Staying Married

“Do you want to know how to stay married for a long time?”  Expectantly, I perched on the end of my chair as I watched the morning talk show host interview the author of a new marriage book.  (Wedding Toasts I’ll Never Give, Ada Calhoun).  Who doesn’t want to know the secret to marriage longevity?  Because – for half the population – attaining it has proven to be quite a challenge.  In spite of high hopes and touching promises at the beginning of virtually every marriage, the odds of success are underwhelming.  The statistics indicate that there is a problem because somewhere around fifty percent of marriages end in divorce – Higher if it’s a second marriage.

Do you want to know how to stay married for a long time? The question was a tease before the station broke for commercial. I waited for the never ending string of advertisements to finish so I could hear the author’s answer…..and it was worth the wait. The answer was simple, yet profound and I had to agree whole-heartedly.  In three words she articulated a conclusion I had come to after thirty six years of marriage and almost as many years in my profession as I have observed both success and failure.

Want to know how to stay married for a long time?  Don’t get divorced. Period.

Could it possibly be that simple? At face value, it’s a simple answer yet on a deeper level it’s profound and messy.  It speaks to the fact that marriage is both wonderful and very, very hard – sometimes one or the other and sometimes both at the same time. I don’t know how we’ve missed communicating this, but I fear that we have portrayed a false impression for what new couples can expect.

Here’s the common impression of what long-term marriage will be like.  “We love each other so much we can’t imagine being apart.  We recognize that our marriage will be hard and we will surely have challenges (head knowledge) but we will work it out with God’s help and with determination.”  Add in a dose of “God’s will” for the union and couples eagerly vow all kinds of things to each other based on their confidence in the relationship and their great expectation for things to continue as they have been…..with vast reserves of love and attraction and desire.

Consider the vows I’ve actually heard at wedding ceremonies:

• I will never hurt you
• I will be there for you
• I promise to listen to you always
• I will always make you a priority

I still love weddings and I love the wonderful promises that are spoken because – who doesn’t – but most of the time I think, “Well…..good luck with that”,……because I know better.

I fear that we have not had the courage to be honest about this. I’m thinking of the marriage input that I’ve received over the years as I sat under preaching, teaching and conference workshops from ministry leaders, Christian marriage authors and Bible expositors.  As far as I knew (and what they said publically) they had amazing marriages. While lip service was given to the difficult nature of relationships (usually with entertaining stories about a quickly resolved conflict or disagreement) it appeared that they had all married, mature, smart, competent, relationship savvy people who knew how to work it out in spite of minor lapses in judgement.

Lip service was given to the challenge of marriage – because it would be naïve to suggest that it is easy – but everything seemed resolvable with the right tools.

No one mentioned ongoing fights ABOUT THE SAME ISSUE…..over and over again  (in spite of making up – or not – in between eruptions). No one spoke about immaturity in relationship and  chronic insensitivity to one another.  No one referred to a partner who was unable to understand or respond to feelings or emotional need. No one warned about paying dearly for someone else’s repeated lapses in judgment in spite of promises to change. No one spoke of the everyday annoyances that build up over time and lead to self-doubt about the desire to put up with these things for a lifetime.

They did not mention things left unresolved, or repeatedly being less than what you expected, or more annoying or chronically painful then you ever thought it could be.

The truth is marriage is not for the faint of heart.  It requires a lot of resilience and determination.  It will demand that you be the bigger person – even when it’s not your turn.  It calls for maturity – even when it is not reciprocated.  It presents the opportunity for forgiving – over and over and over again.  It will require letting things go – even when they seem really important. Most difficult of all – it requires giving up your freedom to choose alone, to choose as you wish, as you would if it were only up to you. If you don’t think that’s difficult – try it for a while.

You might think that greater success in relationship lies in more closeness, more togetherness, more fusion of needs, wants and desires but here’s the surprise.  Health in relationship is gained by maturity and differentiation.  In other words – growing up and becoming a separate individual.  Health comes by knowing who you are and who they are, knowing how you are the same and how you are different and being secure with those differences. Strong relationships require the mature understanding that no person is entirely responsible for your happiness, your state of mind and your well-being.  While rifts will happen in relationships and you may be hurt or disappointed by another person’s behavior or demeanor they should not have the power to devastate and determine the outcome of your well-being.  Take ownership of your happiness and contentment and yield power in your life only to the Source that will always love you perfectly.

I must be ok with myself first in order to be healthy in the relationship.  I would prefer that my spouse meet my need for unconditional love and secure love by being perfectly attentive in the relationship.  The up-side is that there are moments and hours where he admirably meets that need and it satisfies my inner cravings for acceptance, love, security. Alas, the downside is that he fails and I am left with the gaping hole of my insecurity, fear and loneliness.  But before I judge him and if I am honest, I must admit that I have failed him in the same way – because that is what we do.

Before we sink into despair and encourage people to stay single, let’s remember that the problem is not the challenge of relationship. The problem is the unrealistic expectation that it will not be what it is:  Beautiful and complicated.  Fulfilling and disappointing. Wonderful and painful.

The healthy response to the reality?  Three things:  Celebrate the good things, grieve your disappointments and resolve how you will move forward.

Celebrate the wonderful things about your committed, long term relationship.  Be grateful for the things that work well in the relationship, whatever that is.  Make note of what is good and healthy.  Remember the moments of fulfillment, contentment and well-being. Promote times of attachment and connection.  Continually build on the strengths of the relationship with outside input, learning, reading, prayer or whatever brings life and encouragement.

Secondly, grieve what is disappointing in the relationship.   Acknowledge what is painful and process the pain in whatever manner works for you (sometimes this can be done with the help of your spouse and sometimes it cannot).  By all means pray about your disappointments.  It won’t be a surprise to God nor will admitting it make things worse.

When you have admitted it, forgive. Forgiveness is a part of a healthy grieving process. Forgiveness releases another from the debt they owe you and allows you to let go.  It essentially unlinks the chains the bind you to another and frees you to move on to a bright future.  After all – here’s the key: You too are failing to be all your spouse needs you to be. Remind yourself that you also cannot completely meet all of your partner’s needs, nor totally understand them or see things as they see them.  And this reality causes discomfort for your spouse too.  You, yourself are in need of grace.

The end goal of grief is finding a way to go on so that once you’ve acknowledged the feelings, find a way to move forward.  In order to do that find a way to accommodate what is disappointing. Accommodation means you adjust or shift your behavior and attitudes to accommodate the realities of what is, versus what you would prefer.  It is not permission for another to behave badly (because you have no control over another person’s behavior) but it is a pragmatic shift of perspective to the things that you can control. Admit that your relationship contains brokenness and resolve to take responsibility to meet your aching unmet needs in healthy ways – resourcing your faith, your heavenly Father, your support network.

So how can we prepare couples moving toward marriage?  What can we teach them? Two things:  Kindness and forgiveness.  Be kind. Always.  Even when you don’t understand. Even when you feel hurt or neglected or ignored. Even when they aren’t being kind.

And forgive.  Let it go.  Give the benefit of the doubt.  Extend grace.  When things are amiss and you’ve done your best, grieve, process, take ownership and then let it go.  Let it go.  More quickly, more completely.  And remind your heart that you are in it for the long run. That your goal is permanence and forgiveness.

One thing I can promise with a lot of confidence.  If you stay with it, it will get better.  I promise you.  It gets better for those who stick to it.  Not because your spouse changes or finally gets it (although with God’s grace, they might).  It is because you grow up and you see the one you love over the long run. The immature bloom of early love shifts gradually to a deeper, rooted attachment that comes from walking through hard things together and finding ways to care for one another when it’s difficult.  The unexpected surprise is that the painful parts of the relationship become part of the glue that holds you together.

Want to stay married a long time?  Don’t get a divorce.

NOTE:

Let me say firmly that I am not an advocate for putting up with abuse. No way and never. For the sake of this piece, I’m referring to relationships that do not contain physical or emotional abuse, or unmanaged addictions. If that’s the case, this article will not apply but that’s a discussion for another day.