Every time two bright-eyed young lovebirds come to me for premarital counseling in preparation for their wedding day, I’m conflicted. As much as I’d love to get on board with their saccharine visions of love and marriage, I feel obligated to tell them the truth, and the truth about marriage is that it’s a grind. No couple stays together forever because they feel like it. Making your marriage last will take everything out of you, push you to sanity’s brink, and make you question what you thought you knew about love. Staying with the same person “till death do you part” is one of the hardest things you’ll ever do – and the same is true for the person who stays with you.
The difficulty of matrimony is evidenced by the fact that nearly half of all marriages end in divorce, with even higher rates of divorce among people who get married before age 24, cohabitate before marriage, have children before marriage, and/or live below the poverty line. Because so many marriages end in failure – and we should be real about divorce being a kind of failure – fewer Americans than ever before are actively seeking marriage. In 1920, 85% of American adults were married. By 1960, that number had dipped below 75%. And in the 2010s, for the first time in our nation’s history, less than half of all American adults were married.
And matrimony’s degree of difficulty appears to be a huge reason why so many people today are staying single. Many unmarried Americans have developed a “why bother” approach to nuptials (Why bother, if it’s probably going to end in divorce anyway?), a mentality that has also infected the minds of many married people as well (Why bother staying married if I’m not happy?).
Tim Keller writes, “Marriage is glorious but hard. It’s a burning joy and strength, yet it is also blood, sweat, and tears, humbling defeats and exhausting victories. No marriage that is more than a few weeks old could be described as a fairy tale come true.”
Our expectations of love and marriage have been poisoned by sentimentality. As children, Disney/Pixar movies instilled in us the notion that love is a feeling we’re destined to feel with the person we’re destined to find. As we came of age, those lofty ideals were reinforced by popular novels, sitcoms, and films.
But we have to face the facts: everything the world has taught us about love and marriage is wrong.
Geovanna and I have been married for twenty-two years, eight months, and twenty days – almost exactly twelve million minutes, but who’s counting? – and according to the stats, we’re beating the odds. We were twenty years old on our wedding day, an interracial couple from vastly different cultures. And we were broke. So broke. We were bologna-for-lunch broke.
And it hasn’t always been easy. Early on, especially, our marriage was often a mess. My roots are German, and German folks are known for being stoic and reserved. Her roots are Latin, and her people are known for being…well, the exact opposite of my people. So when we got angry, she would scream, and I would leave. Then she’d get mad at me for leaving instead of screaming back at her like a man, so she screamed at me some more. And I got mad at her for screaming instead of sweeping it under the rug like a lady, so I distanced myself some more.
Before we got married, we never dreamed it would be that way. We had great expectations, and our marriage wasn’t meeting them. In our wedding vows, we called one another soulmates, but it didn’t take long to realize that we weren’t really soulmates after all. So we both privately asked ourselves, “If we’re not soulmates, then why did we even get married? And more importantly, why should we stay married?”
What I’m about to write may not sit well with you, but it’s something that everyone needs to hear: there is no such thing as a soulmate.
In her Psychology Today piece titled “Soul Mates and Other Words I’m Afraid Of,” Dr. Tracey Cleantis writes:
“When a patient comes in and tells me that she/he has just met his or her ‘soul mate’, my highly trained ears respond by going into extreme hyper alert and I metaphorically strap on my seatbelt. For the most part what I hear my client saying is that my patient believes that he/she has just met the person who will complete them (à la Jerry McGuire). And while that might sound wonderful when you hear Tom Cruise saying it when he is playing Jerry, the reality of the soul mate idea is a little more Tom Cruise jumping up and down on Oprah’s couch.”
Nothing in the Bible or in our human experience should ever lead us to believe in the existence of soulmates, or the idea that God has made one person for you, to complete you, if you find them. That’s not how love and marriage work. Marriage isn’t about finding your soulmate and living happily ever after; it’s about two people growing in love and grace in such a way that, after years of victories and defeats and joy and self-denial, they wake up one morning and realize that, but for the grace of God, they might have given up long ago and missed out on something truly beautiful.
Marriage is hard and joyous because it is a reflection of the gospel, and while the gospel is always simple, it’s almost never easy. Marriage isn’t always like Christmas morning, full of wonder and gifts; it’s often like Christmas Eve, full of waiting and what-ifs. The gospel proclaims the glory of our God without ignoring the depravity of our sin, and so does a great marriage.
Notice how the Apostle Paul illustrated the link between the Christian life in general and married life more specifically:
So then, putting away falsehood, let all of us speak truth to our neighbors, for we are members of one another. Be angry but do not sin; do not let the sun go down on your anger, and do not make room for the devil. Let no evil talk come out of your mouths, but only what is useful for building up, as there is need, so that your words may give grace to those who hear. Put away from you all bitterness and wrath and anger and wrangling and slander, together with all malice, and be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ has forgiven you. Submit to one another out of reverence for Christ. Wives, submit yourselves to your husbands as you do to the Lord…husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the Church and gave himself up for her…
– Ephesians 4:25-32, 5:21-22, 25
Most people seem to think that Paul’s teachings about marriage begin with “Wives, submit to your husbands…” but take a closer look. Paul was writing about the entirety of Christian life – including marriage – throughout this entire passage. When he wrote, “Submit to one another out of reverence for Christ,” he was writing about Christian marriage.
And when he wrote, “Put away bitterness and be tenderhearted and forgive each other.”
And when he wrote, “Let no evil talk come out of your mouths, so that your words may give grace to those who hear.”
And when he wrote, “Put away falsehood.”
We should consider all of these writings to be instructions for Christian marriage – not just the ones about submission (although the importance of submission in marriage cannot be overstated).
All of Paul’s instructions for Christian living and marriage can be summed up this way: Be gracious. Husbands and wives: extend grace to one another.
When I was young, I thought being gracious to my wife meant avoiding conflict and bottling up my frustrations, but that’s not grace; that’s just passive aggression. And Geo thought love looked like a shouting match, but that’s not love. That’s just aggressive aggression.
Once again, here’s Tim Keller on the importance of grace in marriage:
“This is the only kind of relationship that will really transform us. Love without truth is sentimentality; it supports and affirms us but keeps us in denial about our flaws. Truth without love is harshness; it gives us information but in such a way that we cannot really hear it. God’s saving love in Christ, however, is marked by both radical truthfulness about who we are and yet also radical, unconditional commitment to us. The merciful commitment strengthens us to see the truth about ourselves and repent. The conviction and repentance moves us to cling to and rest in God’s mercy and grace.”
I know what it’s like when the years take their toll, and when it seems like you’ve offered grace upon grace, but nothing’s really changed. Anyone who has been married understands what that’s like.
Marriage is hard – beyond hard, really. So hard, in fact, that it can feel like a sacrifice.
Or like a cross to bear.
So why get married, and stay that way? Because after the cross comes the empty tomb. Through trial and self-denial come joy and salvation.
The last twelve million minutes have shown me what marriage is really all about. It’s not about finding the right person and then feeling happy together. It’s about two sinners choosing each other and trusting God’s grace to keep them together. By choosing me every day since June 5, 1999, my wife has shown me the grace of God, and I’m a better man for it. By God’s grace, I’ve witnessed a similar transformation in her heart as well.
Marriage at its finest is the grace of God transforming two selfish sinners into two selfless partners who lay down their lives for each other.
