Why marry?
I mentioned in Saturday's Marriage links for the week that Irene had written a few recent posts about marriage. She posed a question in one that I felt a need to respond to:
Yesterday I was driving Emmy (my housemate) and I to a nearby shopping mall when I asked her if it was ok to get married for companionship or because we're lonely. After all, if God said , "It is not good for man to be alone"…
She said no. Yeah our gut feeling is to say no, you shouldn't marry just because you're lonely, or you shouldn't marry for companionship alone. But why? Or rather, why not?
Why get married at all? It's a good question to ask, both generally and specifically. Here's what the book of Genesis says:
Then the LORD God said, "It is not good for the man to be alone; I will make him a helper suitable for him."…
So the LORD God caused a deep sleep to fall upon the man, and he slept; then He took one of his ribs and closed up the flesh at that place. The LORD God fashioned into a woman the rib which He had taken from the man, and brought her to the man. The man said,
This is now bone of my bones,
And flesh of my flesh;
She shall be called Woman,
Because she was taken out of Man.For this reason a man shall leave his father and his mother, and be joined to his wife; and they shall become one flesh.
We should get married because God created us (most of us, anyway) for marriage. I think it's okay to marry for companionship. I think companionship is actually the main reason to marry. But that's just a general rule, not necessarily applicable to a situation in which one considers the possibility of spending a lifetime with a specific person. Here's another general rule: "Because we're in love" is a terrible reason to get married, if by "in love" you mean the intense physical and emotional response brought on by another person's presence. If being "in love" is the foundation of a relationship, the relationship can't and won't last. It is a feeling both blissful and ecstatic, but also unsustainable. It is good for a married couple to be in love, to have that infatuation and preoccupation with one another from time to time. It's like having icing on your cake after a satisfying meal. But that feeling can overpower rationality and even impede growth and hamper a deepening of the intimacy two people can share, and therefore can't be the basis of any successful relationship.
Reasons for marrying a specific person vary with every couple. When I considered proposing to my best friend, I took into account several things:
- She made me a better person. Different people draw out different facets of my personality, but she drew out nearly every positive trait I have (including some I wasn't aware of before I met her) while minimizing nearly every negative trait.
- We were spiritually compatible.
- Our simple goals (to serve God, to serve others, to raise a loving family) were the same, and we could work together to achieve them.
- Long before we met each other, we each decided that sex was an intimacy to be experienced only between a husband and wife, and we had both lived accordingly. At the ages of 23 (her) and 26 (me), we were both feeling a sense of…um…urgency.
- I had a desire to make a real difference in people's lives coupled with an utter inability to do so. Mrs. Happy, on the other hand, had that ability in spades but could not financially afford to dedicate her life to it. If we married, she could work for peanuts and change the world while I took care of her financially working at a pointless job (writing computer manuals). In that way, my pointless job was given real meaning.
- I had invested a great deal of time and effort into our friendship. Our lives were already almost inextricable. Marriage was the only further step available, and it was nearly unavoidable.
- I simply could not imagine living the rest of my life without her.
Those were just some of my practical reasons for proposing. There were definitely other reasons, reasons that can't really be put into words—emotional reasons, spiritual reasons, reasons that you might even call mystical. They all boil down to one thing: marriage (this specific marriage) felt right, and remaining single and apart from each other felt wrong. We reached a point where we felt that every day that we weren't married was just a day we spent running on a relational treadmill, having fun and learning about each other but not making progress consistent with our effort. It took us three years to reach that point, three years so full that they felt like a lifetime. The years since have been even fuller. Whatever reasons we had, whatever feelings compelled us, whatever guidance we received from loved ones and from God, they have worked out. Messy Christian said in a recent post:
Marriage means the end. I don't want to end up having that perfect suburban life because it terrifies me. Because then I'll end up like everyone else, part of this endless cycle of marriage, birth and debts; part of millions. I want something more than that.
Well, MC, marriage is more than that when the husband and wife are both committed to making it so. A good friend brings out the best in you. A good spouse brings out more good than you could ever have on your own. Two people who do that for each other make for an amazing couple, and a fuller life than I could ever imagine.
