Stop Joking About Marriage
A few weeks ago, I was getting my hair cut. The barber asked what I did, and I told him that I’m a writer and that I write about Christian marriage. The resulting conversation was about his experience of the married life and the times when he really screwed up. I enjoyed our conversation, but I was a bit uncomfortable with the jokes that he was sharing. I love humor and use it in almost every situation, but, in my opinion, jokes about marriage tend to be more damaging than funny.
Humor is a good thing and it’s essential for a happy life. It’s important for us to be able to laugh at ourselves and to find the bright spots in any situation. Bringing levity to serious situations can help us make it through the day. At the same time, humor tends to influence beliefs. A large segment of the young adult demographic get their news solely from satire TV shows. While comedians can put a fun spin on the day’s stories, if you only get your news from these types of programs, your view of the world is seriously distorted. Without any conflicting information, you might believe that the jokes made about politics, religion, or any other topic covered are fact. Jokes about marriage are potentially just as damaging.
It’s wrong to share jokes that falsely portray marriage. Consider the audience of these jokes; they’re usually kids or unwed adults. Without perspective, like those who get their news solely from satire, these audiences will form poor opinions about the married life or how marriage works based on the lie of the joke. Even worse, marriage jokes tend to either make your wife look bad or make you look spineless. The hyperbole of these jokes is what’s incredibly damaging. You aren’t “always broke,” your wife isn’t “always right,” and she isn’t spending all of “your” money. These jokes aren’t funny, they’re thoughtless.
There’s plenty to joke about in the married life that doesn’t perpetuate false notions. We can laugh about mistakes, awkward situations, burnt dinners or any other number of things. However, when you cross the line into mocking relational dynamics or about aspects that are categorically false, especially to audiences with no alternative information, you do a real disservice to your marriage and to the institution.
Humor is a great thing, but like any other form of verbal communication, think before you speak.
Nip Problems in the Bud
We all have a bit of a flair for the dramatic. While we may despise personal conflict, we’re a bit partial to the excitement and the unknown that the drama incites. There are endless reality TV shows based solely on the generation of drama. Drama is entertaining.
It certainly may be entertaining on TV, but drama in your marriage is poison. Drama, by its very nature, turns people against one another. It demands that someone be blamed, that the fault rests with a single person and that retaliation is justified. The problem is that without a dose of maturity, drama offers no exit plan. Instead, it promotes a cycle of blame, mistrust, and broken relationship. Marriages can be quickly degraded if drama is allowed to take root. The best weapons against drama are transparency and open communication.
Even the most compatible marital partners will have conflict. There’s no getting around the fact that despite numerous areas of similarity, you are both two different people. Not only is it unrealistic to expect to have a no conflict marriage, it can set inappropriate expectations. Life happens. Instead of aiming for an impossible “no conflict marriage,” you should work together to foster a “low conflict marriage.” Not only will you both be more satisfied in your relationship, your kids will also have a healthier, more stable childhood. This low conflict marriage can be achieved by having open communication in your relationship. Open communication fosters a community of love and respect where everyone feels safe expressing their feelings and working them out. It’s only when spouses don’t share their thoughts, feelings, and emotions on a particular topic that drama is able to take root.
Your best offense against drama and the destruction it can bring into your relationship is to keep yourself from going to dark places in your mind. Whenever I’m in conflict, be it with a company or an individual, I play out various scenarios in my mind. In these scenarios, I stage mock arguments and see if I can determine which argument is the strongest. In most cases, the conflict in my mind leads to endless escalation. When the conversations play out in the real world, they tend to be much milder and, frankly, go better. Our minds are creative, but if we don’t keep them in check, they’ll gain too great of a role in our decision making process. Express yourself in conversations and be bold enough to share your feelings, but never retreat into the darkness of your mind. You’ll find that your anger and resentment will grow to unhealthy levels.
The best approach to maintaining a low stress marriage is to manage conflict immediately. Never let it go on for days, festering, eating away at the fringes of your marital relationship. Have the courage to nip problems in the bud by talking openly and honestly with your wife and working through your problems instead of running away from them.
Even Jesus was Tempted
I hate temptation. It’s always so exciting and alluring, especially if I give it any attention at all. All temptation needs is a moment of consideration and, like a fish going after the bait, it’s got me hooked. Not every fish ends up in the boat, however. We have innumerable chances to fight back and break the line before it’s too late. In those times, it can be helpful to remind ourselves that even Jesus was tempted.
No, not even the Son of God, who took on our humanity while retaining His divinity, was immune to temptation. In the desert He went toe-to-toe with Satan and yet, He resisted. In active ministry, He was tempted by the demons He encountered, and even was tempted to walk away from the horrific passion that He was about to endure. I think that there are three great truths contained in the story of Jesus’ temptation in the desert.
First, temptation will come. If it came to the Son of God, you can be certain that it will come to you. It will also be personalized, tailored just for you. Jesus was hungry in the desert, so He was offered food. Jesus was infinitely powerful, so He was offered an opportunity to prove it. Jesus knew He was going to suffer and die, so He was offered an opportunity to worship a new god. We all have weak links. Expect these weaknesses to be exploited and never give an inch.
Second, like Jesus, you can beat temptation. Jesus didn’t hem and haw, He responded decisively. He didn’t consider how good the bread would taste, how vindicated He’d be when the angels caught Him or how nice it would be to not be tortured and crucified. Instead, He rejected the temptations outright. We should do the same.
Finally, just as empty as the temptations were for Him, they are for you. We all can recall a time that we were tempted to do something wrong and were filled with excitement. Then, when we committed the sin and got on the other side, there was only sadness. If you’re like me and have had this experience more than once, you know it’ll always be like this. Like the mean words you always wanted to use to tell off your boss, coworker, or classmate, you always end up feeling guilty. Temptation is the illusion of something great wrapped around something lame. You know it’s going to be lame, so don’t bother with it. Plus, the time you spent distracted by sin is time that you can’t use to do something amazing with your life.
When faced with temptation, especially temptation around the weakest parts of your humanity, take courage. If Jesus was tempted, then you are in good company. Stay in that good company by resisting and overcoming.
Respect Women
Sex sells, even when it’s irrelevant. Watching commercials during the Super Bowl underscores this interesting point. Advertisers and companies use sex to sell things that really have nothing to do with human sexuality, like web hosting or restaurants. We’re a sex-crazed people and it needs to stop.
Many people decry the incidence of sexual assault on college campuses, as they should. At the same time, they buy tickets to see “50 Shades of Grey.” They complain about a hook-up culture, but then demand that contraceptives be provided free of charge in vending machines. Some complain that women aren’t respected the way that they should be, but then call the consumption of pornography “free speech.” If we really want to address our societal issues, we’re going to have to take a collective hard look at the lower level problems that are contributing to this overall tone. We have to be willing to make serious changes in order to have a society that respects the dignity of all people.
First, we must marginalize and eradicate organizations that are implicitly hostile to the dignity of women. It’s challenging to make a case for the benefits of having Greek Life on college campuses when we can’t make it through an entire semester without a national headline about sexual assault, illegal activity, or even death on some college campus at a particular fraternity or sorority house. Common knowledge holds that the raucous parties lead to excessive drinking and sexual assault. Few charges are ever brought and the perpetrators of these felonies are never brought to justice, leaving them free in society to attack again. Criminals must be held accountable for their actions and removed from our society. We must go after the institutions that protect them.
Next, we must stop using women for business gain. Sex sells, so we have to quit buying. The porn industry would wither away if people stopped clicking on their links and paying for their content. Human trafficking and the prostitution that goes along with it would shutter its doors if people stopped soliciting. The fantasy given to us is that these women are all willing participants and yet, many aren’t. The reality is the incidence of drug abuse, suicide, and depression is significantly higher among porn actors than it is among the general population. Even if someone is a willing participant at the time, few walk away without guilt, regret, and shame. By supporting these types of industries we support the institutionalized denigration of women and that’s wrong.
Finally, we have to stop telling women that they’re only valuable if they’re men. Women have the awe-inspiring ability to support and nurture life within their bodies, and that fact alone merits great deference. Women have every right to enter into the workplace, make valuable contributions, and be compensated commiserate with their performance. They shouldn’t feel compelled to act like their male counterparts in order to gain the respect of their company and equal consideration for advancement. Women have a unique perspective to offer the world. We don’t need more men, we need more diversity of opinion.
If we want to live in a world where both men and women are respected and valued as human persons with dignity, we need to address the underlying issues. Women especially are victimized and used for profit and, as men, we need to withhold support from people, companies, and industries who base their profitability on the denigration of women.
Invest in Your Kids
Although Benedict is recently beginning to prefer walking to crawling, I’ve already begun to plan out all of the activities and hobbies that I want to introduce him to. He should learn Spanish and hey, maybe I’ll learn with him. He should learn to play the piano or saxophone… I’ll do it too! His grandfather and I are both pilots, so was his great grandfather, so he definitely needs to learn how to fly. There are literally endless possibilities and each of them is equally exciting.
I had a priest friend whose father was an OB/GYN with an extremely successful medical practice. He had 8 kids and drove a 15 passenger van. One day, as a child, the priest friend went with his dad somewhere and they ended up parking next to a corvette. The son said to his father, “Dad, I can’t believe you drive around this 15 passenger van when you could be driving that corvette.” His father replied, simply, “Son, I’d rather have you than a car.”
In those eight words are perfectly encapsulated the mystery of parenting. Adults, with their own hopes, wants, needs, and desires are more interested in spending their hard earned money and resources on the needs of their children than on their own wants.
The world is a wide open place and introducing your children to new things is a healthy pursuit. In the hobbies or activities that they participate in, they may find a life-long hobby or even their life’s work. They may only participate for a year, a few months, or even a few measly weeks, however, they’ll forever carry with them the lessons and memories from that time. Hobbies, museums, books, classes, sports, theater, and the thousands of opportunities open to kids provide endless outlets for creativity, energy, and exploration.
A big struggle that I faced when I was working with a youth organization was parents struggling to get their children to commit. Elementary school kids are well known for their ability to change their minds in an instant and many parents seemed to be frustrated with what they saw as wasted money that could have been put to better use. Activities are teachable moments in a child’s life and letting your child take up and quit activities at the drop of a hat isn’t good stewardship of your family’s finances. A better approach is to use activities to teach your children about commitment. When they want to try something beyond the first free session, they need to agree to very clear terms. They need to know how long they’re committing to and that they may not be able to get out of their obligations. They also need to understand that if they do activity A, they won’t be able to do activity B. This life lesson can help them to not be flaky in their adult life. It certainly will be a battle when they inevitably want to quit, but giving in to them will be extremely damaging to the development of good moral character.
After trying many different activities, perhaps over the course of several years, the time will come when you need to guide them to committing to a few that they’ll pursue long-term. This evolving discussion should focus on their passions and natural strengths and encourage structured decision making. We know that when you put focus and resources on a few things, you’ll make far more progress than if you had put your energy into many things. By helping your kids determine which activities to edit out of their schedule, you’ll again be teaching them an important life lesson. Taking on too many things is unwise and you’ll do much better if you focus on a few things.
Your kids will have endless opportunities to pursue new things. Be prepared to inspire them, cheer for them, and help them to learn the inherent life lessons that come with choosing one’s activities.
Staring Down Medical Problems
In life, there may be nothing more disruptive than a major medical problem. Whether it’s one that you’re facing, or one that someone in your family is dealing with, medical problems consume the thoughts and time of those afflicted with them. This dilemma is one that is common in the human experience; despite our best efforts, we will get sick.
When I was a senior in high school, I was delivered a knock out blow from migraines. Nearly every day I had to be removed from class and sent home to recover. The situation got to a point where, near the end of the school year, I was asked to stay home. It was disruptive to the learning environment and, frankly, embarrassing to be taken out of class with such frequency. The attacks were only the beginning. My experience with the physicians that I sought treatment from proved just as difficult. Migraines are relatively misunderstood and I didn’t fit into the typical patient profile. Many of the neurologists that cared for me had little experience with migraine patients outside of middle aged women, so they either prescribed treatments as if I was a middle aged woman or they just didn’t believe me. It took four years to find the right neurologist and only then was I finally able to get my life back.
When you or someone that you love is forced to stare down a major medical problem, it’s important to have courage in the face of uncertainty. While our physical health does dictate many of our daily decisions, there’s almost always things that we can do to improve our situation. A health crisis will face each of us at some point in our lives. This fact alone should be enough to motivate us to make good decisions today to help mitigate the factors that contribute to poor health later.
We put too much faith in modern medicine. It’s true that medicine can do amazing things to help correct imbalances in our body. However, it isn’t an exact science. With each body being completely unique, albeit with similar structures, pinpointing and treating causes of illness and disease can be difficult. There’s a lot that we know but there’s even more that we still don’t understand. Alison is brilliant and knows an unbelievable amount about the body, how the systems work, and what type of afflictions can impact each organ and tissue. Even she will admit that there’s a lot of unknown and that the best defense is a good diet and exercise. That means that although we will face major medical problems, we have the power to fight back by making good choices daily. Your doctor can’t force you to make good decisions, those are choices that you need to make on your own.
When the time does come, despite your good efforts, when you’re diagnosed with some condition, face the diagnosis with patience and humor. Don’t give up the fight and resign yourself to despair. Understand the process, ask lots of questions, and use humor to help you through the difficult days. Life is valuable and precious not because of the utility that one gives to society, but in and of itself. Not every medical problem is fatal, but every problem is impactful. Life may not be the way that it used to be, but you’re just as useful, valuable, and precious as you were before the diagnosis.
Medical problems present us each with two choices: resign the fight and slip into a sedentary lifestyle or take charge of your health and fight back by making good choices every day. When you face this dilemma, I hope that you’ll fight.
Adult Report Cards
When I was in high school, in my Junior and Senior year, I was introduced to something truly horrible. It was a system called EdLine and it gave my parents direct, realtime access to my teacher’s grade books. While I performed well academically, the pressure of constantly knowing one’s grade was almost too much. With the press of a button, a bad test grade could ruin an entire weekend. My parents loved it because they had a granular view of my progress and could spot trends.
While I dispute the morality of giving parents this level of access to grades, I do think that, as adults, we could benefit from this type of system. We set goals for ourselves or have dreams that we’d like to fulfill, most of which occur over time. Having a report card that gives us a realtime picture of our progress could be immensely helpful and could also translate into a higher success rate. As adults, we refer to these report cards as habit streaks. I use an app called Habit List on my phone to track daily progress with a simple yes or no challenge. Did I keep a food diary today? Yes. 1 day added to my streak. Did I drink 8 glasses of water? No. My streak begins again tomorrow. This frictionless system takes seconds to update each evening, but provides a powerful set of data and subtle motivation to keep a streak alive. We need report cards or habit streaks to give us feedback on progress towards our goals.
Goal setting requires tracking. While it can be ugly, feedback is our best path to success. No one likes negative feedback, so when we receive it, and when we have the means to stop it, we will change our behavior which, in turn, leads to success. We get that motivation back that we had when we started this goal achievement journey. It can literally get you back on the horse and moving again in the right direction.
We need accountability in our lives. Discipline isn’t pleasant and without someone or something holding up a mirror to us, we’ll fall victim to the laziness within us. No matter what the task is, we need help keeping on track. We need a person or a system to hold our hand and to keep moving us forward. Habit streaks can add that level of discipline back into the equation.
The longer the habit streak, the more likely your continued success. We see the number of days add up to a huge number and we have no interest in seeing it go back to 0, so we push ourselves to success. As an added bonus, the longer you avoid a bad habit, the better you’re able to resist it. The more you do a good habit, the more it becomes ingrained in you.
Report cards in school were the enemy, but habit streaks as an adult are an ally. Habit streaks will push you to places that you’ve never been and help you to become the best person that you can be.
The Joy of Serving
In the not too distant past, I engineered my weekly routine to involve cleaning a single room of the house every day. Since I spend almost all of my time at home, I want to have an environment that is clean and well maintained. When there’s clutter or mess or dirt I feel impeded in both my energy and my creativity. When all is in order I feel balanced and at peace.
After several months of trial and error, I determined that while daily cleaning allowed me to make progress every day, it was a huge time suck. I threw out the playbook and batched cleaning and laundry into one giant marathon. It turns out that while 15 minutes every day cleans the house, so does 1 hour on a Saturday morning at a rapid clip. My favorite time to clean is when Alison is at work. I love the thought of her leaving a dirty and messy home and coming home to a sparkling environment.
While serving often requires an increase in our workload, it paradoxically increases the joy in our lives.
Placing your wife at the center of your life is the ideal in marriage and it should be the end that we’re all actively working the achieve. By caring for her first, you take an active role of serving. This could be shown in small acts like getting her drink for dinner or big acts like taking care of the kids so she has the night off. If cleaning the house is typically in her domain, doing it for her once in a while can really rock her world. The objective is to discern her needs, decide how best to meet them, and then serve her.
The act of serving is something to be enjoyed. If you’ve ever used a premium service, you notice how great it feels to be well looked after. As the recipient of that service, I feel not only respected, but cared for. When you take good care of your wife, when you serve her well, she can have those same feelings. Think about how thrilled she’ll be now that she can read a book instead of having to clean the house. Think about how excited she’ll be getting to have a little extra time playing with the kids before bed because you’ve taken care of the other pre-bedtime preparations.
As you work to master the skill of serving your wife, do the same for your children. Your kids are certainly stuck with you, but it’s important to work daily on those relationships. Blow their minds by doing something unexpected for them. It could be a surprise trip, throwing around a ball with them, or even cleaning their room. Be a great dad and teach them a lesson at the same time.
Serving is a joy unto itself, but one that’s only derived from humility. Love your family, lead your family, and serve your family.
Intent Matters in Sex
One of the best books on the argument for marriage the way that we understand it is What is Marriage?: A Man and Woman: A Defense by Ryan Anderson, Robert George, and Sherif Girgis. I’ll review the book in a later post, but in the work, the authors systematically lay out the foundation for the conjugal view of marriage. Namely, that marriage isn’t based on emotions, but rather on a mutual desire to express love in such a way that it flows out from the couple and into children. Along the course of the argument, the material touched on some auxiliary issues, including the intent required during sex. Wrongful intent in a sexual relationship, even wrongful intent held by a married person, can reduce sex to a lie or a tool.
Sex is an organic bodily union. The male and female reproductive systems carry out their own processes individually, but it’s only through the combination of the two systems, through sex, that either is able to complete the reproductive cycle. While sex unites and binds the two people into one bodily system, it does more than simply complete a process. Sex unites both the body and the mind. Bodily systems do not think or act independently, they must be directed by the mind and by the heart. So when a couple has sex, their minds and hearts direct their reproductive systems to work towards a common good, namely, the creation of new life and the strengthening of the marital union. The fact that every sexual act doesn’t achieve procreation is irrelevant. What is relevant is the intent of each spouse. The right intent is enough to achieve the good regardless of whether or not reproduction itself is achieved.
The intent of one spouse can denigrate or destroy the organic bodily union. In order to perfectly achieve the design of sex, both partners must be willing the good of the other, not simply attempting to achieve one’s own maximum pleasure. When one spouse withholds emotionally or mentally, the act is diminished. The bodily systems function in the same way, but the wrongful intent reduces the sublime nature of the organic bodily union to simply checking off a box or completing a process. Even more egregious is that wrongful intent reduces the opposite spouse to an object, a means to achieve a singularly pleasurable end. Wrongful intent divides the heart and diverts precious resources away from the marital good and to a selfish objective.
Procreation as an end is good, but again, it’s not required. There is a great deal of confusion about the Church’s teaching which has driven scores of Catholics into the arms of the contraceptive culture. Think of it this way. If sex’s only objective was the creation of new life, why would the female reproductive system only be able to achieve pregnancy a few days in a cycle? By looking to the natural order, unimpeded by contraceptives, we can discern that sex is about more than procreation. The natural order tells us that sex is also unitive.
Certainly removing the procreative aspect of sexuality is just as damaging as removing the unitive aspect. Sex and intent towards sex should respect both spouses, should be used responsibly in the creation of new life, and should always be prepared to lovingly and openly accept any children that may come about from the sexual act.
A responsible couple practicing the discipline of natural family planning is able to balance the unitive needs of the couple and the responsibility of parenting. Sex should be a regular occurrence in a healthy marriage because it binds spouses together in ways that nothing else can. At the same time, recognizing the grave responsibility of raising a child, natural family planning empowers a couple to make judicious and just decisions about when to attempt to achieve a pregnancy. By doing nothing more than observing and working with the wife’s reproductive system, a couple is able to appropriately, morally, and intentionally seek to create new life when their family is able to support new life, and abstain from sex when they are not. A key foundational principle of natural family planning is the understanding that, despite the scientifically valid data proving natural family planning to be effective, like contraceptives, it’s practice is susceptible to human error, meaning that pregnancy can still occur. The difference between contraceptives failing and natural family planning failing is in how the couple reacts. A contraceptive mindset leads to an intent that seeks to immediately destroy the life that was just created while a natural family planning mindset leads to an overwhelming joy and excitement about the child who in just a few months will be welcomed into the home.
The Church is the last remaining institution that celebrates and promotes true freedom. By helping us to understand the importance of the conjugal view of marriage and the right attitudes about sex, She encourages us to experience true freedom. We are not to be prisoners to our own minds and passions nor are we to be enslaved to the dire side effects of contraceptives. Instead, we are to experience the true beauty of the married life, and, if in accord with God’s Will, the joys of parenting.
Turn Off the News
Since late last summer, I’ve had a subscription to the Wall Street Journal. It’s my first newspaper subscription, having before gotten the majority of news from websites. I must say, there have been a lot of unexpected difference in the print news as opposed to digital news. I’ve grown to hate 24 hour news networks.
Getting most news updates about once per day feels like the right amount of updates. While news is always breaking, not everything deserves my attention. While news stories are constantly evolving, a 24 hour break in between checking up on stories allows reporters to gather facts instead of reporting on speculation. Another highlighted benefit of reading print news is that instead of always being reactionary, reporting on stories as they happen, they’re proactive. Reporters are doing in-depth studies on issues, investigations into topics, and frankly, breaking stories through original content.
When I compare the news reported in newspapers and the news reported on 24 hour networks and websites, there’s really no comparison. Digital news is a disaster.
Too often, websites and networks, under pressure to feed content to the masses, will report on something, anything. They’ll embellish stories, report inaccuracies, and just do an all around poor job of news reporting. Since they don’t have enough hard news to report and don’t do many in-depth studies, they have to stuff fluff pieces into their news. They’ll report on celebrity gossip, they’ll overreport someone’s meltdown, or they’ll bring you live coverage of a ballon over a desert, a musicians funeral, or continually report on shark attacks, although there isn’t necessarily a higher incidence at that particular time.
Of course, there’s plenty of fear and speculation laced into every story. We’re filled with anxiety about epidemics that will never reach our shores en mass, we stress over who our next president will be when it won’t be decided for 18 months, and we worry over the impact of court cases that won’t be decided for years. 24 hour news is bad for your health.
The best way to get your news, in my opinion, is through a newspaper. There’s something about the experience of having your paper delivered or picking it up daily. There’s something about feeling the paper in your hand and reading a story that you know has been through several rounds of editing, not reporting based on someone’s tweet five minutes ago. We just don’t have any justifiable need for constant updates. A newspaper, with a set publication schedule, has time to gather facts and present actual news, not just conjecture.
If you find that 24 hour news is overwhelming you or is reporting things that just aren’t news, turn it off.