The Marriage-Go-Round by Andrew J. Cherlin, a demographer and sociologist at Johns Hopkins University, makes the case that Americans venerate and practice marriage with more fervor than their Western nation counterparts. For many or most Americans, marriage represents the non plus ultra of human relationships.

Then there’s reality, the often ugly aftermath of marriage — the 50% divorce rate.

According to Cherlin, “‘two powerful forces are at war in America, a historic belief in marriage grounded in our religious heritage on the one hand and a foundational principle of individual freedom and a post-modern sense of the right to self-fulfillment on the other. When these values clash, breakup and divorce follow.’” We tend to rush into relationships, and we tend to suffer the unintended consequences.

Americans voted for the Obama platform, but also for the Obama relationship. We feel their chemistry. We approve of the way they treat each other,  at least in public. But you can’t fake tenderness. Theirs seems to be a marriage in the best sense of the word, a model to emulate in our own personal lives.

Which begs the question: How did this seemingly close-to-perfect union come to be in the first place? Michelle has gone on record that she and Barack were friends first.

In an April, 2009 interview with Oprah, the first lady says: “Barack is a human being with flaws. And I can rattle down all the flaws and tease him about them every day, but those flaws are not fundamental. They don’t hit upon things that are intolerable to me. In terms of his core values, he has never disappointed me. … I don’t lose sight of the fact that he’s the president, but first and foremost he’s my husband, my friend, and the father of my children. That didn’t change with his hand on the Lincoln Bible. But it doesn’t mean I don’t appreciate the gravity of what he’s doing. The way I can honor that is by working by his side and adding value to what he’s doing in any way that I can.”

A  July, 2008 Chicago Sun Times story, encapsulates their romance:

“Michelle Robinson was a first-year attorney at the Chicago law firm of Sidley Austin. Word rippled through the law office that a hot-shot Harvard law student would be working at the firm that summer. The future Michelle Obama saw a photograph of the new hire and was less than dazzled.

‘I thought, OK, he’s probably not all that terrific, and he’s probably kind of a clown, and then I found out that his name was Barack Obama….And like everybody else, I thought, ‘Well, what kind of name is that?’
And then Michelle learned she’d been assigned to mentor the new guy. In the flesh, though, Barack was less geeky than he appeared in his photo, and he wasn’t the cocky Harvard student she’d been expecting.

He had both a worldly charm and a genuine desire to help the less-fortunate. Michelle found herself laughing at the same things as Barack. If she was cynical about something, he seemed to see it that way, too.

‘I was charmed, and we became instant friends after [the] first conversation,’ Michelle Obama said.”

They dated for two-plus years. Barack Obama was a bit skittish about the institution of marriage, but finally caved and proposed to his best friend and lover, Michelle.

Friends first. Friends forever.

Bookmark It

Trackback URI | Comments RSS