When One of You Is the Bridge to the Place

When one partner is the bridge, the other may do fewer of the early, awkward things that build their own roots.

By Neil Solomon · 3 min read

Picture a couple named Elena and Tom. Tom grew up in the town they now live in. His sister lives down the road. Everyone knows his name. Elena is the guest. People are warm to her, and a little curious, and they pass things to Tom to say.

She loves it. She also notices that she is mostly "Tom's wife" at the market.

What people describe

I read several accounts of couples where one person was the link, and I was struck by how many different feelings came up.

In Japan, a woman who married into a farmhouse life described what some called a goldfish bowl. A house full of eyes, with a mother-in-law at the center. It is told as a profile rather than in her own words, and what I took from it was endurance. She stayed. She found a way to write at home. Another account, from someone who came back to Japan after years away, said home no longer felt certain. Home, to that writer, is wherever the heart can open. A third, more recent, looked at in-laws and curiosity and the odd feeling of being treated as a prize. That one was not about older people, so I only note it for the wary mood.

In the Philippines, a man married for more than forty years to a Filipina wrote tenderly of their life, and of how his wife is sometimes called "the foreigner's wife." He sees the sting in it. She is her own person and the label does not hold her.

In Mongolia, an American by birth wrote of feeling Mongolian at heart. For this person the link to the place had become a belonging of their own.

And in Hong Kong, a British woman wrote about leaving the city where her husband had died. For years her tie to the place had run through him. Once he was gone, she had to ask what was hers.

What stands out to me

The link can be a door. It can also be the only door. When one partner is the bridge, the other may do fewer of the early, awkward things that build their own roots. That is natural. It is also how some people end up as guests for life.

Elena and Tom talked about it once.

"If something happened to me," Tom said, "would you stay?"

"I don't know," Elena said. "I'd like to think I have my own reasons by then."

"Do you?"

"Some. Not enough."

I think that is an honest answer, and a good one to have early.