Three Things That are More Important than Hotness: Selecting and Attracting a Great Life Partner

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What if you were walking on the quad one day and met a wizard. You can picture it however you’d like. Imagine this wizard offered you a ten minute glimpse into your life twenty years from now. What would you want to see? When I was in college, I can tell you what my top two questions would have been:

“Who am I married to? and
“Do we hate each other?”

You see, my parent’s marriage and the cultural narrative I had uncritically adopted had not exactly made me optimistic about marriage. When I was in college, it seemed that the question of how to select that person that we will spend the rest of our lives with seems to occupy a disproportionate fraction of what we thought about and what we talked about. And its’ spending some time on, because there are crazy ideas out there about how this thing is supposed to work.


 I mean, the whole process can just get pretty discouraging:

Lets face it, not all of us the sheer magnetism of our pastor: [1]

You laugh, but no one ever asked me to couples skate.

Even the Scriptures suggest that there is an aspect of this whole process that is just mystifying:

“There are three things that are too amazing for me
four things I do not understand
the way of the eagle in the sky,
the way of a snake on a rock,
the way of a ship on the high seas,
and the way of a man and a maiden.” Prov 30:18-19

Why is this question SO compelling…it is because it is so hard. Essentially, Dan has asked me to tell you how to predict the future. How do you know which person will augment rather than detract from your life and your service of God?

Actually, it turns out to be even more difficult than it seems. Predicting our future happiness turns out to be something humans are pretty bad at. I mean, it sounds hard enough, but brain scientists actually tell us that predicting what will make us happy is something the human brain does especially badly.

In his book Stumbling on Happiness Harvard psychology professor Daniel Gilbert wrote

“we so often mispredict our emotional response to future events…It is difficult to escape the focus of our own attention – difficult to consider what it is we may not be considering – and this is one of the reasons why we so often mispredict our emotional responses to future events.” 103

“When imagination paints a picture of the future, many of the details are necessarily missing, and imagination solves this problem by filling in the gaps with details that it borrows from the present.” 226

He calls this the problem of presentism – we use the emotional furniture of our present to predict what our emotional reaction to a future event will be – and this turns out to be a really bad method of prediction.

“No one can imagine every feature and consequence of a future event, hence we must consider some and fail to consider others. The problem is that the features and consequences we fail to consider are often quite important.” 225
He goes on to conclude, citing a wide range of scientific studies, that our imaginations are poor predictive mechanisms to determine what our emotional response will be to future events.. The problem, Gilbert says is that we overestimate the extent to which we are special. We tend to think that our experience of early love is qualitatively different than everyone else. Like Wesley and Buttercup, our love is a unique precious snowflake will burn and sustain for decades…even though that does not seem to be the experience of most of the mature marriages we observe. Now I don’t want to trivialize the sublime beauty of what I will simply call early love, because it is really one of life’s gifts. Early love is fantastic.

But we can become so intoxicated by the experience of early love that we fail to accept that every crappy marriage that makes us sad and every failed marriage we watch disintegrate before our eyes started out with the same kind of intensely magical 18 months. The great lie is that the intensity of your emotions towards someone right now is an accurate predictor of the quality of your relationship in twenty years. The movies say ‘trust your heart.’ But the bible tells us that our hearts are pathological liars. We suffer from what psychologists call confirmation bias. We really want this person to be the one, and so we over weight the evidence in their favor and under weight the evidence that says, ‘don’t walk…run.’

The scriptures say:
“He who trusts in himself is a fool,
but he who walks in wisdom is kept safe.” Prov 28:26

So, if we can’t trust our emotional connection to someone to be an accurate predictor of the long term quality of the relationship…if accurate prediction of our emotional future is something that our brains do really poorly, how do we go about making such a hugely important choice? Tonight I want to offer you two basic approaches to this decision (and bear with me with the terminology a bit, I will explain):

I. The Empirical Approach: Where is it working well? (And how can I copy that?)
This is what scientists call inductive reasoning – where we move from observation to principal – we observe and listen to as many good marriages as possible, collecting all the data we can about what makes them work. Then we use this data to guide our choice.

II. The Theoretical Approach: How was it engineered to work?
This is what scientists call deductive reasoning. We start with central principles and move to observation and predictions. For Christians, this will be the question, ‘What resouces can we get from the scriptures that will help us predict how this relationship is likely to hold up in the long term.’

So lets start with the empirical approach:

I. The Empirical Approach: Where is it working well?

The empirical approach is not the special property of Christians. It is part of common grace. Gilbert actually recommends it. He calls it ‘surrogation’. He claims that the results of experimental brain science demonstrate that accounts of others that have been through a particular event that we are about to go through are better predictors of our emotional response to that event than our personal imagination of what it will be like. This, incidentally, why arranged marriage works way better than it seems like it should. And so, Dan and I decided that what you really need is just for someone who has been through this to make this decision for you…so we spent 20 hours this weekend matching you all up and are just going to reveal these pairings and give you the rest of the evening to get to know each other…

…so lets start with the winner of the Adam Darbone sweepstakes…

Obviously, I’m being silly…but Gilbert’s idea of ‘surrogation’ is pretty cool…particularly because it is what the Bible taught us thousands of years ago. The scriptures teach both, skepticism of our own hearts and they teach us to seek out the counsel of those who have faced the decisions we face and, it has gone well for them as part of the program for perusing wisdom, the Scriptures recommend surrounding yourself with wisdom…tenaciously seeking out people who have what you want and finding out how they got it. Here is what the Bible says about wisdom:

i. It may be the most valuable commodity you can accumulate
ii. It is difficult to acquire

‘Wisdom is supreme;
therefore get wisdom.
Though it costs all you have,
get understanding.” Prov 4:7
One complication here is that people often mistake cleverness for wisdom.[1.5] And sice married people are perceived as dull, unmarried people get a disproportionate amount of their marriage and dating advice from people who are not married. Spend time with married people and get their feedback on your relationships. This is actually as special feature of college life among the campus ministries – as a church based ministry we have a wealth of married people that you could seek out on this topic. But be sure to pursue the wise and not just the clever.

And let me say this, Dan’s talk included a disclaimer that went something like (‘you might not agree with everything I say, and you don’t have to.) He said that because when we venture from what the Scriptures teach, when we offer advice from our experiences and the experiences of others we need to be cautious of legalism. But I agree with everything he said. While what we are offering you is not all directly from the Scripture, so we have to deliver it cautiously, I would argue that if you want to develop wisdom on this issue in time for it to influence your life choices that you would not dismiss it lightly. So before I move to what the Bible has to say, let me offer you two observations I have made about successful marriages.

First – Choose the parent you want your children to have. I feel like most of us chose our life partners for the relatively brief newly wed stage. Amanda and I protracted that stage longer than anyone I know. We were married for 9.5 years before we had kids. But, we will still have kids in our house for more than twice as long as that. On the whole, couples tend to be married 2 to 4 years before they have kids. But they base their decision of who to marry on what that relatively breif years will be like.[2] They don’t think about it on the right time scale. They are choosing a roommate instead of the parent of their children.

Second – Sexual purity matters. While I was planning this talk I asked several of my married friends, ‘What do you wish you had heard in a talk like this in college?’ The #1 response went something like “I wish someone had gotten in our faces about sexual purity.” I have yet to meet the person who said, ‘you know, we took it too slow physically.’ Keep your cloths on until your are married and don’t do stuff that would really just be much more convenient if you were naked.

“Above all else, guard your heart, for it is the wellspring of life.” Proverbs 4:23

II. The Theoretical Approach: How is it meant to work

But, there is a more fundamental way to acquire wisdom. As Christians we believe that the one who made us let us in on some of the inner workings of how he intended the whole thing to work. We call it the doctrine of revelation…the belief that God opened a small window of self disclosure through the Scriptures, that not only let us know who he fundamentally is, but who we fundamentally are.

Now the scriptures can seem a little annoying in this respect. Sometimes it seems like they have very little to say on this topic so many people are so interested in. But it may be because we are looking for the wrong things. We are looking for a formula or an algorithm for choosing a wife or husband…but the scriptures want to lead us in the way of wisdom…the Scriptures want to tell us what kind of person we should be…and by extension, they tell us what kind of person we should be looking for.

So with the remainder of my time I want to look at three criteria from the Scriptures that will help you make this choice…I like to call this part of the talk, three things that are more important than hotness. Now don’t get me wrong. I think physical attraction matters. I’ve been married for 12 years and am still totally into my wife. But the success of marriage is more strongly correlated to character, than hotness. Most of the marriages I respect are based on these three Biblical principles

1. Contentment/Joy
2. Industry/Discipline
3. Forgiveness/Repentance
Why these three things. Well I have a couple of thoughts.

i) These aspects of a peron’s will correlate more strongly with your future happiness (not to mention your effectiveness as an agent of God’s kingdom) than the physical beauty of the person you marry.

ii) They are too fundamental to hide. When you are dating, you tend to be on your best behavior, so it can be difficult to evaluate if someone …but these are three things tend to leak out of a person’s heart through their words and actions. And I am going to offer you several diagnostic tests for each one to help you evaluate a potential love interest.

1. Contentment/Joy

‘Godliness with contentment is great gain.’ 1Tim 6
You do not want to bear the weight of their future happiness. If they are not fundamentally satisfied with their life now, it is unlikely that marriage will fundamentally change that. You will expend all of your energy chasing their happiness when it turns out, they do not need a husband or wife, they need a savior.[3] You will not make him or her happy. Either they are a content person with self generated joy or they are not. It is a function of their character, not of what you can do for them.

Prov 15: 13 A happy heart makes the face cheerful,
but heartache crushes the spirit.
Dan and I were talking about this, and he said ‘Contentment is such an important criteria because discontent is symptomatic of so many spiritual sicknesses.’

If the purpose of the relationiship is investigative, then you need diagnostics. I am offering you three big ideas with respect to how to evaluate a potential partner, but how do these manifest as particular behaviors. In other words, what specific criteria should you use to evaluate these things. Well, I am going to offer you diagnostics on each topic:

Diagnostics: gossip, blame shifting, complaining, joy

21:19 25:24
Better to live in a desert/corner of a roof
than share a house with a quarrelsome and ill-tempered wife

26: 21 As charcoal to embers and wood to fire,
so is a quarlesome man for kindling strife.[4]

10:19 When words are many, sin is not absent,
but he who holds his tongue is wise.

11: 22 Like a gold ring in a pig's snout
is a beautiful woman who shows no discretion.
2. Industry/Discipline

14: 23 hard work brings a profit,
but mere talk leads only to poverty.[5]

25:28 Like a city whose walls are broken down
is a man who lacks self control.

31: 10, 11, 18
“A wife of noble character who can find?
She is worth far more than rubies.
Her husband has full confidence in her
and lacks nothing of value…
She sees that her trading is profitable
and her lamp does not go out at night
This seems about as unsexy as possible. This sounds just plain boaring. But, in the long term, discipline and industry are just about the sexyest things possible. Let me make this case with a digression I will call: 3 reasons discipline is super sexy

i.) Future hotness is a function of discipline. You are probably sexier now than you will ever be again. When you get married, you vow to choose to love the person you marry regardless of what happens to their mind or body….but, in marriages I respect both partners work hard to maintain their physical appearance to make themselves as lovable as possible. Fighting the decline takes discipline. I mean, there is technically more than one way to get a six pack, but the way of discipline is unquestionably superior:

ii.) Discipline makes you more interesting. But being lovable in the long term is not just a function of physical upkeep. It is also an issue of growing spiritually and making generate respect for family contribution. People, on the whole, get uglier. But there is a providiental grace that accompanies that. As people get uglier, they also get more interesting…if they cultivate disciplines that make them interesting.

iii.) Discipline Fundamentally Means More Romance and More Sex: But here is the thing. In most married couples I know about the guy wishes there was more sex and the woman wishes there was more romance. And they are both fundamental to the relationship. Ten years into a marriage sex and romance are things you have to work at. So I am not saying that you should choose discipline and character instead of sex and romance. I would argue that choosing discipline and character is one of the best possible predictors of the quality of your future sex and romance. If you marry someone who is lazy…there will not be much sex…just a lot of late night television.

Also, dicipline is the engine of fidelity. It is the evidence of ordered affections.

Diagnostics - how does she approach her studies, how does he manage his time, amount of time spent playing video games, sexual availability

When I think about the women I considered dating in college, there is a high correlation between women who were conscientious about their studies, and not necessarily good at school, but disciplined and industrious in their vocation as students. Money and sex might be the top two things married couples fight over, but laziness has got to be top three.

In fact, my brother likes to say that the woman who doesn’t have sex with you now is the one who is more likely to have regular sex with you after you’ve been married 20 years. She is the type of woman who does the hard thing now. If she is sexually available now, it is unlikely that she has the discipline to be sexually available in twenty years. And if he is sexually aggressive now, if he cannot do the hard work of self control and respecting your body, he may not have what it takes to do the hard work of romance or, even, faithfulness in the long term. This isn’t a perfect predictor, but it does fit the category of ‘too fundamental to hide.’

Proverbs 20: 6

Many a man claims to have unfailing love,
but a faithful man who can find?
In Joss Wheadon’s latest show, the villan accused one of the heros of being in love with the central character. Listen to the evidence he offered:

“You shared one room for months and you never slept with her, you could have but you didn’t, that’s love…” Alpha

3. Forgiveness/Repentance
‘Love keeps no record of wrongs.’ – 1Cor 13
Forgiveness and repentance are the survival skills of relationship. Christian theology provides a couple insights into humanness that give you an advantage going into marriage. Every marriage is the union of two fundamentally valuable but broken people. Broken people injure those close to them. We can’t help it. It happens. This is why repentance and forgiveness were so central to the teachings of Jesus. In the decades you are married[6] you will do some phenomenally selfish things, and so will your partner. And, selfishness is a feedback mechanism. Often, selfishness of one begets selfishness of the other.[7] There are only two things that actually break this cycle: repentance and forgiveness.

Repentance and forgiveness make up the basic tool kit for marital disagreement. If one or both of you have not developed these skills, you are in for trouble. This is actually related to the discipline point, because the vast majority of arguments Amanda and I have are not resolved as part of the argument, but when one of us sits down alone to spend time with God. Healthy spiritual disciplines are the stop loss of marital friction. It is almost impossible to maintain self righteousness for long if you are regular experiencing of the presence and correction of a Holy God.

Going into marriage without the ability to recognize your own fault and the willingness to let go the fault of your partner is a like going to war without your gun.

Diagnostics: Grudges, broken relationships, roommate relationships, closeness to family,

Post Script (Coda): How to Attract a Great Life Partner

So this talk was supposed to be on how to select and attract a great life partner. And I spent 99% of the time on the choose question how to select a life partner. But we have already done all the work on the attraction question. A person of character, who has the characteristics likely to lead to a successful marriage, is going to be looking for the same things. You want to attract a really great life partner?

1. Cultivate joy and contentment. If you are fundamentally discontent, it doesn’t matter who you marry. You will find him or her wanting. You will begin to focus on their weekensses rather than revel in their strengths.

2. Cultivate industry and discipline. Learn to apply yourself to your vocation…which right now, is your studies. Develop self control and practice it in the context of the physical components of your romantic relationships.

3. Cultivate repentance and forgiveness. Practice on your family and roommates. Develop a regular devotional wife where you examine your actions and motivations (especially in the context of conflicts you are having) and allow the presence of a holy God to unravel the self righteousness that threatens to undo your relationships.

Your character will not only attract someone with character, it will affect your experience of marriage, because how you feel about you husband or wife in twenty years has more to do with

Let me close by quoting my wife: ‘If you want a girl who reads her Bible, prays and goes to the gym…um…guess what she wants?”

[8]

______________
[1] “Many Bothans died to bring us this information” – Admiral Ackbar
[1.5] I think I owe this language to Mark Driscoll...by way of Bronwyn.

[2] I remember that I left most relationship talks I ever listened to, disappointed. I wanted 5 easy steps to …essentially, I wanted an algorithm that would minimize the risk in an inherently risky choice. But you don’t need a flow chart, an algorithm, a 5 step plan or a method…what you need is to become wise…and that is not something we can give you in 90 minutes of relationship talks. Part of the wisdom Dan and I are trying to offer you is that of emphasis from the other side. If you wish we were focusing these talks on other things…maybe the value of these talks is that we just don’t think those are the important things.

[3] “We need to demystify this thing. I could be married to another woman and be thriving…I am crazy about (my wife)…but she is not my savior. She does not complete me.” Matt Chandler
[4] See also Prov 11:16-17, 14:29 and 27:15
[5] See also Prov 10:4, 20:6
[6] though, disproportionately in your early years.
[7] Fortunately, I have found that the opposite is true. Selflessnes begets selflessness. It is a feedback mechanism in both directions.
[8] This image didn’t make it into my talk, but I wanted to include it anyway.