Exposing Three Marriage Myths
I recently performed the wedding ceremony for my son Alexander and his fiance Julia. I did some heart-searching and reflecting about what I’ve seen with successful and unsuccessful marriages over the years, and tried to share that in the following message.
Research shows that the relationship with your spouse has a huge effect on the quality of your life … and as parents, one of the hopes we have for our kids is that they would have a good marriage.
Of course we hope to see marriages that last … but that’s a pretty low bar. The “success” we desire for our kids is not simply that they’d have marriages that endure, but marriages that thrive.
There are three myths about marriage today that are really destructive. Believing these myths prevents us from doing what needs to be done to build healthy relationships, and can justify our decision to jettison these relationships when things get hard. Here are the three myths people believe about marriage that get them into trouble:
Myth 1 — That a good marriage shouldn’t require a lot of maintenance
Maintenance has gotten a bad rap. We don’t think that good relationships should need maintenance. If somebody is difficult to get along with, we call them “high maintenance.” In marriage, many people assume that if they marry the right person, then the relationship should stay strong and healthy without a lot of maintenance. They assume that as time goes by, a good relationship will just stay strong.
It doesn’t work that way. GK Chesterton once said that “The fundamental flaw of conservatism is believing that if you leave a white picket fence alone, it will stay white.” We believe this about marriages too. We think that if we don’t do anything to “mess with,” tune up, or re-invigorate something, that it will continue on as is.
But that’s wrong. If you want your white fence to stay white over time, you’ll have to clean it periodically, and re-paint it every few years.
Most people are well aware of the need for maintaining their cars and trucks. Most people are aware of the need for maintaining the health of their physical bodies. Or their homes. Or their businesses. They know that if they don’t, they’ll pay the price.
Isn’t it ironic that people think nothing of spending large amounts of time, energy, and money maintaining physical things, like their cars — things that will last them a few years, and will bring them only a marginal sense of joy and satisfaction — while ignoring the need to maintain THE ONE keystone relationship that brings joy, stability, and happiness to life?
All relationships — especially marriages — take time and energy to maintain. Life happens. We do things that our partner misunderstands, or gets hurt by. Stressful things happen in our lives that pull us apart. Other people, our work, or outside commitments come between us, challenging the health of our relationships.
Marriages are like gardens. They can be beautiful, but if not actively maintained, they will deteriorate. It doesn’t matter how great the soil is, or how beautiful and sturdy the plants are … over time things will change.
Imagine you were given a beautiful garden, but did nothing to it. Over time, weeds would crop up, the plants would grow in unhealthy and destructive ways, and over time, the fruits and flowers would diminish, and the beauty would fade.
That’s how it is with marriage.
Some people find that the joy and intimacy they have with each other is at its peak on the day of their wedding. As the years of marriage go by, that joy and intimacy deteriorates. The quality of their relationship is at its height on the day of the wedding, and goes downhill from there.
It doesn’t have to be that way. But it WILL be that way if you treat it like the garden I described above … and just let it go.
What if I told you that its possible — and many people find this to be the case — that the quality of joy and intimacy could get BETTER over the years of your marriage? It absolutely can, and frequently does, for people who treat their marriage like a garden.
Maintaining a marriage requires the willingness to spend time and energy to building it, and paying attention to things that threaten it. It also sometimes requires spending money on it … money for vacations, time together, expert help / consultants, child care for date nights, etc.
MYTH 2 — That marriage is good for you because it makes your life happier and easier
Most people think that marriage — assuming it’s with the right person — makes our life “better” … and by better, they mean “happier.” It helps us become better people. We are less lonely, because we have a companion. We are stronger and safer, because we have someone to help us. Our life is better, because we have love, and that love affirms us, and gives us joy and happiness … a refuge from the harsh world.
Hopefully a good marriage is all that … but the way it helps us and makes us grow is different than we sometimes assume.
A marriage is not like a Jacuzzi … a marriage is like a fire.
Any intimate relationship will have an edge to it. We will find ourselves sometimes affirmed by our partner, but also challenged, frustrated, and disappointed.
An important way marriage helps us, and makes our life better, is that it forces us to change and grow. And this pretty much always happens in the context of pain, disappointment, and frustration.
When I say marriage is like a fire, I don’t mean a destructive fire that wrecks everything in its path. Hopefully that’s not what happens. I’m thinking of fire, in the old-school sense of the term: the fire that’s used to reshape and purify things. When metal-workers put objects in the fire, the heat makes them malleable, and allows them to be re-shaped. Hard edges can be smoothed over, bends can be straightened.
Or when a goldsmith puts ore in the fire, it burns away all the impurities, so that what is left is pure, valuable gold.
That’s what marriages are, and that’s why they help us so much. They help us not simply because they make life more comfortable and fun. They help us because they challenge us, and force us to let go of our childishness, selfishness and narcissism; along with the codependency and manipulation that keep us from being honest about what we really want and need.
Think of it this way — your spouse is the person God brought into your life because this person is what you require to grow to the next level.
The writer of Ecclesiastes puts it this way: “two are better than one.” Good couples are better together … they bring the good out of each other … and part of how they do that is through clashes and misunderstandings and hurt feelings, followed by deep reflection, difficult conversations, and changes in communication patterns and behavior.
Couples that have good, long term marriages are better because of those marriages … and those marriages are like fire that burns away the dross.
MYTH 3 — That a good marriage is the product of just two people
Many people think that a good marriage is the product of just two people: the husband and wife. “It takes two.” “It’s just you and me babe.” “You and me against the world.”
But this is a dangerous myth.
It takes more than two to make a good marriage. It takes a community. It takes extended family, friends, and sometimes helpers, like counselors and coaches.
People used to understand this. For eons, marriage and child-rearing happened in the context of close-knit communities. Couples went through the ups and downs of life and relationship surrounded by a tribe of supportive family members and friends. New parents had an abundance of help with child care and child raising.
Of course it was not all perfect: sometimes these extended families were dysfunctional, and sometimes these communities or tribes were unhealthy and oppressive. But at least they were there … and by being there, they helped the couples in them.
Marriages in our time are suffering because people are cut off from friends and family, and wind up putting too much pressure on each other. Partners look to their spouse to be the sole emotional support and parenting partner. Nobody can do that! We need others: friends and family members we can vent to, have fun and blow off steam with.
By the way, it’s incumbent on us friends and family to be genuinely supportive. This means that we must be honest as well as compassionate with you when you’re going through hard times. Being a supportive friend doesn’t mean that we always take your side and thus enable you.
A good friend is someone who will tell you the truth, not simply commiserate with you about how selfish and unreasonable your spouse is being.
Friends don’t let friends live in delusion.
Sometimes the best thing our friends and family can do for us is to lovingly tell us that we — not our spouse — are the ones being unreasonable, selfish, or crazy.
One more thing …
Finally, I need to add one more part of this “more than just the two of us” myth. Good marriages need God. One of the fundamental teachings of the Christian tradition is that when we come to faith, the Holy Spirit ignites the divine spark within us. This is the divine spark that so many people talk about, and so few people understand. The Spirit of God within us softens our hearts, makes us more loving, patient, and compassionate.
If that Spirit of God is alive and predominant in us, it allows us to function in more healthy and loving ways, and makes our marriages so much better. Not only that, but this faith journey supports us in the process of burning away the parts of our character that create dysfunction in relationships — things like selfishness, resentment, impatience, contempt, rage, dishonesty, etc.
I want to close this by saying once again that the goal here is not just a marriage that survives and lasts a long time. Almost anybody can do that, if they are supremely committed to hang in there (which often happens when people feel like they don’t have other options).
I’m talking about marriage that is long, but also GOOD. One that gets better over time, even in the midst of the inevitable ups and downs that all relationships encounter. A marriage that thrives, that makes life better, and makes you better, because you are together.
This is my wish for you, my hope for you, and my prayer for you.
