It’s wedding season. A recent nuptial at a beautiful location south of Denver captured the fantasy of many a blushing bride. The location was pastoral perfection, the weather ideal, the ceremony handled with the right balance of solemnity, humor, and emotion. It really was enjoyable to watch the couple exchange vows, the participants and parents hold back tears, and the attendees dance the night away. A dream wedding. Today’s letter is the first part of a multi part series on marriage where we’ll get a bit deeper on some marital topics like roles, exchanging value, different kinds of sex, the changing meaning of commitment, and renewing a relationship that has gotten off track. We haven’t tried this series idea here (Ironmen yes, here no) and hope you find it worthwhile. We hope it starts a conversation.
For complex reasons, marriage has been declining in the western world. We (Lis and Dave) believe marriage is more valuable now than ever and have committed ourselves to do what we can to improve the lives of those couples already underway in this meaningful journey. Because marriage is so much about discovery, OneFamily desires to light the path ahead with insights gained over our 31 years of marriage (Rich and Shelly Howard’s 28 years) and help you confirm that marriage was a great decision. In marriage you discover the richness of relationship, the mixture of feelings, the challenge of melding two lives, and the layering of factors required for happiness. Sometimes a layer is missed and the path to happiness is clouded.
Insofar as our readers vary dramatically in every category, we have tended to approach “help” in a straightforward manner not get too complicated. But that approach can add only so much value. Occasionally, you have to go deep to appeal to the more experienced segment, but mostly to address real issues at the crux of relationship. We believe that some couples split just because they haven’t run across an important perspective that might have re-inflated hope and put them on a better path. We believe that some couples might have a mediocre marriage because a thought or a skill was not introduced at an earlier stage in their marriage. Sometimes the difference between an ok marriage and a great one is just a few ideas and suggestions that can tweak behavior into mutual benefit.
The young bride and groom mentioned above exchanged vows and crossed a threshold into a long term commitment. Do you think, at 23 years old, they knew what they were committing to? Hopefully their commitment won’t be tested for a while and the honeymoon will last a good long time. You, however, have have been married at least a few years, so you know. The more years, the more children, the more complexity to life, the more you know what commitment means.
What is commitment? When you say the vows to do all those positive things – love, honor, cherish, respect, and do so for the rest of your life so help you God – do you have a clue as to what you’re doing? If both are virgins, but virgins in a modern world, do you think they know that sex is a skill that takes a good long while to be mutually satisfying in its cycled nuances? How about communication, do you think each is equally endowed with balanced maturity and a full glossary of acceptable phrases to use appropriately in circumstances of alcohol and hornyness? What about figuring out the balance of earning money and maintaining a well ordered life of clean clothes, food preparation, health, adventure, credit card discipline, and have we mentioned sex yet? Of course these rhetorical questions are designed to have you look back on your own naivete when you lept forward in faith, figuring you’d do just fine like millions of others have done before.
Naivete requires faith. How could it be otherwise? Faith is buoyed by hope that the future will be filled with happiness and the man/woman you married somehow finds and fills the jars hidden in your heart. It’s when time passes and experience together helps you realize that some jars are found and filled, some partially, and some not at all, that faith is challenged. After a bit more time and experience, you can see it requires more time and effort than you had previously realized. Hope still keeps faith afloat, but you see more clearly now. The issues that require actual work for your happiness jars to be filled will take meaningful engagement. For example, engagement with the home, the kids, and life’s maintenance, often requires choosing responsibility over play. If one person reluctantly engages in the family it feels cheap and selfish. They should prioritize gladly instead of acquiescing after debate. For another example, speaking of acquiescing, sex should occasionally offer passion. Coming to bed and arguing about whether tonight’s the night isn’t foreplay. Yes, but maybe doing the dishes is. Ok, would that do it? Do you value me or just want sex? — The more two lives are pulled apart balancing the activities of family and work, the weightier commitment becomes.
And so sometimes a marriage hangs by that thread, the commitment to renew hope, restore faith, engage fully, and fill jars.
Next week, we’ll talk about equality and roles. Then “The Sex Talk” which might be awkward, but hey, we’re friends, right? And then a summary of spiritual leadership and exchanging value.
To an abundant married life of finding and filling jars,
Lis and Dave Marr