The Fayette Citizen-Weekend Page
Wednesday, March 24, 1999
STILL MORE MARRIAGE NOTES

By Sallie Satterthwaite

Lifestyle Columnist

Recently I've been musing on the weighty subject of Why Some Marriages Work and Others Don't, and found among my own notes yet two more variations on the theme.

As part of a "marriage tune-up" at our church last month, Dave and I took one of those personality tests designed to help you see where the rough spots might be in your relationship.

After 43 years together, we had a pretty good idea where they were. But even we were stunned to see lines crisscrossing from one side of the graph to the other, forming a profile of two people hopelessly out of synch with each other.

Granted, some opposite traits often bode well for a marriage, as when one is introspective but the other has enough social skills for both, or when one is a good money manager and the other knows how to indulge occasionally.

Dave and I, for instance, have always prided ourselves on how we complement each other. He's the better planner. I keep a cool head in emergencies. He makes decisions quickly. I fall apart when faced with options. He's a born mechanic. I can't get the key in the ignition switch.

But back to the test. Differences are not necessarily bad things. Obviously a Dominant/Submissive pairing sometimes works because it simply suits both partners but two Dominants?

We were especially jolted by the Impulsive/Self-disciplined category. On a scale of 0 to 100, Dave scored, predictably, a 74. Why not? He was a chemist, precise and methodical.

My score? Promise not to laugh? I got a 7. A 7 calls it a good day if she can find a pair of socks that match. A 7 may forget to eat breakfast (without a 74 to remind her). A 7 wants to scream when a 74 asks about goals and objectives.

No, despite the fact that we started out with strong similarities in

race, religion, socio-economic and family backgrounds this has not been an easy marriage. I stand in awe of couples whose marriages have not only survived but thrived in spite of far wider differences.

Such a union was included in a Valentine column I wrote last month. No way should this match have succeeded, but it's going strong after nearly 20 years and an honor-student son.

Rudy and Cella would rather I didn't identify them, so those are made-up names.

In the late 1970s, Rudy was stationed at Wallace Air Station, a little radar site near San Fernando, on the west coast of Luzon Island in the Philippines.

Cella was a Filipino, only 20 when Rudy saw her getting drinking water at his base and was bowled over by her "long black hair, down to her posterior."

She tells it this way:

"I was a little bit off balance. My parents just went back to their province [Isabela, on the east side of the mountains]. We evacuated because where we used to live, there was a lot of guerilla activity, a lot of killing. Because we had left everything we owned, we didn't have enough money or things to get income, and very little land, so I decided to work as a housemaid in San Fernando."

Rudy asked Cella's friend if Cella would go out with him. "I said no," she recalls. "He doesn't take no for an answer. He said, Oh, come on, let's go, and he picked me up and put me in the front of his truck. I could understand everything they were saying, but he doesn't know I could speak that good English."

She finally agreed to go out with him, to a discotheque, and he asked her out again.

"After about three dates, he says, How about getting married? Only not directly. He says, How long would the paperwork take to finish for an American to get married here?

"I heard it was about six months. He says, Six months, eh? OK.

"I wasn't sure if he had asked me to marry him or not, but he brought the paperwork and asked me to sign something."

In the understatement of the interview, Rudy told me, "Our conversations weren't that good."

The lieutenant sent her home to tell her parents. Her father, a broom maker, was working on a grass broom when she arrived. He looked up from his work, Cella relates, and said, "Uh huh. Did you come home to tell us you're getting married?"

"Where I grew up," Cella explains, "a lot of people were engaged mostly three years. The fiance goes abroad and then comes home and gets married. I came from a tribe that has arranged marriages, but my parents didn't do that."

Her people believe it's bad luck for younger siblings to get married before the older ones. "I said [to my brother], Hurry up and get married!"

He didn't, but Cella's family gave their consent anyhow. They were "happy, yet sad," she says. "The U.S. is so far off. They thought it was as far away as Manila about 150 miles.

"I stayed there for a week, helped with farm work. After that I went back. Rudy was going crazy, thought I wouldn't be back. We were married in San Fernando with friends [present], but my parents didn't make it."

Never mind. Rudy did go to see them before he married Cella. What was that meeting like?

"They hadn't seen much of Americans," Cella said. "The last time was World War II.

"My Mom says, They all look the same to me."

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