closeness and love, as well as moments of distance and tension. The Hora or circle dance is another feature of Jewish gatherings: as such, it represents our never ending and collective desire for equality and harmony. The circle is the past and it also is the future. Anyone who has experienced it can attest there is huge power generated by a group dancing with a unified purpose.

Negative Effects of Dancing

To be sure, there can be unhealthy patterns in dancing as well; some people have a propensity for choosing narcissistic, codependent partners who are dysfunctional, controlling and harmful. When your main concern in the dance is forcing others to dance the way you dance, seeking approval of others, pretending to enjoy the dance, but really harboring feelings of anger and sadness, or trying to be a perfect dancer, then you are missing the joy of dancing. 

Dancing can also be cognitively overloading, it can challenge your range of physical movement, it can remind you how your  body has aged and it can sometimes make you feel foolish!

               

I’ll take all the bad and the good that comes with dancing. You see, I’m the luckiest man: I found the ideal dance partner in my Dearest Annette. I reiterate, without exaggeration, that I would not be the type of man I am today without Annette's influence and support. I might have meandered through a multitude of career paths without sustained success. Annette's charisma and booming operatic voice gave me the courage to venture forth from the cozy, secure world of academia into the riskier, more interactive realms of private psychological practice and public speaking and writing. The words and the ideas were, I firmly believe, always there within me; Annette helped bring them to the fore. Similarly, I am her "composer" and "lyricist," helping her channel her energy, her electricity into mellower melodies.

As different as we are,  we have found the way to dance in step and in love for 50 years!