July 3, 2007
A month or so ago, I asked the general public, “What makes a good marriage?” and received a myriad of responses. In the time since, I haven’t touched the topic; partly, because as it’s clearly obvious to most, I have no firsthand knowledge of what makes a good marriage, and partly because it’s a daunting topic. So why would a single woman have the audacity to even attempt to handle such a subject?
My answer (of course I must justify this, this is what philosophers do, after all =) is because my generation desperately needs to start listening to those who have gone before them and actually hear what they have to say on the subject; we need to humble ourselves and ask the questions; we need to seek to learn from those who are older, wiser, and more experienced than us, and recognize when we don’t have the answers – that “love” is not enough.
Of course, I’ve never walked the road, so take what I share with a grain of salt. However, the beauty in soliciting the advice and wisdom of others is that I’m not proffering my own advice (which has no authority on my own without a healthy marriage to back it up), but I am proffering the thoughts and advice of many others who do have healthy marriages.
And with that, I submit a partial list:
Love.
Forgive.
Seek to out-serve your partner.
Laugh.
Dance.
Date.
Smile.
Be humble.
Compromise.
Put your spouse’s needs before your own.
Women – respect your husbands.
Men – love your wives.
Have fun.
Communicate.
Surprise each other.
Seek to learn each other’s love languages and speak to each other in them.
Remain each other’s best friend.
Pursue God together.
Continue to pursue each other as you did before you got married; never stop.
Commit.
Persevere.
Pray together.
Cry together.
Learn.
Cross each other’s cultures – you come from two different backgrounds; seek to understand
Be transparent with each other.
Be patient.
Fight for your spouse even when he or she does not deserve it just as God has fought for us
Choose to love when the emotions are not there
Seek to love your spouse with the kind of love Christ loved us - a love that allows you to willingly lay down your life for your spouse
Romance each other
Play
Never lose the wonderment you experienced when you were first falling in love
Talk
Say “I love you” frequently
And breathe.
- Christen Patterson, July 2007
July 31, 2007 at 3:26 am
This is one that my generation may not be able to help you with (I’m about 30 years older than you.) We baby boomers developed the novel notion that marriage is about personal fulfillment, or at least that personal fulfillment takes precedence over all. Does it help to tell you what didn’t work?
I think of a dear friend (40 y/o) in Germany who had been living with a man for 7 years. Her answer to why they didn’t marry was, “We’re right for each other now, but who knows how it will be in another 10 years – we may grow differently.” A very intelligent lady, & I admittedly thought of being number next – I’ve no doubt she was sincere. But I’m told by another German woman 20 years older than she that this idea is characteristic of her generation. I wasn’t surprised, upon returning to the U.S., to learn that indeed her relationship had ended. (&, wicked boy that I am, wished I’d lingered over there a bit longer.)
If marriage is above all an instrument of personal fulfillment, then there’s no argument against same-sex marriages – these couples claim to be fulfilled by each other. Still, my gut screams that marriage is a holy union between a man and a woman.
But not just that. Time for this romantic fellow to show another chamber. Marriage is not simply a private matter between two people – it is a contract between these two & their culture, that the couple promises to pass that culture through them in the person of their children. In exchange, the community guarantees protections and privileges to their union. Are you entirely your own property? Did you give yourself life? I don’t speak of the state, but rather your families, and by extension, your community. People, not institutions.
Not romantic? In dreams unfaithfulness is often represented by someone seeing his/her partner commit an act of theft. Our partner’s intimacy is still seen by our subconscious minds, even by modern, ‘liberated’ people, as property promised to us in mutual contract. Do consider whether these unromantic, primitive thoughts are barbaric, or are they an essential truth of us.
Our greatest Western lovers, Romeo and Juliet, didn’t live beyond that magnificent infatuation, that thing worth dying for. But impossible though it may be, that god, that goddess who fills our senses and our night & day eventually becomes familiar, & mortal.
Love phase number 2 – the partners roll away from each other, and stand shoulder-to-shoulder to face the world & build a household. Your advisers’ list recommends that a wife respect her man, and a husband love his woman. A cliche of mine is that a man’s word for love is respect – I would have expected the reverse pairing in the list, but the better advice is that both do both.
The question is how much of our identity is our individuality, how much is it in our partner, how much is it woven into our community? The modern answer strikes the community off the list, and subordinates the partner. That’s my generation’s fault. Please forgive us.
The classic model of male head-of-household has its problems, too. Turns out that women are actual people, you troublesome lot. Can you younger folk rescue our culture by figuring out how to enter a marriage both agreeing to love and to respect the other? There is something to be said for the old Italian model, that if there comes a fire outside the household, the greater sin is to allow indiscretion to bring shame to your spouse, and children.
Do better than did we on the idea of fulfillment. It’s not always personal, or maybe it’s better to say we need to trust something higher to show us what it is. Not that we’ve done it ourselves, but we can suggest to you that in this very intimate matter we need obedience to a greater authority than ourselves. (Of course I know what that is for you, Christen.) Then that list of techniques to keep both the romance and the contract alive will be blessed.
Sorry to be so verbose, but this is still only a partial response.
.
August 1, 2007 at 3:17 pm
What makes a “good marriage”: Understanding it’s a cause worth living for
IMHO two - or more I guess - people who are willing to commit themselves to making a life together. Marriage is a commitment to live as a family and support each other, and to keep doing so. That’s rub - it’s easy to do something grandiose but finite; it’s bloody hard to do something with every breath for the rest of your life.
August 2, 2007 at 12:17 pm
Understanding it’s a cause worth living for
So few people nowadays seem to be ascribing to that viewpoint – that marriage is something to live for, fight for, and work at. In a society in which we seek self-gratification in almost every area of life, the concept of “working” at a marriage relationship is foreign to most of us – when we tire, we move on to the next pleasure, the next stimulation, the next excitement instead of committing to and actively choosing to love one person for life, through good times and bad. No wonder divorce is so rampant when the principle of self-fulfillment rather than sacrificial love is pervasive in almost every other aspect of both society as a whole and individually.
August 2, 2007 at 12:43 pm
I agree, barelysage, that my generation is suffering from the Baby Boomer generation’s attitude towards both relationships and marriage – self-fulfillment became their god, and their children are taking it one step further, if that’s possible.
My understanding of marriage is that it is intended, at its best, to be a holy union between a man and a woman, while simultaneously being a contract and testimony to those in community around them. Both personal and yet public, both sacred and yet practical. That the exact nature of the union is a mystery to me at a philosophical and spiritual level and yet has a familiarity that calls for the label “paradox.”
Fidelity has been for centuries a gut desire; we, ourselves, may desire to not live by the intrinsic rule that governs our gut in the pursuit of our personal fulfillment, but should our spouse or partner become unfaithful, we cry “foul.” We may give lip service that we’re liberated souls, casting off old-fashion notions of faithfulness and commitment, when in reality, when we become the one affected, our cry changes; at the core, each of us desires fidelity from our partner.
There are many faces and stages of love; we morph in and out of them; somehow, my generation has mistakenly ascribed to the passionate, infatuation stage as the litmus test for “love” – I’d blame Hollywood and the media for inculcating an ideal that does not exist except that we are culpable for having fed the beast. The blame starts with us, individually first and foremost.
I believe that if women started to understand that a man’s word for love is respect, and if men started to understand the deep, pervasive cry of a woman’s soul to know she is loved, we might start having healthier relationships. While I agree both love and respect are required from each party, I believe experientially that men struggle to love and women struggle to respect; thus the directive intentionally address weaknesses in both parties. And of course, perhaps it would be fair to admit that I paraphrased the Apostle Paul. Plagiarized is too harsh. ;)
The classic model of male head-of-household has its problems, too. Turns out that women are actual people, you troublesome lot.
No apologies there; while at times I’m harsh on society as a whole, there are some things that have required an attitude change; a more egalitarian, or perhaps better said, complementarian, view of the sexes is a healthier one I would proffer.
Do better than did we on the idea of fulfillment. It’s not always personal, or maybe it’s better to say we need to trust something higher to show us what it is. Not that we’ve done it ourselves, but we can suggest to you that in this very intimate matter we need obedience to a greater authority than ourselves. (Of course I know what that is for you, Christen.) Then that list of techniques to keep both the romance and the contract alive will be blessed.
And therein lies my battle plan should the occasion ever rise. =)