Our culture lied to me about marriage
And you should know the truth
Our culture lied to me about marriage, and it’s lying to you as well.
Our culture is leading us to believe that marriage is where your sex life goes to die, when you give up on your hopes and dreams, and a pit that you fall in to — eternally trapped with your partner until you die or subsequently divorce.
This distorted and unrealistic outlook on marriage might be the reason as to why we have a near 50% divorce rate in America in 2016.
We set unrealistic expectations that guide and simultaneously distort our view of marriage before it’s even started. The moment something starts going sour in your marriage it makes it seem as though our culture was right and that we really messed up, until eventually the obvious answer is a divorce.
I won’t act for a moment like I’m an expert on marriage, as I only got married in February of 2016 however it didn’t take long for me to understand how wrong and outright poisonous our culture’s portrayal of marriage actually is.
I could go into the religious aspects of marriage, and the history of marriage, the oppressive history in marriage, and of course the same-sex side of marriage, but I don’t think those are honestly important to what marriage does to a relationship at its core.
I want to answer the honest questions that I think our culture lies about in regard to marriage, and the true beauty of it that we shouldn’t take for granted:
How do you know she’s the one?
I decided to get married to my wife when I realized that I would rather spend my life with this woman than any other in the world. I have not met every woman in the world, but I could not imagine one more perfect for me than this one — and at the point of that decision every day that I was not married to this woman and did not have my full commitment to this woman I would not be whole.
I had many people ask me why I decided to get married, or how I knew that “she was the one” and to be honest, that’s an impossible question to answer.
There are things we disagree on, there are things that she does that I had a hard time with, and there are certainly things that I do that probably make her blood boil — mathematically you might be able to find someone who is a .1% better match for her than me on paper, but no one will feel right after having been with me, and that’s the same for me with her.
What if they do things that annoy you and you can’t escape them?
Before we were married, and even when we were engaged, there would be times that I would find dishes around the house and get annoyed that she didn’t put them in the dishwasher, I would have an internal monologue saying “Is it really that hard to do this? Why do I always have to clean things up?”
Now that we’re married I haven’t felt this literally once.
There is a perspective shift when you become married that you stop caring about your own personal struggles as much, and you start looking towards how you can collectively be better. How can you bring your strengths together to get a great mutual benefit. You also become less selfish, because with a commitment comes a certain level of ownership in your role of the relationship. You stop saying “I hate having to do this” and start thinking “This isn’t such a big deal.”
The problem with our culture in this regard is that we simply want things to be too easy sometimes. We don’t want to benefit others, we want our own needs met as fast and as easily as possible. That’s one reason we run rampant with dating apps that are really just meant to hook up with people so that you can jump from one need met to the next. It’s not what they should be used for but to be honest, that’s what they are used for.
We don’t think enough in our culture about the long-term and how we can help become a more cohesive and helpful body, rather than a broken splinter of need and want.
When you buy in to helping the other, you feel rewarded for your effort and thus want to do more.
But now you only get to be with her for the rest of your life..
I’m lucky to be able to have her for the rest of my life. I don’t need to have a different woman every weekend to feel fulfilled, I would rather have one woman who knows every detail about me, who loves me despite my darker side, and who can help me become a better person — than someone who will know me for a moment and then inevitably leave when I don’t bring down my walls.
I would rather (to be blatantly honest) have someone who knows what I like, so I don’t even have to say it later on in life — rather than having to delve in to my every want and need as I go from person to person.
I would rather have one person to invest my love, time, and value into rather than a number of people that I have to prove my love to over and over again.
We need to stop thinking about it as being trapped with one person for the rest of your life, and start thinking of it as a privilege to always have someone for the rest of your life.
If you’re not excited about these prospects with the person you’re with, then you probably shouldn’t marry them in the first place. If you can’t be honest with yourself about what you want, you can’t be honest with the person you’re with. Find that out first before wasting your time, and that of others.
What’s so special about marriage though? I already love this person.
There are a few things that happen when you actually get married, and officially dedicate yourself for that person forever that are hard to honestly explain.
There is a certain warmness and excitement that you get that no one really talks about. We act as though (and specifically during bachelor parties) that you’re marching to your inevitable death as a man when you stand under the alter and pledge your life away.
This poisons what you should honestly experience, which is a high unlike any other.
It comes from knowing that someone is dedicated to doing the best they can for you every day, and knowing that you have someone to dedicate what you do to every day. That you gained an even higher purpose than just yourself, and having that re-affirmed you gain a certain level of responsibility that makes you hungry to prove your worth, to add to your own value to better your life for you and your spouse, and to build the best life you can together.
It’s an extremely exciting feeling, and one that I don’t think you can get by just loving someone without the declaration of dedication that comes with getting married. I never thought I could love my wife as much as I already did before our wedding day, until the day after our wedding day.
It’s not closing the door on your dreams, it’s opening the door to your potential.
Our culture lied to me about marriage. They said I would probably be divorced in a year (statistically), that I wouldn’t have the sex life I wanted, that I would be broke, fat, miserable, and probably become an alcoholic.
I’m happier than I’ve ever been, I’m more driven than I’ve ever been, I have more money than I’ve ever had, my sex life isn’t any of your business (but it’s great), I’m in great shape, and I barely drink.
Kids are the next journey, and I’m excited to see how wrong our culture is about parenting as well.
Experience it for yourself, gauge your own understanding, be humble before the ones you love, and appreciate who you have the blessing of being with.
Marriage is a great and beautiful thing.
