So when Cory approached Dan and I about doing one of these talks (in addition to Jarrod) we both kind of got the same look on our faces. I think I said, ‘Wow, I’m totally tapped out.’ But Dan put it best when he followed, ‘Cory, we left it all on the field this year, I’m not sure we have another talk in us.’ I finally said, I won’t be able to teach by then, but I might be able to share a few loosely connected thoughts on some aspect of manhood. I would usually take the opportunity to talk about a theology of work…but I feel like I have talked about that a lot recently. So I am going to talk about something else I am really passionate about…marriage. I’m calling this 5 myths about marriage. Lets start with myth #1.
(Photos by Dave Tan)
1. Marriage Sucks
Let me start with a pretty typical perspective on marriage from a representative of our generation. Bill Simmons (ESPN's sports guy) has started a new feature in his mailbag highlighting an e-mail each month to which he gives the 'Fellas don't get married' award.'
Q: Why can't Hollywood make a movie about a guy who doesn't get married, keeps his friends, loves life, dates hot girls up until they get crazy. But also show his old college roommate married with kids, a nagging wife, a crap job he can't quit because of the kids and mortgage. This should be made and mandatory viewing for any single male by the time he hits 18. At least he would have a fighting chance. If you have a great marriage awesome. But I would tell you that nine of 10 married guys I know are in the old college roommate state of life right now. Good luck all you engaged men. (Suckers.)
-- Gabe B., Waterloo, Iowa
SG: And that wraps up this month's installment for "Fellas, Don't Get Married!" By the way, I'd like to give a special shout-out to my buddy Sully, who's already trained his two young sons to answer the questions "How old will you be before you can think about getting married?" and "Where are you going to college?" with the answers "35" and "South or West." Now that's great parenting. Simmons mailbag
If you watch enough sit coms, movies or hang out with enough married guys, you could start to wonder why anyone would get married if they didn’t believe it was a prerequisite for sex. There are a few lucky ones, who like Wesly and Buttercup, have a magical, once in a life time connection. But most of us will end up divorced or disinterested.
That is not only a myth…it’s a lie. With very few exceptions, guys with crappy marriages are largely responsible for the state of the relationship…or just need to grow up. There is a correlation between guys I respect and quality marriages. (Though part of that is because they attracted women of character). After watching my parents and imbibing the cultural narrative, I was ready for torture on both counts. But both marriage and parenthood are fantastic. They are costly. But they are worth it. I can confidently say that they are God’s gifts, not just theoretically, but empirically. I just want to tell you guys, that marriage and parenthood were both way easier than I had expected. It can be done well. It is God’s plan for most of you.
2. Love is an Emotion
I think that this is the biggest myth of all. There is this sense in our cultural narratives that love is something that happens to you. That is a lie. Chemistry is something that happens to you…love something you do…it’s an act of the will.
I think the term ‘falling in love’ is one of the least helpful semantic constructions in the english language. It suggests that love is something passive, something that happens to you. Something outside your control. But even more destructive, it suggests that love is precarious. If it is so easy to fall into and seemingly random in its object, than surely it is as easily to fall out of or reassign its object.
Love is not a thing in itself…it is the sum of your actions that honor, support and romance your wife. It is not something you can be in. It is something you do.
Even the emotions can be cultivated. I cultivate affection and attraction towards my wife. I keep a list of ‘things I love about my wife’ that includes observations about her skills, gifts, character and physical beauty. New discoveries that I can revel in. I let my thoughts linger on her beauty. You’ll never hire John Cusak to make that movie…but then very few movies are made about marital romance…it doesn’t mean it can’t happen well.
And so if you can’t count on a mystical-gooey-abstract-fated attraction to guide you as you try to choose a wife:
Well first, here is something unhelpful, but hysterical:
One of the things Amanda and I have talked about from time to time is how little our process of choosing a spouse was based on what would actually make a good marriage partner. I am still wrestling with how to articulate this.
Stumbling on Happiness: (p146-7)
But here are some thoughts:
She has to be your best friend. I would never kiss anyone who wasn’t legitimately my closest friend. That’s just my opinion; it’s not in the Bible. But that is the point at which I would start exploring the physical side of things, because that is the point where she is legitimately ‘in play’ for marriage. Until then, she’s just a crush.
Pick someone that you want your kids to be like. For that matter, pick someone that you want to be like not just someone you want to be with. It is a universal axiom, that married people start to act like each other. I once heard Bronwyn say, pick someone who, after you start spending time with her, your friends like you better.
Does she believe in you? Not just in the fog of chemistry, but will she stand by you when you fail. Will she be the voice telling you to try again when you should? Do you respect her enough to hear God say no to you through her? Is she adventurous enough to hear God say yes if he does? When my dream job opened up in Davis, 3000 miles away, I mentioned it casually over dinner. It was Amanda who said “You are applying. We don’t want to wonder ‘What if?’ about that sort of thing.” But recently, I got pretty committed to a plan that I thought God was calling us to…and Amanda said no…and it is pretty clear she was right. That, my friends, is the sort of thing that makes her an amazing wife, that wasn’t even on our radar.
My wife adds (from Proverbs 31:23) “Her husband is respected at the city gate, where he takes his seat among the elders of the land.” Is this what she wants for you?
I’m into a lot of stuff. I work pretty long hours, go to school on the side, teach at college life and spend as much time as possible with my kids. People say stuff to me all the time like ‘I just don’t know how you do all the things you do.’ I respond, ‘Have you met my wife. She’s remarkable.’
And what about you? Do you believe in her enough to make sacrifices for her to achieve her goals (even if they aren’t domestic)? Do you want her to flourish, even at the expense of stuff you want to do?
But attraction does matter. You absolutely need to marry someone you are sexually attracted to. You need to be careful not to over-spiritualize this…to take a Gnostic view of marriage.
And I’ll also say, opposites attract, but psychologists tell us that similarities are the currency of compatibility.
(I've never seen guys 'do hair' on a men's retreat. Leave it to Noah to look into the face of cultural expectations and shrug. Color me impressed.)
3. You Simply Cannot Love One Woman Your Whole Life
I had a friend in college that used to say that evolutionary processes had made it at worst impossible and at best miserable for human males to be monogamous. He planned to marry a starter wife that would help him through med school and have his kids and then move on to an array of younger women in his later years. I have other friends who intentionally put marriage off until their mid-thirties – each time they got close enough to a woman they would get scared that this would be the last woman they would ever get to have sex with and jet. Both these friends fundamentally misunderstood humanness.
But I think this is a big question we have as the children of the big divorce generations. When we saw marriages in our parents generation having a coin flip chance at making it, it seems like a pretty good question. At the retreat one of the girls asked something like ‘Forever is a really long time. How do you know you can go the distance.’ And it is true that you cannot love the same woman for 30 years…because after a few years she will not be the same woman. My wife will often tell people that I am not the man she married. But far from being an excuse about why she cannot stand me any more, she describes the process of learning to love who I have become. All I have to wake up tomorrow and chose love my wife. And in 30 years I will wake up that morning and choose to love my wife …but only because I have done so every day in between, discovering new things to love along the way as she grows and changes.
Here is the punch line, though. Whether or not you love your wife in 20 years will have more to do with your character than with her worthiness. The chemistry will fade. There will be a couple kids running around that will multiply the joys but also the fatigue. The question is, will you take the time to remember why you loved her…and to find new things to delight in. And incidentally, whether or not she loves you will have more to do with her character than your worthiness (though you should give as much attention as possible to being lovable) – so picking a woman of character turns out to be extremely important.
4. Marriage Will Fix My Lust Problem
It just doesn’t. In fact, it can make it harder. As a single guy, there is more ‘looking’ and ‘imagining’ that is fair game. It is not only OK to imagine what your life would be like with various girls, it is imperative. But once you get married, that imaginative life that has been part of your basic apparatus…the constant search for a woman…has to be shut down. Its no longer ok. This search that has dominated your imaginative apparatus for years, suddenly has to be replaced.
And, it is true, when you get to have sex, you are less obsessed with it. But getting married does not automatically guarantee the sex you’ve always imagined. Many couples struggle with it and the majority of guys that I am close enough to, to know about their sex lives are not having as much sex as they’d like. And if you are into the porn thing, when you get married that will destroy your wife…instead of just destroying you. So take care of the business of holiness up front. Don’t drag that crap into a marriage.
5. All Couples Fight
Since I am talking about marriage, I thought I’d wrap up with the best advice I ever got about marriage. Amanda and I were hanging out with a couple we respected that had been married a while and had school age kids. At one point I mentioned that all couples fight, something I thought was axiomatic since my parents fought constantly. The other couple became dead serious and said, ‘That is simply not true. You do not have to fight, and shouldn’t. We don’t.’
I thought ‘Bull Crap.’
They sensed my confusion and unpacked the idea for me. They said, ‘We disagree all the time. And some times the disagreements are deeply held, passionate and emotional. But there is a line we will not cross. It becomes a fight when the things you say have the intent to harm. The minute you let something out of your mouth that has ‘intent to harm’ you are fighting. But you don’t have to.’ This has been a really helpful distinction.
("There are (bleeping) snakes in the (bleeping) camp site".)
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