Congratulations Lydia de Jong!!! You have won The Mystery of Marriage - thanks for playing along.
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“Fields of gold by Eva Cassidy. The beauty of that is just unbelievable to me and gets me through almost everything:-)”
Conversations is written on (most) Fridays to examine someone else’s take on love and marriage – and then discuss what we think about it amongst ourselves!
When I first saw a photo of this sculpture by Edwina Sandys, it took my breath away. And not in a “beauty and awe” sort of way. More like a “someone just kicked me in the stomach and then stole my puppy” sort of way. It looked so daunting and violent. It looked like the artist was saying that marriage is a trick - that it looks like it will be beautiful and lovely but turns out to be harsh and dangerous. I felt like it portrayed marriage as the ultimate hot bed of violence and violation!
Then I watched an interview with the artist. I was expecting a woman from another part of the world, talking about being forced into an arranged marriage. I expected to see someone dark and cynical and wounded. But what I found was a woman in her 60’s – light and straightforward. She explained that she set out to demonstrate that marriage is both soft and cruel; happy and sad. She said that this piece was meant to simply communicate that “marriage is not always a bed of roses.”
I don’t think that it is divided in this way - half beautiful and half painful – roses and spikes split neatly down the middle. But I think many people think about the pain found in marriage this way. It is almost as if some people believe that if you are very careful, you can figure out how to stay on the soft side of things and stay safe in your marriage.
I propose that marriage is indeed all roses. Both beautiful and dangerous. Fragrant. And yet, when you get close, you might be pricked by a thorn. Coming close to another means they will eventually hurt you because we are all beautiful, bumbling messes. There are days that the beauty may outweigh the pain; others when pain wins. But who are we kidding if we believe that we ever go a day - a minute – without both pain and beauty being a part of things? Who we are and what we do is informed by the ways we have wounded and been wounded; informed by the beauty we have both witnessed and created. So even in moments of beauty, we experience the moment through the lens of someone who has also known pain. And when we see pain, we know that beauty also exists and this informs the way we receive that pain.
You cannot have one part of marriage without the other. You cannot have one part of a person without having the other. The beauty and the pain is not something that we move in and out of. We are in both of them at the same time, all of the time.
Josh and Mandy Wright have been married for nearly 11 years. They live in St. Louis, MO with their three kiddos!I don’t know that I’ve ever really thought too much about leaving my marriage—my daydreams are about what things would have been like had I never gotten married, or if I had gotten married or had kids later in life. We were married and had kids at a very young age, and that has presented a unique set of challenges for Mandy and I to contend with. When I dream about a change in my marital circumstances, the dream typically involves some path that avoided those challenges.
I can’t say I really think about leaving my marriage. Not because things have been sooo easy but because I know that God gave me Josh to bless me. I really believe that, and my desire to receive those future blessings that He has for me and my family get me through the rough times.
Less financial stress, fewer impediments to the pursuit of my career and educational goals, more time to run and play guitar. I think every man wants to be free, wants to find his fortune, wants to make a name for himself. Any time you feel some insecurity or dissatisfaction relating to one of these ideals, it’s the most natural thing in the world to rationalize the discomfort by blaming your wife.
Sometimes I think that it would be exhilarating to be doted over and longed for by someone; just like I was by my husband before he captured my heart.
from the flickr photostream of notquitealmost
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“To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything, and your heart will certainly be wrung and possibly be broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact, you must give your heart to no one, not even to an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements; lock it up safe in the casket of your selfishness. But in that casket - safe, dark, motionless, airless - it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable. The alternative to tragedy, or at least to the risk of tragedy, is damnation. The only place outside Heaven where you can be perfectly safe from all the dangers and perturbations of love is Hell.”
- C.S. Lewis
Something I appreciate about people like C.S. Lewis and Mike Mason is that they had the foresight to tell their readers what love is. What marriage is. So often, I stumble across books and conversations that tell me how to be married. What to do. But learning the actions, or even the attitude, of a healthy and happy wife does me little good if I don’t know what it is that I am doing. If I don’t know what marriage is. If I don’t know what love is.
All of us have had some part of our pre-married understanding of what marriage is shattered or at least challenged. It is inevitable. This break down in understanding and expectations is where a lot of us begin a downward spiral towards divorce. If I don’t know what marriage is, then as my marriage is not meeting my expectations, I begin to assume it is all wrong. My marriage, that is, not my expectations. It is easy to fall into the trap of believing that our expectations are the base line and that if the marriage moves away from this base line, then something is dreadfully wrong.
But knowing what marriage actually is brings clarity and peace. It does not make it easier, necessarily, but it does bring peace. I am grateful for these words about vulnerability and love. Because they allow me to make sense of what is happening in my life; in my marriage. These words allow me to step back on a very hard day and say, “I feel this way because being vulnerable is gut-wrenching. So this feeling has to do with being close to Herb. It does not (necessarily) have anything to do with Herb himself or the marriage being an abomination!”
Knowing that vulnerability causes a strong reaction, I can step back and figure out what my unique reaction tends to be when I am feeling raw and open and at risk for being hurt. From my perspective, vulnerability is the thing that could allow me to be completely loved. Or destroyed. This doesn’t appeal to me. So, instead of embracing it, I reject it. In my life, vulnerability often gets passed over and unrecognized. Because instead of realizing I am feeling vulnerable, I go right to anger. I don’t like being exposed or fully seen. If I am fully seen, what will he think? And then, what will he do? I have already answered that question in my mind: he will leave me. So I become angry. I feel angry. I act angry. And I assume it is because I can’t stand him. Because I don’t like our life together. Because I am miserable being his wife. That is when I want to leave. And for so long, I have mistaken it for hate. When I become that angry, I feel like I hate him. And so it seems logical that if I hate him, I should not be married to him.
But what I need is awareness of what is actually happening. I don’t hate him. I hate being seen by him. Because I am scared. Scared he will leave me. What I mistook for hate towards my husband is actually the opposite - I love him so much that the thought of loosing him or being left by him is more painful than anything I have ever experienced. On my most sane days, I am able to take this information that I have gathered about how I respond to being vulnerable with Herb, and I can then try and make choices that build us up. This is not to be mistaken as a big pink bow, tying up the delima, but rather a tattered map, giving a little bit of direction in the midst of a difficult journey.
“(Starting in the 1970’s) Newly empowered, women across America turned to men and began insisting on levels of emotional intimacy that most men - raised under the old regime - were not readily able to meet.
The new marriage takes the stability, the building of a life together, that was the whole of marriage a generation ago, and grafts onto it the expectations of a lifelong romance - deep talks, exciting times, and great sex.
Contemporary women have two “sets” of relationship strategies: the traditional set handed down from the beginning of the twentieth century, and the “liberated” set handed down from the end of the twentieth century. Neither gets you the love you want and deserve.”
- Terrence Real, The New Rules of Marriage: What you Need to Know to Make Love Work
pages 6, 8, & 9
When I read these first few pages last spring, something clicked inside about why Herb and I operate on such different playing fields sometimes. And if you read only one book on marriage this year, please please please make it this one. I do not think you will regret it!
In this book, Real suggests that women in Western culture are an entirely different species than they were just 50 years ago, whereas men have not changed much in that time. While women have been on a wild journey, have a completely new perspective on things, and are craving different things from our marriages, men are left slack jawed, confused about all of the commotion going on around them.
Our culture and lifestyle no longer requires the “companionship marriages” that worked so well during the farming days of the first part of the twentieth century. He did this. She did that. And they came together at the end of the day to fall into bed together once they knew that the cows and horses and children were all secured for the night. It was a partnership, to be sure, but one in which they were often forced to divide and conquer in order to survive. They did not have the luxury of taking long walks on the beach during that two week vacation every summer. Paying a babysitter $10/hour while they lingered over small plates and wine would have been unheard of. Small plates are what you ate once the Great Depression hit - not an overpriced foodie trend! It was not practical or even on their radar.
Whether this model was “fair” or “right”, I think it made some sense during that time. In the 1950’s and 60’s, we started to see the dark side of the model. The husband went to work. The wife stayed home. Both partners were not equally appreciated (and it goes without saying which partner fell into which category). By the late 60’s the ladies were fed up with that nonsense and they revolted. And thank goodness for them! It was time for a change and they were very courageous in demanding it!
So here we are. 2009. We are equal in so many ways that our grandmothers did not even dream to think about pursuing. Things sure are not perfect, and it certainly took too long for such a drastic shift to finally occur, but let’s all be fair - we have come a long way in a short amount of time.
And yet.
And yet, we are not completely content, are we?
We want things that were not valued in marriage 50 or 100 years ago. We want to be partnered in every aspect possible. We want to talk, and pick out the brand of diapers together, and have a whirlwind romance together. We want intimacy to cover every part of our culturally new interdependent relationship. Because our husbands have not been handed the legacy of the past two generations that women have been given, their heads are spinning as they try to catch up. Sweet guys. They are, in many ways, okay with the companionship model. While so many of them have more respect for their wives, they don’t have the desire to share every thought, feeling, and trip to Costco! Romance is for wooing a woman and the thought of continuing to do so throughout the entire marriage is confusing to some guys.
I am very lucky to have found an evolved man. He is still trying to figure out the romance thing, but he does the dishes and talks about his feelings and likes to cuddle after love making (if we are being honest, he likes this last part more than I do!). Many of you who I know personally also have pretty amazing husbands who are very different than the stereotypical 30-something male during the 1950’s. And yet.
So now the question is this:
If what we want (more intimacy) is a fair thing to ask for (and it IS), how do we get it?
Real asserts that this is where women have been left unequipped by our mothers. During the 1960’s and 70’s, they had to be very loud in order to catch the attention of an entire culture and cause the tectonic plates of thousands of years of gender roles to drastically shift. They had to make some noise if they were going to be heard. And then they did a disservice to us by passing down the idea that if you want to be heard you have to be a loud, angry bitch. While it may seem sad or silly or unfortunate to us, it is easy to see how they came to this conclusion. I mean, sure, if you are having trouble obtaining equal rights for women in the workforce, I can see how being a loud angry bitch might be necessary. But it does not seem to have the same impact as we are shouting: “Buy me flowers and take me to dinner, and not just on my birthday, damnit!” For some reason, guys just don’t feel compelled to respond well to that. Go figure. But now we are stuck with two choices: be silent and go with the flow, or raise your voice and be a bitch.
I don’t know about you, but neither approach works in my marriage (I will let you guess which one I have tried more often). Real’s book tries to give women a new arsenal to use in communicating with our husbands and getting our needs met. Thank you Mr. Real, we appreciate a dude’s perspective that both honors our needs and also gives a little insight into what men respond to.
What have you found to be helpful as you try to integrate 21st century desires for intimacy into the 20th century model of companionship marriage? In what ways is your marriage opperating in the 20th century? In what ways have you successfully steered your way into the 21st century? The more we discuss these things, the more likely we can all enjoy healthier marriages.
As always, if you found something here that made you scratch your head (for good or for bad), shout it out - we would love to hear your voice!
“Love is patient . . . “ 1 Corinthians 13:4
I am listening to the song of a very large wind chime out the window. And it’s song reminds me of patience. It is deep and low. Slow. Quiet. Certainly not in a hurry. It waits for the next gust of wind, happy to respond when it comes but not causing it to happen.
If I were to personify this old wind chime and its sounds, I imagine an old grandfather, probably chubby and teddy bear-like in all the right ways, sitting on a bench, waiting for his grandchild. He is in no hurry. No rush. He is not worried about moving along, and yet, he is completely engaged. He watches his grandchild play and move about with commitment and interest. He finds joy in the watching. In the waiting. He savors this time. Though there are other things to do today, he knows that this matters too. This time is valuable, even though it might not appear that way to the naked eye.
As I shared on Wednesday (and heard a resounding “YES!” from you), I find that it is so easy to become disinterested and frustrated with the state of affairs in my relationship with Herb. I see things I don’t like; maybe things that worry me. And I want change now. When I moan and complain about what we are or what we are not, Herb often reminds me to consider one important thing: context. So, when I say, “We don’t have sex as often as So-And-So, what is wrong with us???”, he gently reminds me that he is an entrepreneur that comes home tired and that I live with a great deal of physical pain that often puts me in bed by 9 PM. And not in bed in a sexy sort of way. More like a comatose, fleece-clad sort of way.
Context. Reality. Breath.
Patience.
I want to sit back and enjoy my marriage the way it is today. I want to give it a break for not being all I hoped it would be. I want to appreciate what is, and let it be what it needs to be (or even, just is) today. It will be so interesting to see what it grows into; what it becomes. If I (or any of us, really) leave now, it would certainly put an end to the irritating process of waiting; the pain of living in a marriage that sometimes feels incongruent with who I am and what I want. And I would completely walk away from everything that my marriage would be after this season.
Sitting on the park bench, watching my young marriage leap and stumble is so hard sometimes. I watch as it skins its knees and drinks juice boxes (okay, boxed wine). It spends too much time on the merry-go-round and rarely tries out the swings. Oh, it can be so frustrating to watch. I just want to charge through the sandy playground, grab that little rascal of a marriage by its ear and drag it over to the other toys. Make it grow up faster. Do different things. Do what I want it to do. But if I did that, it would not become what it really is. It would be sort of skewed and tainted with my harsh words and expectations. And so I wait. With hands folded neatly in my lap. And I watch. I wait. I strive to be patient.
What is it like for you to be patient with your marriage as it grows and changes over time?
(If you see anything here that you like, disagreed with, or related to, leave a comment! I would love to hear your voice!)
“It is not intimacy itself that is so distasteful and intimidating to the world but rather the moral condemnation that comes with it. People crave closeness with one another, but are repelled by the sin that such closeness inevitably uncovers in themselves: the selfish motives that are unmasked, the pettiness that spills out, the monstrous new image of self that emerges as it struggles so pitifully to have its own way.”
- Mike Mason, The Mystery of Marriage (page 94)
For the past few years, I have been interested in the concept of living in community. The idea is for a few families to intentionally come together and participate in life as a group. For some, it might involve sharing a living space; for others, it might mean living in close proximity like my friends Kevin and Latonya do with three of their neighbors. Meals, chores, errands, struggles, children, spiritual journeys – all parts of life are openly and honestly shared and worked on together. I often feel lost in the concrete jungle that is urban living, so in theory, this modern day throw-back to living in tribes brings me a sense of comfort and belonging in a world that is fast-paced and autonomous.
In the past few months, Herb and I have talked very informally with two different couples about living this way in the distant future. And in both instances, I felt myself emotionally back away from the idea. In one conversation I told the husband of a very old friend, “Well, you love me now, but my fear is that if we live so close you will see all of my wounds and issues and you won’t like me anymore.”
If we allow others close – really close – what will they see? What will they think? And is that something that I – let’s be honest, we - want to deal with? Can we hold the weight of the truth that surfaces when we are completely exposed in front of another person?
Most of us ask these questions in our day-to-day lives; it is a normal part of the internal dialogue we hold as we decide how close to allow our friends. And yet, so many of us entered into marriage with carefree confidence in our decision to marry our partners! For a culture which so highly values protecting ourselves from being completely seen by our friends, in order to maintain their admiration and appreciation, I must ask: what did we think would happen in marriage? That we would continue this dance of monitoring exactly which parts of ourselves are dispensed to the other person? Did we think that our spouse would see us completely but that the love we have for our each other would have a supernatural ability to free us from seeing those flaws and wounds in a negative light? Did we assume our love would free us from being hurt by the negative way our partner sometimes responds to seeing us completely?
Many years ago, my friend Andy was telling anyone who would listen about John Eldridge’s book Wild at Heart. As Andy, with reverence in his voice, described Eldridge’s idea that a man has a deep internal need to have “a beauty to rescue”, I was repulsed. Aside from the disturbing and offensive connotation that I am little more than Princess Peach, stuck in a tower, until Mario comes to save me, I found the idea terrifying. As I imagined myself holding onto my prince by the waist as his white horse raced past the ogres and castle guards, over fiery drawbridges and moats filled with crocodiles, I cringed. What would happen to me when, after all was said and done, my prince turned around as the horse finally slowed to a walk, and said, “Oh. I risked everything for this? For you?”
What then?
For Herb and I, this is exactly how it happened (give or take an ogre or two). Herb could not have known what it would be like to see all of me. He knew I was not perfect, but still, he idealized me in a way that resulted in complete surprise and dismay when my deepest self was exposed. He was unprepared. And I was unprepared for what it would feel like to be completely exposed; to have all of my woundedness revealed. And I caused insult to injury in the way I approached my already disillusioned husband as I dealt with it all. Do not worry – this story has two sides – I was equally surprised and hurt by some of the truest parts of my husband that were exposed after our wedding day.
After six months of marriage, divorce made so much more sense to me than it had before. In the past, I had ignorantly assumed that divorce was the result of infidelity or not trying hard enough. I humbly retract these over-generalizations, with full understanding now, that many divorces are simply the result of the shock, dismay, and anger that can come with being completely exposed by another person. What I am slowly learning is that if we use our hands to hold and comfort the other in their exposed state (instead of using them to push the other away so they cannot see us in our equally exposed state), we will all be much better off.
How have you experienced the complete exposure of yourself that comes with marriage?
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