Re: Re: Re: Raising a family while being a musician


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Posted by Jay Bertolet on May 23, 2001 at 11:08:13:

In Reply to: Re: Re: Raising a family while being a musician posted by Matt on May 23, 2001 at 08:12:06:

The original post was asking about the possibility of having a serious relationship with a non-musician. I was only confirming that it is possible and my marriage is one such case. In fact, my first serious teacher advised me never to marry another musician. He was married to a harpist and he told me that being married to a non-musician was preferable to marrying a musician. I think you bring up some very good points about the inherent competitive issues and the sometimes unbalanced rates of success. There are quite a few married couples in the orchestra here and they have differing degrees of success and failure. At least two such marriages here have crashed and burned really hard. But there are just as many others that haven't. I still say it boils down to your committment to each other. It is easier to shelve the competitive juices when you think of each other's successes as "for the team" rather than individual accomplishments. That's how I've done it in the past in relationships with other musicians. Of course, none of those panned out into marriage so I'm not really qualified to say if my approach would have worked in that realm. The issue of understanding the craft is a very important one as well. I've been blessed with a loving wife who was a decent flute player and vocalist at one time. She's no longer a musician (she has never and will never play for me because she says I am an unbelievably critical listener) but she still has a strong affection for classical music and comes to many of the FPO's concerts. She's also a very adept listener and I ask her comments frequently about what she heard from the audience side at one of our concerts and the advice is always invaluable.

I guess the bottom line is the level of understanding you have in a relationship. I find that in really good relationships, both partners go the extra mile to fully understand and appreciate what the other does. That level of care and committment speaks for itself.

My opinion for what it's worth...


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