Money matters can deal marriage a harsh blow

Money matters can deal marriage a harsh blow

By Mochtar Buchori

JAKARTA (JP): Is it really hard for the fabulously rich to
preserve their marriage? Is it harder for them to preserve their
marriage than for ordinary people who do not feel the power of
money?

These questions came to my mind after reading Ellen Goodman's
article "Money Gives Its Views On Marriage", in the Dec. 21
edition of The Guardian Weekly.

Goodman wrote about a marriage that was wracked by money. It
was a story about how a ruined marriage compelled the married
couple to change the tales about their marriage, and how broken
marriages in general force us to rewrite the idea of marriage
itself.

In her article, Goodman discussed the famous divorce case of
Lorna vs. Garry Wendt. The couple got married about thirty years
ago. At the time Garry Wendt was a graduate student at Harvard
Business School. They started with US$2,500 and high hopes. In
Dec. 1997 their marriage ended in a Connecticut courtroom with
bitter recriminations and a division of their $100 million.

Garry became rich from hard work at General Electric, where he
became a top executive. Lorna took care of the kids and their
home. Garry told his lawyer that $10 million would be all Lorna
would ever need. However, Lorna claimed that she was entitled to
receive $50 million, half of their accumulated assets, and that
"need" had nothing to do with it. In the end, the judge rewarded
Lorna an estimated $20 million and some of Garry's future
earnings.

This case raised several important questions. First, it has
become popular to ask the question "What is a wife worth?"

To Goodman the intriguing matter is that in this case both
parties and the public focussed their attention on what Lorna did
or did not do to deserve the marital millions, but that nobody
questioned what Garry did or did not do to deserve the corporate
millions.

The second question is "What changes the value of a marriage?"
In the case of Lorna and Garry, the marriage was at the beginning
a 50-50 proposition. "But when push comes to shove comes to
split," Goodman wrote, "it may be rescripted as an 80-20
proposition. The equal relationship based on love suddenly is
recast as an economic relationship based on pay slips."

Goodman went on saying that what was happening in this case
was a collision of two value systems, those of marriage and the
market, of love and money.

To dramatize her story, Goodman wrote that a year before the
divorce proceedings were initiated, Garry still thanked his wife
for all the support she gave him during their entire married
life. At the annual banquet he thanked his "wife and partner
without whom" he would never have reached the financial
stratosphere.

However, a year later at his lawyer's office Garry insisted
that Lorna "was not the helium in his rise to the top, but the
old ball and chain."

"What a difference a year makes," Goodman wrote and "What a
difference a divorce makes. One year, a homemaker wife is the co-
author of a success story. The next year, she is the corporate
welfare recipient."

This story by Goodman prompted me to reflect about a number of
questions. Can such a conversion in a marital relationship happen
to everybody, or is it only a "disease" among the fantastically
rich?

If a marriage is still intact and functions harmoniously, does
the "equal relationship" really rest on love alone? Does money
indeed have such a strong corruptive influence on our value
system?

I have been asked these questions many times before, except
the last one. Whenever I went out together with my wife, and
stopped at some shops to buy things, the young shop attendants --
in most cases young women -- usually made comments about us and
asked a few personal questions.

"What has made you both remain together until such an old
age?" or "I rarely see old couples of your age still going out
and shopping together. What makes both of you so different?"

Some young people went even further and said that they wanted
to live like us. "Could you tell us the secret of your successful
marriage?"

I must admit that comments like this are very flattering to
both of us. But not a single moment in our lives did we ever feel
that we were a special case. These young people just do not know
what it takes to preserve a marriage for forty-odd years. They do
not know that in every marriage that lasts that long, continuous
adjustments and readjustments have to be made. Any successful
marriage that lasts until old age is the product of hard work by
both wife and husband.

But I found it impossible to give lengthy explanations about
meaningful marriage in encounters that last only ten to twenty
minutes. My standard answer to questions like this has always
been that in marriage love alone will not suffice. Besides love,
mutual respect constitutes a very important ingredient.

"If you have respect for each other," I always told these
young people, "you will not easily throw harsh words at each
other. If you have respect for each other, you will do your best
to rein yourself before doing something stupid that might hurt
your spouse. But if such mutual respect does not exist, you can
easily run out of control. You can easily hurt your spouse
without feeling guilty or remorse. Such a situation is the
beginning of a creeping change in the relationship. Uncorrected,
such a situation can lead to a change in the mutual perception of
each other. Your spouse will no longer appear to you as the
'loved one'. He or she may begin to look as the 'oppressive one',
the 'troublesome one', or the 'hindering one'."

And from here on, I said to myself, it is but a small step to
perceive one's wife as -- to borrow Goodman's words -- the "old
ball and chain".

I hope that such a simple explanation will help these young
people keep their faith in marriage.

After reading Goodman's article, however, I realize that my
simple formula will not work with very affluent people. What
these very rich people need to remain together in a meaningful
way is, I think, integrity. Alas, integrity is not a commodity
that can be purchased.

The writer is an observer of social and cultural affairs.