Lesson from the School of Marriage

Sometimes I am curious about other people's marriages. Not so much out of prurient interest, but because in my own relatively short experience, marriage is mysterious. Sometimes difficult, but satisfying, and deserving of a good amount of safeguarding and care, though what kind I don't always know how to provide in a very intentional way. The contemporary conventional wisdom seems focused almost exclusively on keeping one's marriage full of sparks and romance. And I'm really less concerned about that than about the overall quality of my marriage. Not because I think mine is especially fussy or complex, but because it's one of the most important commitments we make, yet it happens largely in privacy. I have the sense that in our culture at this historical time, we expect a lot from marriage--that it should be passionate, companionate, fulfilling, inspiring, cooperative, and restorative--while other relationships that have traditionally surrounded marriage, like relationships with big groups of siblings and cousins, friends that are both local and lifelong, and churches to which whole communities belong, have dropped out of the picture, leaving marriage to do quite a lot of work on its own. And we're all trying to figure it out on our own, since the traditional marital roles have entered a state of flux.

I've had at least three girlfriends--educated, empowered, professional women (feminists!)--confide in me that in the crucible of their marriages, at least one argument has gotten out of hand and ended with some kind of shove or slap. It's just really hard sometimes, I think. In many ways, it's easier to have healthy relationships with friends where the terms are always defined in mutually satisfying ways. If you don't agree on something, like taste in movies, you just don't go to movies together. But in marriage, your lives are so intertwined that you can't just redefine the terms to allow you both to have what you want. I can't really ever imagine Sam and me coming to blows; neither of us has that particular variety of temper. At our worst, we smolder and then unleash some kind of sarcastic hyperbole, or maybe regale each other with a series of longsuffering complaints, settle on a solution by one of us wearing the other down, and then pat ourselves on the back for our creativity in problem-solving. It's not especially pretty, but it's our process, and we've learned to shortcut it most of the time.

To be completely honest, I would say that one of the strengths of our marriage is that Sam is better at marriage than I am in some important ways. I contribute by doing a lot of the routine domestic work (laundry, cooking, most of the cleaning, etc.), while Sam does yard work, endless home repair, bills, and assorted boy chores like taking out the trash. In that respect, we are both competent in the labor we've divided between ourselves. I have more rules about how I want the household organized (no shoes worn in the house); Sam requires more idiosyncratic favors and services (his milk always kept in the front of the fridge). As is obvious from this discussion, neither of us is very low maintenance AT ALL. But where Sam truly exceeds me in marital virtue, and in contribution to our marital happiness, I think, is that he is genuinely, from the heart, by nature and by habit, waaay more forbearing and forgiving than I am (he points out that he also has a terrible memory, and this helps. But still.).

In the past few days, I've had a couple of conversations that have put forgiveness on my mind. Then, in church, we were singing this song I like with this very heartfelt expression of the desire to be like Christ, and I had a moment to experience it fully because Sam had just taken AC out to the nursery, so I wasn't distracted by wrangling her. And it came to me profoundly that this God--whom I say I want to be like--forgave the people who were, paradigmatically, nailing him to the cross. Inflicting excruciating, mortal pain. And I, on the other hand, have trouble forgiving my husband, whom I love most of all, and moreover who loves me most tenderly and sweetly and consistently of all.

And I thought, wow, do I have a long way to go.