... in response to Re: Turn on the Discovery channel right ..., posted by Quasimoto on Sep 3, 2002DC_FULLTEXT
Copyright USA Today Information Network Jul 19, 2001
Ever wanted to take a powder from your marriage? Just up and leave your husband for an extended period to reconnect with the person you were before you became the caretaker of everyone else?
Women in their 40s and 50s are doing it, some even taking time off from their semi-grown kids, according to Cheryl Jarvis, author of The Marriage Sabbatical: The Journey That Brings You Home (Perseus, $24). The solo sojourners still startle many of their friends. But an amazing number of experts support the idea.
"Sometimes people have needs that have nothing to do with their marriage," says sociologist Pepper Schwartz, co-author of the landmark study American Couples. "They may need a spiritual quest, or have a need for adventure, or need solitude, which is a very important counterpoint to daily life. And solitude is almost impossible to achieve" without going away, she says.
The idea still shocks. "We are not used to women being as self- oriented as men have been," Schwartz says. "And when they go away, we say, 'Oh, a woman does not get to do that!' "
Being absent temporarily does not mean that something is wrong with a relationship, Jarvis says. "If one partner does something she really wants to do, and she has a husband who nurtures that desire, why would we not think there is something really right about that relationship? There is a freedom to grow and pursue individual dreams in the marriage."
Janis Kirstein, 46, is a high school art teacher in Louisville who says she is taking such a sabbatical at the Vermont Studio Center in Johnson, Vt. At her husband's suggestion, she is dedicating a month to pure creativity, to learning more about her art while somebody else fixes the meals. She calls it painters' camp.
"We talk on the phone daily," she says of husband Brooke Rigor, a lawyer. They have been married since 1986 and together since 1977. "But it is just so nice to have this space here" that is both emotional and physical. She is finding a "sense of renewal and perspective. And I will bring renewed energy back to my marriage."
Artists and writers come to the Vermont center for a variety of reasons, says founder Jon Gregg. He does see a plethora of women who spend weeks learning from visiting artists and "come here to get away from spouses, children, employers, pets, plants and the phone."
Jarvis defines a sabbatical as a "personal timeout from daily routines for creative, professional, or spiritual growth, for study, reflection or renewal." It is not a vacation, a visit with friends or a sick parent, a few days at a spa or a summer at the lake with the kids. She is quite fudgy about the length of time. For some women, a few weeks might be adequate; others may require months -- but the length of time is set ahead of time.
John Gottman, a pioneering University of Washington couples researcher, thinks it is a great idea, a way for a man to "honor a woman's dreams." Women have to deal, he says, with "what I call the female lie: that they can be happy if they focus on relationships. Relationships are not everything."
His own wife took three weeks off to fulfill her dream, "going to Mount Everest base camp before she was 50. I said, 'Are you crazy? This is dangerous.'
"But she went anyway, organizing a trip for 11 women," says Gottman, co-author of The Relationship Cure: A Five-Step Guide for Building Better Connections with Family, Friends, and Lovers (Crown, $24). "She has a picture of herself at 18,500 feet. And I have never seen her happier."
Jarvis weaves her book from the threads of her own experience. A St. Louis journalist, she secured two grants and spent three months staying at various writers' colonies as she honed her book. It was her first time away from her husband of 30 years.
The idea can smack of a much older concept: a midlife crisis. "I left a week after I turned 50," she says. Like the 50-plus women she interviewed, she was "figuring out the second half of life, where we had been and where we were going. In our society, it is a luxury to take time out to reflect on our lives. I also think it is essential."
Like most of the women in her book, she did not leave until her children were grown. And her husband was supportive. "Jim has never given me any grief."
Obviously, the women she studied had the money to go away, and if they had jobs, they were mostly able to take leave. Many came from arts-related fields but few from the world of business. "Composers can compose anyplace, but the world of business doesn't let you shift gears," Jarvis says.
Sally Howald found that out. The first time she took leave from her job as creative director for an advertising agency to teach advertising strategies in Holland, her boss gave her private office away. The second time, he hired a new protege. She eventually quit and made a job shift to teaching. "I couldn't blame my boss. In the business world you don't leave for two or three months," says Howald, 49, of St. Louis.
When Howald left the first time in 1993, she had not eaten in a restaurant by herself. "I had hardly been by myself." She had been consumed with being a wife, "a soccer mom, and working full time. You cannot get perspective on your life at home until you pull yourself out of it."
There are dues to be paid, however, especially when there are children.
"At the time, my son was 10 and at first caught up in the excitement of the thing. He got to come over and visit. But looking back, he says it was stressful. He didn't quite understand the whole thing. It was scary for him."
Not all the women have success stories. One grown daughter took eight months to forgive her mom for being absent during the daughter's first pregnancy. That traveler's marriage also still struggles day to day. Another spent "a miserable five weeks in China," Jarvis says, having bitten off more than she could chew. But still it was a landmark experience the woman would not have traded, Jarvis says.
Taking time off is not an invitation to an affair for either the wife or her husband, say Jarvis and the women she interviewed. "Couples can be on opposite ends of the world and be faithful, while others sleep in the same bed every night and have affairs in the afternoon," she says. "These women want time for themselves, not another entanglement." Many of the husbands she interviewed were insulted when asked about infidelity, Jarvis says.
Sabbaticals of three months to one year are actually prescribed by Washington, D.C., psychologist and marital therapist Catherine Gray. "They are most effective when a relationship is just getting dull, a victim of low energy." Partners are held accountable for the level of personal growth they achieve while apart. "A sabbatical implies time off and growth, whereas a separation implies fighting and deterioration of the relationship," she says.
But other experts find the idea of a wife's leaving home quite appalling.
"How many of us can afford to go off to Italy to paint?" asks Diane Sollee, founder of the Coalition for Marriage, Family and Couples Education, a couples' research and resource organization. "I also think it's a bad message: that marriage is something that holds you back instead of marriage as a vehicle that can help women and men realize their dreams."
Why not include the men, Sollee wonders. "Men get just as sick of the grind. Couples should be encouraged to arrange for sabbaticals together. I don't think couples do enough of that. We are so child- focused, so work-focused."
Maggie Scarf, author of Intimate Partners: Patterns In Love and Marriage (Ballantine, $6.99), applauds the concept of a wife's getting away. But she makes a distinction between a sabbatical that lasts two weeks and one that goes on for months: "That sounds like a separation to me." And she cautions that a young child would not be able to understand mom's being gone for an extended leave. "That could have an effect on the child's future."
Joan Mister waited until her children were grown. And then, after 30 years of marriage and six practice trips, she drove 30,000 miles alone in six months. She had her 65th birthday on the road "with a friend I had not seen for 50 years," says Mister, now 67, of Brooklyn. "I have always been interested in observing people, in understanding life in various places. I epitomize the late-blooming person. And this is what I wanted to do."
Her trip, she says, "was not about coming back and being a better wife or mother or appreciating my family more. My family was grown and I already appreciate my husband. I was on an internal and external journey. This was self exploration."
It was also, she says, a legacy for her grandchildren. "There is only so much influence we can have on our grandchildren. But I hope they have a desire to know the world."
Jarvis feels her own experience was so rewarding that she would leave home again if the spirit moved her. "It is a delicate balance to be married without losing yourself. Going to those writers' colonies was a slice of heaven."
[Illustration]
EAR PHOTO, Color, Adam Riesner for USA TODAY; PHOTO, Color, Adam Riesner for USA TODAY; PHOTO, B/W; Caption: Janis Kirstein on painters' camp sabbatical. Time to reflect: Janis Kirstein works on paintings at the Vermont Studio Center. She's on sabbatical from her marriage and her job as a high school art teacher.
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DC_SUBTITLE: [FINAL Edition]
DC_COLNAME: COVER STORY
DC_STPAGE: D.01
ISSN: 07347456
DC_SUBJTERM: Leaves of absence
Marriage
Women
Books-titles -- Marriage Sabbatical: The Journey That Brings You Home
DC_PNAME: Jarvis, Cheryl
