First Comes Love, Then Comes . . .
First Comes Love, Then Comes . . .
“Mawwage. Mawwage is what bwings us together today.” ― William Goldman (The Princess Bride)
Why do we take marriage advice from these people?
There is a lot of marriage advice bandied about on the internet. There is no shortage of authors, speakers, pastors, commentators, and internet gurus talking about this subject. The speech usually begins like this . . . .
We’ve been married for 30 years. We were on the brink of divorce for 20 of them. He had an affair with every woman in town. She slept with the mailman and the neighbor’s dog. He was addicted porn. She was addicted to meth. But 10 years ago we found Jesus and now our marriage is great.
A lot of the people who speak on, write about, and create conferences on marriage have had some of the worst marriages. I’m glad at the age of 45 they finally got some sense and stopped acting like impulsive, selfish teenagers. But that doesn’t mean I want marriage advice from them.
You know who I’d like to get marriage advice from? Boring people. You know the boring couple that got married at 18, had a few rough patches, but no dogs needed therapy afterward. I want advice from those people.
Unfortunately, those people don’t usually give lectures or write books. The few who do usually model their language after those speakers who came before them. They repeat the same talking points, even though in their own marriages they applied those points differently. They lose nuance in their copied and pasted, vague language, leaving much to interpretation. The first couple had a marriage that was awful nearly everyday. The second couple had a much happier marriage with some rough spots. You wouldn’t recognize the distinction, because it’s hidden in a uniform language.
The Marriage Mirage and Marital Martial Law
The language Christians and conservatives use is not just uniform. It is also ill-defined and militaristic, with an emphasis on duty, self-improvement, and sin. The messaging is dated, addressing problems associated with boomers, rather than millennial and gen z concerns. The boomers' problem was two fold. They were exceptionally lazy in their marriages and had a “complete me” problem. Marriage can be a wonderful, happy union, but you have to work for it and the baby boomers didn’t want to work. They thought they could let themselves go, take their spouse for granted, never have date night, and be exceptionally needy and demanding. This mentality led to generations of children growing up in broken homes. The baby boomers got a rude awakening with each divorce certificate signed. You can have marital bliss, but not if you’re a prick. Now, baby boomers go on podcasts, lecture tours, give sermons, and write books about how you can’t “idolize marriage” and “marriage takes work.” Uh, no shhhh, Sherlock. Thanks for giving millennials and gen z lectures, but that’s not our problem. Our problem is growing up in unstable, broken homes; watching our parents fight and never show affection to each other; and ultimately seeing their marriages crumble before our very eyes. Our generations don’t idolize marriage. We’re terrified by it.
I’ve heard the argument that it’s just the other side of the same coin. That avoiding marriage for fear it won't be as good as we’d like it to be is just another form of idolization. The entirety of that argument rests on the assumption that “good” is defined as some utopian fantasy. We’re not afraid it won't be some utopian fantasy where the couple never has a tiff. Married couples go through rough patches; that’s a given. What we’re afraid of is that it won't be a patch. We’re afraid that, like our parents’ marriages, it will be that way all the time. We’ll be miserable until we wind up divorced and broke, which is just another kind of misery. We’re afraid our kids will have to feel the pain we felt when we discovered mommy and daddy were separating. We’re afraid of shuffling our kids back and forth from house to house, not carving out for them a single spot on this globe to call home. We aren’t looking for a marriage that never has issues. We’re just looking for a marriage that lasts and most of us have never seen one.
Our generations don’t need to hear “marriage takes work.” Our generations need to hear “marriage is good.” And not because it is good for society. After what we’ve seen, if your argument is that marriage is good for society, then society is screwed, because we’re not getting married. We need to hear that it’s possible to be married and happy. We need to hear the story of marriage the way the Bible tells it.
That’s the funny thing about Christian and conservative marriage experts, they often don’t discuss marriage with the even hand the Bible does. The Bible is honest about the difficulties found in marriage, while offering a full-throated celebration of comfort, connection, sex, passion, etc. Modern speakers often discuss the former and treat the latter as an afterthought.
The best biblical and literary depiction of marriage is found in Song of Songs. In this book our couple goes from courtship, to wedding night, to marital difficulty, to reconciliation and marital bliss. In this story, rejection and reconciliation are present, which is painful, but they are short-lived. Modern speakers offer the message that you are going to be deep in the trenches every single day, beating yourself to a pulp, just so you can eke out a few, little, short-lived moments of happiness. Marriage is meant to last until death do you part a.k.a. approximately 50 years, depending on lifespan. Every day of the next 50 years of your life is not supposed to be drudgery. Modern marriage experts make it seem like the bulk of your relationship is going to be this miserable fight against sin, when one of the purposes of marriage is to provide love and comfort. They speak as though the parts everyone longs for will only be experienced on a few brief occasions. The opposite is true. If you behave like an adult, instead of a baby boomer toddler, then you can feel comfort and joy in your marriage quite often. That can be the norm and the rough patches can be just that, patches, real and awful, but patches, just the same.