So recently some friends in my church got married. As part of the reception the church was asked to write down some words of wisdom and give them to the couple. As I began to think about what I could share I realized that the things I wanted to tell them were things that I wished I had known before I got married.
When I got married I had a lot of myths and false expectations. As the marriage progressed I began to understand that what I thought marriage was and what God had designed marriage to be were two very different things. When the divorce happened I was shocked, but I spent a lot of time considering what I had done that I could change. So when I was asked to share with this couple in my church I felt that these things might help others who were engaged, or dating, or even single.
1. Your spouse cannot complete you
This is perhaps the hardest one for me. When I got married I had this idea that now finally my life would be complete. I would have someone who would finish all my sentences and like all the things that I did. I wouldn't need anyone else. I was married.
If I am honest I didn't come to this idea on my own. The churches that I grew up in helped this idea along. Maybe not vocally or even actively, but these churches perpetuated the idea that being married was the perfect relationship. It was the panicle of relationships.
Now don't get me wrong being married is amazing. You have a constant companion, a person you can talk to daily. But, see, being married did not solve all of my loneliness issues. Being married didn't mean that I no longer needed friends. In fact it showed me how much I needed people outside of my spouse.
There are just some things that your spouse can not do for you. In fact there are some things that no person can do for you. God is the only one that can truly complete any of us.
Sometimes in the church we set up marriage as the only relationship that matters. This does harm to both our newlyweds and our singles. It set our newlyweds up for failure when their spouse is not that completion and it alienates our singles.
(Edit: if you want to read more about this I have a whole post on it here.)
2. Expectations can destroy a relationship (or Communication is Key)
This leads nicely into my second lesson. When I got married I had a lot of expectations for my wife. She in turn had a lot of expectations for me. We both walked into the relationship with unsaid needs and desires. We expected the other person to meet these without ever saying anything to them.
We were both at fault. There were so many times that I wanted my wife to do something but said nothing to her. Rather than be honest with her I just ended up resenting her for not doing those things. She in turn did the same to me. This led me to resent her for having those unsaid expectations of me.
The reality is that had we just communicated those things with each other then we would have saved ourselves pain and suffering. There were so many times that had I just said something she would have done it. I would have done anything for her, all she needed to do was ask. There is no way that two people can coexist without communicating.
3. Love is a choice
The first time I heard this I was 18. I thought the person telling me this was insane. Love is not a choice. It is a feeling you get. It’s butterflies and bunny rabbits. The idea that love is a choice sounded cold and methodical.
I realize now the wisdom in that statement. Society tells us that love is a feeling. It’s the butterflies in the stomach. It is the inability to speak. It is the thing that makes your head spin and palms sweaty. This is in fact part of love, but it is not the best part. The problem with this idea of love is that it requires the other person to make me happy. It puts expectations on the other person that cannot always be met. When those expectations are not met we leave. Or in my case, when I no longer made my wife happy she turned to someone else.
But that is not love. Love is a choice. Love says that I choose you regardless of what you do. Now this does not mean that we can go out and just pick anyone (although arranged marriages worked for a very long time). But what this does is it takes the responsibility off of the other person to be something you expect and allows them to be who they are. The crazy thing about this is often what we saw in them in the first place only thrives when they are allowed to be themselves.
So why does this work? Because this is the love that God shows us. He does not love us because of what we do for Him. If we are honest we don't do much. God loves us because he chooses to. He loves us because He wants to.
The funny thing about this is I find it more romantic. Loving someone because of what they do forces them to continue in that way. It is a prison. It makes the person second guess everything they do. It forces them to always worry about making you happy. Loving as a choice is freeing. It is a love that allows the other person to stumble. It allows them to make you angry, or disappoint you, or hurt you. But it is also a love that allows us to be human. Love as a choice frees us to be who we are.
4. Humility is the only way forward
Perhaps the hardest thing I learned about marriage is that it requires humility. Marriage is God's way of bringing all your moldy old junk into the light. It is next to impossible to live with someone and not see the nasty side of them. I'm not talking about how they squeeze toothpaste or the fact that the toilet seat is up. I am talking about the nasty selfish desires we all have. You do not realize how sinful you are until you have to think about another person.
This humility works itself out in so many ways. It is being humble to realize I need to say I'm sorry. But it is also being humble enough to realize that I need to ask for things. (Remember about communication and expectations?) One of the hardest things for me was realizing that if I needed something I should just ask for it. I didn't want to. I didn't want to admit that I needed that. I should be above asking for things. Besides doesn’t asking for things make me selfish? The answer to that is perhaps. But it is more selfish to assume that the other person will just know what you need. Sometimes humility is knowing who we are and being willing to ask for it.
The other side of this is not allowing my selfishness to hinder the other person. You will be hurt. You will be frustrated. You will want to kick and scream and run out of the house. But humility is looking at that other person and saying '"I love you." It is realizing that you are just as human and flawed as them. It is allowing God to work in you and through you.
Humility is realizing that we serve a God who became human. A God who took on all the messiness of humanity to save it. A God who not only died, but died the most humiliating death the world has ever seen. But we also serve a God who rose and is coming again.
A friend recently reminded me that the same power that rose Jesus from the dead lives in us. If that is the case then what do we have to worry about? God will give us the strength to be humble. In fact sometimes he will just hit us with it. But in any case, without humility no marriage can last.
5. Sex is the EKG of a marriage
Recently I have seen a lot of blogs about sex and marriage. This is a great thing. In fact I talk about some of them here. I am happy to see so many people in the church finally being open about sex. The lack of openness is something that I feel has harmed so many. So it appears that it is my time to be open.
The way I see it there are two things sex does for a marriage relationship. First, it acts as Novocain. Remember how that person is going frustrate you? Well at the end of the day most of those things are minor and really don't matter. But you will fixate on them. God designed a way for you to stop fixating and remember that you do love that person. There are just some times when sex helps.
The second thing that sex does, and probably the more important thing, is that it is the culmination of intimacy. See if you are doing all the things above (humility, love as a choice, etc.) then sex will be the natural result. God designed sex to be perfect intimacy this side of glory. Sex is a foretaste of the intimacy we will have with Him in the new creation. (Yes, I know that is weird to think about but it is true.)
Can you see why I say it is the EKG? If I am honest with myself I knew that my marriage was failing long before my wife had an affair. I knew because we weren't have sex. Now it wasn't failing because we weren't having sex. No. We weren't having sex because it was failing. See if we had been humble. If we had been communicating. If we had remembered that love is a choice. Then we would have been having sex. Sex is the measure for health.
Some of you may ask what about the rest of the world? There are numerous people whose whole relationship is built around sex. Yes and those relationships fail. The world likes to joke about how once you get married you stop having sex and this is reason. Because in marriage sex cannot be focus. Sex is the reward. When you put in the time and the work it takes to make the relationship work then the reward is sex. That is why it is the Novocain.
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As you have read over this list I hope it has encouraged you. When my divorce happened I had many people telling me that God would use it. At the time I wasn't ready to hear that. But over the past few months I have realized that they are right. I wish that it hadn't taken me a divorce to realize these things. But if God can use them to help just one person then I rejoice.
One last note to my newlywed friends.
May the God who created love and marriage guide you. May He show you humility (even when you don't want Him to). May you grow in love and understanding of each other. And may your marriage be a long and happy one.
Amen!
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