Marriage
Recognize Her Value
The other day I was looking at my iPhone. As I looked at the many apps that have earned a spot on my home screen, I realized how much they have changed the way I live my life daily. It’s not that I’d be lost without my phone, but my life would be different. I wouldn’t be as efficient or as motivated.
Having a wife does the same thing.
Your wife brings tremendous value to your life. Not in a utilitarian way, but in a practical way.
• She’s a confidant. Your wife is one of the few people in your life that you can truly be safe with. In fact, her role as your confidant is so strong, that in most cases, US law protects your conversations. It can be hard knowing who to trust today. It’s nice knowing that she’s there for you.
• She’s a sounding board. From difficult career decisions, to the daily management of your world, your wife is the perfect sounding board for all of your new ideas. She can help you ignore the bad ones, engage the good ones, and run with the great ones!
• She’s constant. Marriage is forever. She’s not going anywhere.
• She brings joy to your life. As you get to experience the world and life together, your wife is a great source of joy for you. You get to celebrate accomplishments together, and perhaps even create a new life together. Now that’s joy!
• She helps run your household. Running a house on your own is a ton of work. There is cooking, cleaning, laundry and shopping to be done and it takes planning, determination and teamwork to pull it off. Being a bachelor was great, but having someone to share the load with is even better.
Hopefully you find yourself filling the same value in her life!
The most important thing to recognize is that we can’t take our wives for granted. We can’t let the great experience of her bringing value to our lives just wash over us.
Cherish her… and show it!
Chastity in Marriage
The most common misconception of Catholic teaching on sexuality is that once you’re married, you’re allowed to do anything sexual you want. The idea is that before you’re married sex is bad and, as soon as you slip the ring on her finger, anything goes.
The problem with this worldview is that it discounts the fact that chastity in marriage is just as hard as chastity in the single life.
Our sexuality is an integral part of who we are as human persons. We can’t segment it off any more than we can put our intellect in a box. Yet, it is constantly assaulted. As the general morality continues to degrade, we have to be more and more intentional about protecting our chastity.
Infidelity (of thought or action) doesn’t happen in one day. In fact, if you think of it as a chain of events, you get a better understanding of how someone can toss their marriage aside for a fleeting pleasure. It starts innocent, maybe not even with a particular person. Then, the slippery slope leads to the permanent damage of your marriage.
The fight for chastity is different in marriage from the battle when you are single. In the single life, your fight is to preserve your chastity for your future spouse. It’s a single front battle.
In marriage, you have two fronts. The first is protecting your love for your wife and the second is the responsible use of your creative powers. Let’s chat about those for a moment.
• Protecting your love for your wife. While fighting this battle, you’re fighting the temptation of other women. You may be a good looking guy who gets a lot of attention from the fairer sex, or you might find yourself in a situation that is particularly dangerous. In either case, you have to insulate your love appropriately for sharing with you wife.
• The responsible use of your creative powers. We are lucky enough to have been allowed to share in God’s creative powers, which is amazing! We are also called to use them responsibly. As Catholics, it’s our duty to bring into the world the number of children that we are given. This does not mean that we must necessarily have a large family. What this does mean is that, by praying and participating in God’s plan, we can bring into the world the number of children that we can responsibly support without being a burden on society.
The struggle is real. In fact, if your marriage is doing any good in the world or for the Church, you’re a target. We’ve seen a great many highly respected men fall prey to a failure of chastity. So what can we do?
• Guard your eyes. Television shows and movies are getting more and more racy. Consider what you regularly consume in terms of visual media. If it contains a lot of graphic material, knock it off. It’s like your 6th grade math teacher told you about your calculator, “Junk in, junk out.”
• Guard your ears. After about the year 2000, pop music degraded into I’m not sure what. There’s some good stuff out there, but too much of it is trashy. The lyrics are catchy, but those catchy lyrics are about drugs and sex. It doesn’t mean you have to listen to Praise music (although you should give it a shot) or Jazz, but it does mean that if you want to respect your wife and women in general, you should consider which artists you support. By the way, I used to not enjoy praise music, but I love it now. There’s something amazing that happens to your brain and attitude when you listen to music that is all positive.
• Guard your home. Unfortunately, the Internet has brought in a lot of garbage with the tremendous benefit that it’s created in our lives. Install an internet filter and accountability software (my family uses Covenant Eyes). This is for three reasons. First, we know that kids on the Internet are exposed to pornography as young as 8 years old (usually on accident). Ouch. Second, even if it isn’t a problem or temptation for you, you’d be amazed at how much relief this kind of tool can bring. Knowing that you’re not going to accidentally stumble across something inappropriate and that, even if you tried to, you couldn’t takes tremendous power away from Satan. Last, the depth and breadth of the porn industry is incredible. The release of the movie Don Jon in 2013 got a lot of people talking about porn’s role in society. The Internet has made porn more accessible than ever. Pretending that your household is safe is foolish. Don’t be an idiot.
These tips aren’t about being a prude or a loser. If you think that, then you’re the loser. These are the small steps that MEN take in our world today. We take these steps because we reject Satan, and all of his works, and all of his empty promises. We take these steps because we love our wives and we want to be the men that they chose to lead their household.
The path to infidelity is a chain. The smallest mistake, unchecked, can lead quickly to ruin. So be a man and guard your eyes, guard your ears, and guard your home.
Keeping Things Spicy
The institution of marriage is mind-blowing. Two people with two completely different personalities, with different family traditions, come together and promise, usually at a young age, to be faithful and loving to each other all the days of their lives. As an institution comprised of flawed human beings, it’s clear there is something supernatural within the sacrament of marriage.
Relationships are tough. We come into the world as blank slates. As children, we learn about relationships within a family and among friends. As young adults, we learn (and fail!) about romantic relationships. As married people, we learn what a permanent relationship requires.
When you’re young and you’re in a relationship, it can be hard to keep the thing afloat for a week. There are other prospects, you get bored, she’s no longer interested, you are both laking maturity. Yet, when we get married, we’re supposed to keep things spicy for a lifetime.
How?
Marriage is a marathon. That’s for sure. Marathons are not won and lost in the physical preparations, though. Winning the race is all in the mental war. It’s not the lead runner versus the next runner, it’s whether or not the lead runner can overcome the mental battle that keeps trying to get him to quit.
So how do you keep your marriage spicy?
• Keep the focus off of you. While it may seem like a good idea to make everything in the world about you, the truth is that you’re boring. Well, boring to yourself. You know basically everything about yourself. When you focus on your wife, you don’t get so bored. You’ve only known her for a fraction of the time that you’ve known you. There’s plenty to learn!
• Don’t get distracted. It’s easy to be distracted by the beauty around you. Marriage doesn’t somehow change your natural attractions. There are many ways to deal with this issue, and it may take a few of them to do the trick. Just remember, you chose your wife for a reason. So, stick with it!
• Celebrate each day. It’s a challenge to enjoy the newness of each day. Being alert enough to seek out the good in each day can really make a difference. Make each day special in it’s own way.
So keep things spicy, my friend.
Pushing for A Joint Goal
Working in unison with your wife can be a powerful tool. In fact, when you both set your minds to a goal, you can achieve great things together!
I’m a very goal-driven person. I like to know where I’m going. The problem with working on a goal by yourself is that it can be hard to have accountability. You can throw yourself a pity party and give up. I’ve found that when Alison and I are working on a goal together, we get much further than I would than if I was pushing on my own.
Joint goals with your wife give you shared purpose. As you communicate about what you both want in life or in a particular instance, you both start to see the benefits of hitting that goal. There’s several reasons why working on goals with your wife can make you a formidable team.
• There’s a shared vision. When everyone in the car knows where you’re going, some decisions are just made for you. For example, if your goal is to get out of debt, you don’t have to wonder if it’s time to get a new TV or to go on vacation. You both know why you’re sacrificing and it makes it that much easier to say “no.”
• Two is better than one. It can be hard to work on a goal when your wife isn’t on board, especially if she’s against your goal. If your goal is to lose weight and she insists on making doughnuts, cakes, and rich desserts every day, you’re not going to lose an ounce. But, when you work together, you can both make your individual contributions and go the distance.
• It opens communication. When you set a goal together, you both better understand each other’s needs, wants, and desires. Your marriage is strengthened because you’re communicating on a much deeper level than the typical day-to-day “maintenance” communication.
It’s not all roses and butterflies. When you’re working together, you can also encounter complacency together. You can let each other “have a little break,” slack off, and miss the goal big time. You’ll have to find a way to counter complacency, but it will be easier if you both accept that it will happen.
Any goal worth doing will be a challenge. By working with your wife, instead of counter to her, you’ll both achieve goals you never thought possible!
Lightening Her Load
All vocations are a calling to serve others. The single person is called the Church and community. The Priest is called to serve the Parish. The Religious are called to serve their community. The married person is called to serve their spouse and family.
One of the best ways to serve your wife is to lighten her load.
I’ve made it no secret here that one of my love languages is acts of service. I love surprising Alison with a freshly cleaned apartment or a relaxing evening routine. But I don’t reserve my service to occasional overt gestures, usually it’s a part of my daily life.
How we make our wife’s life easier really comes down to one question. What is it that I can do that will improve her life? Here are a few ideas:
• Take care of her car. There’s something about car maintenance (repairs or cleaning) that makes you feel like a man. Perhaps you could step in and keep track of when her car needs an oil change. When the time comes, knock it out! Make cleaning the cars a part of your week. Integrate it into your calendar.
• Deal with those annoying customer service issues. Nothing brings gratuitous profanities closer to my tongue than dealing with the communications companies. We all have issues with our internet, cell phones, billing, you name it. And we all know the companies that provide these services are hopelessly inept. Though it may be a near occasion for sin, you can take that stress on for her. It’s basically like taking a bullet for her.
• Ask her. We’re not mind readers. And if we are, we’re bad at it. There’s nothing wrong with asking her what you can take off her plate. She’ll probably like the fact that you’re asking the question.
Integration is the key to habit change. Put her in the center of your life and you’ll be set.
Dealing with Life’s Major Decisions
We’ve all come to a crossroads. Two paths that certainly have their benefits, but we can only choose one. In our single days the choice might have been hard, but we only had to look to ourselves to make it happen. In the married life, there’s more at stake.
As I was finishing my undergraduate degree at the venerable Franciscan University of Steubenville in the Spring of 2010, I had to decide where I’d spend the first of my working days. I trotted down to Career Services who told me that I should work for the school’s food management company. Since that brilliant plan seemed like a non-starter to me, I had come up with a new plan.
It was in that moment that I realized how lucky I was to be an American. I could move literally anywhere by simply making up my mind. It was a major life decision and one in which my opinion was the only one that mattered.
Fast forward to today, Alison is working on her Residency applications. We are now deciding, as a family, if and where we should move. There are many more factors in play as we consider her career, my career, Benedict’s future home and what our cat Sophia wants to see out the window.
As a couple, you’re going to face decisions that will require some serious thought. They might be a move across town, a completely new career, or starting your own business, or if you’re being called to grow your family! They could also be financial, spiritual, or educational (like where you’re going to send your kiddos to school).
Since these are a when, not an if, it can be helpful if you create a framework for these decisions. Here are a few things to keep in mind.
• Decisions should always be value decisions. When making a choice, you should make them in accordance with your values. If you value adventure, then your decisions should reflect that. If you’re looking for stability for your kids, your decisions should reflect that. If you have a commitment to take care of a family member, your decisions should reflect that.
• If you both don’t agree, then you don’t do anything. Alison and I have taken this approach in most decisions in our life and it is incredible. There are times when we don’t get what we want, but that is quickly outweighed by the peace we feel knowing we don’t have to do something we absolutely don’t want to.
• Keep all options on the table. Options give you flexibility and flexibility is a huge stress reducer. If you don’t get backed into a corner, you are in the driver’s seat. You tell your life what’s going to happen, not the other way around. Negotiate! This can be a lot of fun in your marriage and can make sure that there are no losers at the end of the day!
I’m not going to tell you that communication is important in your marriage because you already know that. But I will say that if you’re not sharing dreams, goals, or desires on a daily basis with your wife, then there will be rough seas when the major decision. If you’re not in sync before the decision presents itself, you may be sunk.
Major decisions will happen. Work on your marriage today so you’re ready to take them on when they knock on your door!
Laying Down Your Life for Her
Marriage was designed to be a reflection of Christ’s love for the Church. Being part of such a union is a big set of shoes to fill. What makes it even harder is that we’re called to lay down our life for our wife.
The concept of laying down my life for my wife in a theoretical or academic setting is easy. I’d like to think that, if it came down to it, I’d have the courage to make that call. My daily life, however, doesn’t reflect that predisposition.
When we are called to love our wives as Christ loved the Church, and to lay our life down for her, that doesn’t just mean the loss of our temporal life. That means our whole life. That means not playing Xbox in the evening if she needs to talk. That means doing chores instead of watching a movie. It means staying home to take care of your sick wife and missing out on those Super Bowl tickets.
I personally believe that if we don’t make the daily, small sacrifices, then if we are even put to the test, we might not pass. Those who are faithful in the small things are trusted with the bigger things.
Take a look at your own life and relationship with your wife. If you’re not laying down your life for her daily, you won’t when it really counts.
Your Vows Aren’t Stagnant
Your wedding is a day, marriage is a lifetime. Those words are so true, but we can easily forget the words that are exchanged. It can be easy to leave the events of the day in that day. To live an authentically Catholic marriage, we must bring the words and prayers of the Nuptial Mass to life.
Most of my pre-wedding knowledge came from popular culture. In most Hollywood movies, the couples write their own vows. Each story seemed to be the same. The man would labor over the vows, trying to make them unforgettable and impactful. It seemed pretty stressful. I was delighted to find that the Church provides two versions of vows to use.
She gives us two choices for a simple reason. Your wedding vows aren’t nice things to say to your wife. They aren’t supposed to be engineered to bring a single tear to the eye of the Maid of Honor. They’re designed to be the roadmap for your marriage. No matter where you go, or what you do, your vows are the lighthouse. They guide your decisions. They guide your life.
The Church provides the vows because they adequately reflect the Church’s understanding of what marriage is. They spell out clearly the Church’s understanding of the married life and the role of husband and wife.
The vows are promises. They are beautiful. They are final.
The great thing about the vows is that you can use them as a plumb line. In any situation in your married life, when you reach a decision point, you can reference your vows and know if you are out of bounds or not. It’s wonderful.
The vows are certainly words that we speak, but they’re intended to be brought to life. When I promised to take care of Alison in good times and in bad, I’m supposed to translate that into action. When we’re flat broke, I’m still there for her. When we’re rich beyond our wildest dreams, our marriage hasn’t changed.
It’s a refreshingly absolute promise in this world of flakiness.
The vows are one of the critical elements of the Nuptial Mass, but they’re intended to have a much greater use than to just confer the Sacrament.
Couple Friends
The relationship between a husband and wife is both exclusive and complete. By its design, it can meet almost all of the emotional needs of the spouses, but that can be difficult.
One of the challenges for young people is their first exclusive dating relationship.
A major challenge for young people in their first exclusive dating relationship is managing that exclusivity.
The young couple is enthralled with each other and find more and more of their emotional needs met in their relationship. A great danger is for the couple to segregate themselves from their friends. The danger comes when they lose sight of their healthy need to engage in relationships outside of their dating relationship. Marriage can have a similar pull.
Being a husband, you should find the vast majority of your personal fulfillment in your wife and the activities that you enjoy together. You share a life with this woman, you share everything. From the moment you wake up until the moment you go to sleep, you are living in total, complete connectedness. This is even more true if you are raising children together. Your life is full of communication and connection.
While your wife is able to meet most of your needs, and she, yours, it is wise to actively seek out other couple friends. Having relationships with people in a similar state in life can be a tremendous benefit to your marriage and it can also provide many mutual benefits.
First, you have a sounding board. When you have a difficultly at work, you probably turn to your wife to see if you are wrong. When you and your wife have a disagreement, her objectivity could be called into question. If you have some really close couple friends, you could bring them in and get some outside advice. They might have also been in a similar quarrel and could share some tips as to how to successful navigate the situation.
Next, they can provide quality relational interactions. If you’ve ever babysat for a young child, you know just how draining giving your full attention to a single person can be. With couple friends, you don’t have to overwhelm your wife with your emotional needs. Perhaps one of your needs is to go to a sports game or watch a war movie. If you have great couple friends, you can arrange for the husbands to hang out and the wives to hang out and do something they each enjoy.
Finally, good couple friends can provide opportunities to share the joys and challenges of the married life with. Being married is hard, especially being happily married. You may find people trying to pull you down because they are envious. Having great couple friends can reaffirm the good of marriage and remind you that there’s nothing wrong with living an authentically Catholic marriage.
In order to find good couple friends, you must be proactive. Engage in Church activities and local young adult outings. When you find them, hold on tight. You’ll both be glad that you did.
Saying Sorry
Masculine pride will tell you that apologies are weakness. It will tell you that the person who apologizes first, loses. Masculine pride has also gotten you into a few tight spots before, hasn’t it?
My wife and I learned something very important early in our marriage. We’re bad at fighting. I would withdraw because I wouldn’t want to make her more mad. She’d shut down because she needed more time to think. What we had was a failure to communicate. Over time, we’ve gotten better. Thankfully, I learned a few things along the way.
The biggest threat to your marriage doesn’t come from the outside. It doesn’t come from her catty cousin or your bumbling friends. It comes from unresolved arguments. Like a festering untreated wound, it only causes more and more marital discord. When you refuse to treat the wound, you let it get out of hand. It will completely destroy your marital peace.
By time you get to the point of an argument where you assign blame, it’s usually pretty deep into the discussion. You may be in so thick of a forest that you can’t really remember what this fight is all about. Even if you aren’t the original person at fault, you probably hurt your wife by mishandling the process. After all, is there really a correct way to handle a fight?
The important thing to know about apologies is that they are almost like ice breakers. When one side concedes fault, it makes it easier for the other party. Then they can feel secure enough to apologize and the situation can be resolved. I’m not saying that men are always wrong, but I am saying that we don’t have to peacock with our wife. We can lead well by readily acknowledging that at some point in the process, we injured her, though we didn’t want to.
Most importantly, apologies can’t be fake. Don’t say “I’m sorry” to just resolve the fight. It won’t work. Trust me.
Marriage is give and take. We can give her a great gift by taking responsibility first.