I’ve tried to write this post before, but it’s one of those elusive thoughts that defies language.

When I was a child, I’d hear the phrase, “Well, they only stay married for the kids.”  It was the 1970s.  Divorce was new, though still a rarity in my world.  I lived in fear that my parents would split up - especially because my parents’ relationship didn’t seem like that of Mike and Carol Brady, or later, Cliff and Clair Huxtable.  When I’d hear about another divorce - my dad’s friend Gene, or his cousin Sharon - I’d breathe deep.  Statistically, perhaps the bad luck would pass us by.

Or at least, I figured, they might stay married for our sakes.  Soldier through; suck it up.  They’d borne us, without our permission.  They owed it to us to keep us happy, or at least to not make us the subject of whispered speculation. 

Then I had a child of my own, in a relationship that was sometimes strained and flawed.  And I realized that I had misunderstood the concept of “staying together for the sake of the children.”

Make that underestimated.

One of the most appealing things my husband does is to be a great father.  Do I roll my eyes at the things he lets our son get away with?  Okay, yes.  Despite the three decades separating their ages, they’re already buddies, capable of crashing out on the sofa to watch basketball.  Dad has a beer; Kyd has a sippy cup.

There is nothing endearing about seeing your partner in a hoops-and-hops coma on a Saturday afternoon.  But factor in your equally sports mad toddler, who is calling out things like “score!” as Daddy patiently explains that our team is the one wearing blue shirts, well … instead of sloth, my husband is now a poster child for domestic bliss and father-son bonding.

I like him better because I see how intensely he loves our child.

It’s not just the easy moments, either.  The hardest moments in parenting highlight how our strengths complement one another.  Despite outward appearances, my husband is often the emotional one, while I’m able to detach and be analytical.  When our newborn was sick, he was the one who could pace back and forth for hours, soothing and comforting.  I was the one who could call the doctor, describe symptoms and listen to advice - and then go do three extra loads of vomit-flecked laundry.  Pre-baby, my aloof nature clashed horribly with his affectionate one.  But combined as parents, we get it more or less right - just enough smotherlove, just enough rational judgment.

If we both share a character flaw, it’s a tendency to be impossibly stubborn.  Safe to say that sometimes the only thing capable of making us compromise and find common ground is our child.  More than a year ago, when my husband proposed the move to our current home, it would’ve been the death of our marriage.  For the move to work, I had to leave my well-established career, including a position in a growing organization that had been created expressly for me.  Intellectually, I understood that my husband’s career was dead-ended in our current town.  The industry in which he worked had simply moved elsewhere.  He’d been shouldering more of the childcare burden since our son’s birth.  It was my turn.

And so we moved.  All three of us.

Had there been no baby, I’m sure we would’ve amicably filed for divorce ages ago.  I’d still have my professional position and the comfort of knowing exactly who I was - a big and respected fish in a medium-sized pond.  And maybe I’d have eventually remarried.

Instead, I did the right thing.  Not the right thing for me, so much.  But for my marriage.  For our child.

After five years of marriage, I’m not sure I understand the institution.  I don’t need to be married for financial security or emotional stability.  Plenty of women in my life have happy and fruitful lives without partners.

But parenting is, for me at least, a team sport.  It forces me to be vulnerable.  Noble, even, at times.  It prompts me to think decades in the future.

Because I’m going through all of this - all this emotional high and low, all this delight and fear and surprise - with another person, well … it’s not just about being together for the sake of a child.

The child knits us together in a way that almost nothing else can.

We’re not staying together for his sake.  The kind of partnership that we have is a gift that our innocent and trusting child has given to us.

Even on our worst days, when we say good-bye at the front door, our son looks up and prompts, “Now Mommy needs a g’bye kiss, too!”  His absolute confidence that we are a matched set, as inseparable as Henry and his coal car, dismisses a lot of tension, too.

Make no mistake - I loved my husband before we had a child together.  But the idea of a lifelong commitment, regardless of the sacrifice required or adversities endured?

For that, it takes a child.