The Marriage Ref

I retired from watching TV some 25 years ago when it became apparent that there was little or nothing that captured my attention save the chance to dream Olympian thoughts every two years or so. But I had to come out of tube-watching retirement this week to take a look at “The Marriage Ref.” And I have a few choice words to say about it for which I will not even ask forgiveness. This is a show that offers to referee domestic disputes between couples and declare a so-called winner – a priceless bit of semi-reality TV gone mad!

Okay I am not surprised that men are still being portrayed as buffoons – one of the men wanted to stuff and mount his pet dog in a shrine in the entry of their home and the other wanted to install a stripper pole presumably for his somewhat overfed wife to “exercise" with. You know what, maybe we men actually think stupid things like that but usually we laugh it off and come to our senses within minutes. I am certain that many of us think it would be cool to get all our ex-lovers in a room for one night (like Paul Simon’s Kodachrome) but we don’t actually take step one toward that. Whatever! So have fun with our buffoonery even if it only exists in our heretofore un-acted upon thoughts. It just tires me that Hollywood has not gone too many steps down the sidewalk from Art Carney and Jackie Gleason’s or the Lucy and Desi’s house of the 50’s.

No. That isn’t what bothers me. It is the simple thought that for even these trivial incidents, we think we need a referee. There are two problems here. First of all, there is an assumption inherent in all disagreements that there must be a right and a wrong – a winner. Sorry, folks, when there is a winner there is a loser. And in the case of a marriage relationship, when that happens the real loser is the relationship – not the husband or wife. Relationships cannot tolerate winner/loser tallies. Look we are as competitive as the next guy – it is partly what defines us as men. We love to compete. But your wife does not see the score the same as you. Think of a good batting average – what maybe a .300 – but if that were a wife keeping track, it would be converted to a .700 loss average. Marriage relationships cannot withstand a 70% hit! So our advice is to keep your competitive edge on the playing field.

Which brings me to the second problem, which is more about the process. Relationships are about relating – and relating is working on things. Without question, relationships have issues and problems and disagreements. It is just natural, unless you have married yourself, that your partner will see things differently than you. And what happens when you work on things as a team is that you build up a track record of successes. In a sense working to resolve little things (like stripper poles and stuffed, mounted dogs) builds up muscle to be able to handle real crises, like a pregnant teenage daughter, or huge financial setbacks and the like. Don’t worry, the Marriage Ref will never take on those things because they are too real and it will take real people with guts and commitment to work through that. And I don’t care where you mount the reality TV camera, you just can’t capture that kind of committed work on camera. The bottom line is that it is resolving these “problems” that makes a marriage strong. And having a ref, if it doesn’t kill it will only make it weak and atrophied.