Did Lincoln Regret Marrying Mary?

[LincolnToddFan]

This is a fascinating subject. In about 100 years Lincoln scholars will still be debating the mysteries of the Abraham Lincoln-Mary Todd relationship and marriage.(Unless their lost letters turn out not to have been destroyed by RTL after all, and are discovered in someone's attic someday!)

The Herndon School of thought insists that she decimated him emotionally and that he made the best of a very tragic situation. The Randall School calls it a great American love story. I think the truth is much, much more complex than either view. Do you all know Charles Strozier's fascinating, thought provoking psychobiography of Abraham Lincoln "Lincoln's Quest For Union"? He writes in depth about how emotionally stunted Lincoln was, about his subtle push/pull encouragement of both distance and intimacy in his personal relationships, his ambivalence, his emotional coolness. This was behavior that of course drove Mary crazy with frustration and jealousy. But she adored the man, truly worshipped him and as much as he was able to do so, I believe he loved her back. He could also control his "child wife" by his paternalistic treatment of her and his very frequent and long absences. That was the way he got his need for both love and distance in the marriage met.

Anyway it was a very complex relationship. They were probably not soulmates. But in a poignant way they filled a need that the other had...Lincoln was her father-lover(Mary herself described him that way in a letter to a close friend after his death) and she was of course his "child wife"...the woman who bedeviled and tormented him, but whom he could also love and indulge and escape from when he needed. Because Abraham Lincoln actually needed an escape route in all his emotional relationships, even from his beloved children.

Did he ever regret marrying her? Who knows? Even married people who love one another can sometimes look back at what if....

Jacqueline Kennedy once said something to the effect that the only two people who know the secrets of a marriage are the two people in it.

She was right.