Walking home from the dentist’s office mid-morning, a temporary crown atop my molar, I considered listening to a library audiobook but opened iTunes instead. The Bryan Ferry album that played during my last stroll around the neighborhood automatically appeared, so I hit play on “Slave to Love” and smiled (to the extent that’s possible with a still-numbed face) at its best and truest lyric: “To need a woman/You’ve got to know/How the strong get weak/And the rich get poor.”
It’s not a lesson everyone learns, but once you do it’s damn near impossible to forget. The Bryan Ferry test, as I call it, measures whether a newly single person has figured out “how the strong get weak and the rich get poor” post-breakup. If they haven’t, there’s little point in attempting a reconciliation; someone incapable of humbling himself for love can’t humble himself for anything else.* As lame as it sounds, I find it useful in assessing the dissolutions of most long-term relationships and even apply it to my marriage, which remains intact.
If we’re honest with ourselves, Crankenstein and I never needed each other in the ways Ferry describes. Even if we didn’t quite realize it then, we shared more of a companionate love from the start. In retrospect, I think she understood that with more clarity than I did, and despite my best efforts I’m resentful about it — and never more so than during these last few years, as I began to realize with some finality that my prime was probably behind me, spent with someone more in love with the stability our relationship offered than she’d ever been with me.
When I question, as I sometimes do, whether a romantic separation would change much of anything between us, I’ve lately thought of Tom, the first of my younger two sisters, who failed the Ferry test. Isn’t that how every reckless decision to end, or jeopardize, a long-term relationship begins, with specious ‘Would anything really change?’ self-rationalizations? I can see very clearly the many lies Tom told herself to justify taking her ex for granted. What if my vision’s cloudier when squinting at my own marriage?
Tom’s inevitable buyer’s remorse about her fling materialized much faster than expected — I assumed it would take a few months, but it happened within mere weeks. What she didn’t see coming, even though we’d discussed this hazard several times after Youngest Sister announced her separation, was the speed with which her ex would move on. “Carly Simon strikes again,” I think whenever this, a common prophecy foretold by a brassy ’80s cover of Joe Tex’s “Hold What You’ve Got,” happens.
Watching Tom move back in with our parents in her thirties, stunned the giant wrecking ball she aimed at her former partner swung right back at her, I try to imagine what might happen if Crankenstein and I separated. It wouldn’t be anywhere near as acrimonious, or so we tell ourselves, since no one else would be involved. But we made the biggest promises to each other that anyone can possibly make. Maybe Fran Drescher and Peter Marc Jacobson (or Gwyneth Paltrow and Chris Martin) could renege on their vows and walk away friends, but who’s to say we’d be so forgiving when the dust settles?
We’ve watched several marriages crumble this year, some seemingly strong and others strained. With the possible exception of our brother-in-law, who appears to have truly humbled himself in an effort to hold onto Youngest Sister, I’m not sure any of those parties would pass the Ferry test.** Despite our mutual fondness and general aptitude for test-taking, I’m not even convinced Crankenstein and I would pass if answering solely about each other.
* That isn’t to say I endorse prostrating yourself before undeserving jerks. We can debate whether everyone is worthy of love in a general holding-hands-around-the-campfire Kumbaya sense, but not everyone is worthy of your love and devotion.
** Tom would still flunk it because the roots of her regret are currently as shallow as her reasons for straying. That might change in time.