Church & Culture
Marriage is Not Committed Friendship
Marriage is a lot of things. It is painful, it is difficult, it is challenging. It is joyful, it is fulfilling, it is complete. Marriage is enduring, it is final.
Marriage is not committed friendship.
When a man and a woman, enter into the Marital Covenant, they are doing more than telling their friends that they kinda think they’ll be BFF. They are fully and completely giving themselves to their spouse. They are sacrificing their individual identities for a new identity.
The myth of today is that Marriage isn’t anything special, it is just committed friendship. A committed friendship that can be broken at any time for any reason. In the United States, our legal code calls that “no fault divorce.” Lazy. Immature.
Marriage is, of course, based on a relationship, on a friendship of sorts. However, calling Marriage a different kind of friendship cheapens it. It is an indissoluble bond. Nothing can ever break it. Not even changing your mind (sarcasm)!
Marriage is the bedrock of the family. The children find their safety, nourishment, and strength in the marital relationship. It is because of the marriage that they have this place of safety. Marriage frees a husband and wife to be themselves and to sacrifice for their family. It is a life-giving relationship.
Committed friendship can’t be life-giving. The reason is simple. In a friendship, no matter how committed or deep, at the end of the day, you are still an individual. You are still looking out for your best interests. In a Marriage, you guard the interests of your spouse and children. If your wife is happy, odds are you will be too!
Marriage is a mystery.
How a man and woman can be joined together, for life, is something that is beyond our human intellect. People change over time, personalities shift, and yet, marriages endure.
That is something worth thinking about.
Love Contracts
I recently came across an article about a new trend in marriages. It is called a “love contract.”
This is different than a pre-nuptial agreement. This is a document that people use to plan their marriages.
Essentially, both spouses decide what their demands are in their marriage as they relate to their spouse’s behavior. For example, they might say that a spouse can’t weigh over a certain limit or they must spend so many “quality” minutes together daily.
There is one small problem. These “contracts” aren’t done out of love. They’re done out of selfishness.
How can anyone presume to stipulate another person’s behavior? Further, if you are so committed to someone to pledge your love and worldly possessions to them, why would you immediately try to start controlling their behavior?
There is a prevalent belief among nearly-weds that they are going to be able to “change” their spouse. BREAKING: It’s not going to happen.
Your wife is who she is. If you don’t like the total package, then you probably shouldn’t be marrying her.
Entering into your marriage with this extreme selfishness is beyond reckless. You aren’t setting your marriage up for failure, you’re guaranteeing it.
Getting married requires a certain level of maturity. You promise to love your spouse for all the days of your life. Plus, there is a high likelihood that you will raise a family with her.
And yet, people still try to make the world revolve around them.
If you think you need a pre-nuptial agreement to get married, you don’t love her and you’re too immature to get married. If you need a love contract before you’ll commit, you’re not a man. You’re a loser.
The role of husband is for men. Real men. Men who know that their wife and their family comes before them.
Love contracts? Give me a break.
Teaching Healthy Marriage
Growing up, I received most of my education from Catholic schools, thanks to the sacrifice of my parents. Each year, we would celebrate Vocations Week and have guest speakers come in and talk about vocations.
There was only one problem.
In 10 years, I never heard from a married couple. Yes, we do have a shortage of Priests and Religious, and we do need to invite young people to consider the call. However, we need to also recognize that the majority of Catholics are called to the Married Life.
It is plain to see that, even in the Catholic Church, we have another type of vocations crisis. Our divorce rate is almost even with the general population. We are not getting the message out about the importance and the reality of the married life.
As a Church, we need to look at how we are teaching about marriage. We need to look at the message that we are sending. As married people, much like Priests and Religious, we need to radiate joy. How can we not?
How can we not be joyous that we found the one single person, out of all of human history, that is our perfectly suited mate? That is not to say that they always appear to us as our perfect mate, but we must acknowledge Divine Providence. Two completely different lives converging in the same place at the same point in time cannot be anything but Providence.
We must refocus our efforts in Vocational Instruction. Parents must take the lead as the prime educators. We must be talking to all youth, at appropriate levels, about vocations. When kids are “playing Mass,” they are open to hearing about the goods of a vocation to the Priesthood or Religious Life. When they are “playing House,” they are open to hearing about the goods of a vocation to the Married Life.
Choosing one’s vocation in life, discerning the call, is enormously difficult. I remember driving with my wife one day and saying, “I’m so glad that I finally know what my vocation is in life.” It is true, the mystery and pressure were gone. I had found the answer.
We must support our young people in their discernment and we must take every opportunity to give them quality information that they might choose well.
Cohabitation: Not A Test Drive
When my wife and I got engaged, we were living in two different cities. She was studying in Detroit and I was working in Pittsburgh. We got engaged at a crossroads of her medical school career in which she had to move. When my transfer at work was approved, people started asking questions about our wedding and life plans. Invariably they assumed that since we were moving to a new city, a few months before our wedding, we’d go ahead and move in together. False.
It is indisputable, even with just my anecdotal evidence, that cohabitation is a social norm, a social expectation before a couple gets married. The oldest analogy that I can think of is that, “You wouldn’t buy a car without test driving it.” For most, that seems like a logical argument, and they follow it. Yet, even though I got a “C” in Logic, I have gained enough knowledge of logic to know that it simply does not follow. Let’s play with the analogy for a bit though.
When you test drive a car, you don’t own it. In fact, you have no skin in the game at all. Before buying a car, you might even “test drive” dozen of cars. At the end of the day, you end up not buying any of them. When you are on a test drive, you do not treat the car like you own it. You are overly careful, making sure to not get a scratch on it. You, after all, don’t want the guy from the dealership in the car with you to get upset.
If you’re driving and then engine quits or you get a flat tire, what do you do? You hand the keys back to the dealer and walk away. You aren’t committed to the car. You didn’t pay the taxes and registration, you haven’t paid any insurance towards it, no gas, no repairs. It isn’t yours.
As soon as you buy a car, however, you treat it completely different. Suddenly, you are much more yourself with the car. You drive it in a way that is comfortable to you, and you take care of it. You take risks, and some don’t pay off. Then any damage comes out of your pocket, not to mention if you total it and you financed the car, you’ll be making payments on a car that doesn’t exist any more. Do you see the problem?
Cohabitation is much the same. You think it will prepare you for marriage, you think this is the way to get a sneak preview, but cohabitation can’t do any of those things. The fact is, any adverse action you take could end the relationship, and you don’t want that to happen. So, you defensively put up a false front, you “walk on egg shells,” you make sure you don’t get a scratch on the relationship. Then, when you do get married, you’re more comfortable and you become you again. The only problem is, since you lived together, you gave your fiancé/fiancee the wrong impression of what living with you would be like. You leave a mess, chew with your mouth open, and never help with the shopping. Yet, the fake you is the reason why your fiancé/fiancee decided to tie the knot in the first place.
The sad fact is, there is no experience you can have that will fully prepare you for the covenant of Marriage. You can pull together all of the elements that you think make a marriage (I.e. living together, paying household expenses together), but you cannot factor in a substitute to the beautiful finality of the Marriage Covenant. All you are doing is setting the wrong expectation.
If my anecdotal evidence is not enough to convince you, check out this article from ZENIT based on a study published in 2005 by the Vanier Institute of the Family.
Lastly, you’re forgetting one thing when you move in together before marriage; you lose an amazing experience. One of the best parts of my Wedding Day was bringing my new Bride under my roof. It was something that words cannot describe. There was great symbolism of bringing her into our new home. It communicated that she was now under my protection. It was something in life that is truly worth experiencing. Believe it or not, the wait made it that much sweeter.
Do not rely on the illusion of cohabitation as a necessary preparation for marriage. There is no substitute. Instead, pray, read, study, and grow in love, and let the grace of the Sacrament be your strength.
Not for the Comfortable
Catholics tend to each have their own flare for practicing their faith. Thankfully, my wife and I found a parish near our home that fits with ours. We were not so lucky on Ash Wednesday.
We had planned on going to the evening Mass at our parish together at 6:30pm. By 4pm, we were both done with work and home. We decided that we couldn’t wait until 7:30pm for dinner. (Something about fasting?) We scoured the internet and found an earlier Mass near us.
When we were trying to find a parish for us, we “interviewed” several parishes. The parish that we ended up at for Ash Wednesday didn’t make the cut. Our experience on that day reminded us why.
The community was very lax. The priest didn’t have a seat of honor. He sat in a row of choir chairs in front of the first pew. Jesus had a cute corner, tucked away on the side. While 25% of the pews were remotely oriented in His direction, at least a third were oriented away from Him. Every cross that had Jesus on it had the Resurrected Christ. The only reverencing the Altar got was at the entrance and recessional processions. People were going up to Communion with their hands in the pockets of their jeans.
Then it hit me. How could anyone expect respect from a community where Catholicism is so easy? There was no suffering. Christ wasn’t bleeding on the Cross after horrific torture. He was the Buddy Jesus. There was no seat of honor for the priest in persona Christi. Everything was so sterile. It was easy.
People respect people and organizations that stand for something. When you challenge individuals, they rise to the occasion. Look to the martyrs for that. When you sanitize faith, when you make it easy, it doesn’t inspire people to do much of anything. We have an innate desire to be a part of something bigger than ourselves. We innately know that anything hard must be worth doing.
We sanitize marriage, too. We make it easy. A lot of marriage prep courses are a joke. We use “forgiveness” as a pass to do whatever we want. We define it however we want. We let others define it however they want.
The problem is, like Catholicism, marriage isn’t easy. Marriage is war. It’s not a spouse versus spouse war. It is a spouse versus the world war. You have to fight, claw, and defend your marriage. If you don’t have the heart of a fighter, if you won’t take a beating for what you love, then don’t get married.
We all lose battles. The greatest generals lose battles. St. Peter lost a battle. The difference between St. Peter and Judas? St. Peter won the war. He didn’t quit. He took the loss, got up, and kept fighting.
Marriage isn’t for the meek. It isn’t for the fainthearted. It is not for the comfortable. It isn’t easy. It isn’t cozy. It isn’t convenient.
It is worth it.