How an Almost-Divorce Kept Them Together

Do you and Denis still play tennis together? Does he still play “Denis Tennis”?

We still play. I started playing in a league, a women’s doubles league. Denis plays more with a pro and likes to get more of a workout, but he’s still really resistant to the rules. My kids will crack up, especially our son, Jack, who plays tennis really well, much better than us. But it’s always been a joke like that — Denis will still change the rules in the middle of the game.

Even when he’s playing a traditional game of tennis?

Well, like he says it’s not fair because he’s not very good at serving. But him not being good at serving doesn’t mean it’s not fair. If you’re bad at serving, you have to become better at serving!

But no, we play but not as doubles partners. I think that’s common with couples. Because if I’m partnered with my brother-in-law and he makes a mistake, I’m like, “Oh my gosh, don’t worry.” But if I’m with Denis and he misses a shot, I’m like, “What the hell?”

We did reach a point where we started playing a lot of tennis one-on-one, and our marriage was improving, and I was aware of how much we were really pleased when the other did well.

Right — you were playing to extend the game, to keep playing.

And there was something about therapy that wasn’t in the column but should have been, which was that we kept thinking it was obvious what a disaster our marriage was, and our marriage counselor didn’t think so. He thought we actually had an O.K. marriage. He pointed out that we would say things negative about each other, but if he said anything even slightly negative about either of us, we would jump to the other’s defense.

Yeah, for example, I’d say something and the shrink would say, “So you have an inclination to be a little negative.” And Denis would jump in and say, “Negative? No she’s not. I would never describe her as negative.” And the same thing happened with me when the shrink was talking about him.

Source: The New York Times

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