Professional Documents
Culture Documents
The Marriage Manifesto: Turning Your World Upside Down by Kelly M. Flanagan, Ph.D. Copyright 2012 Kelly Flanagan, drkellyflanagan.com. All rights reserved. This manuscript is a Readers Copy. First electronic edition to be published in the United States by YourDigitalBook.com Some parts of this book have appeared previously as blog posts at drkellyflanagan.com. Cover design by Kristin K. Vanden Hoek You are welcome to use a short excerpt of this book for review or critique purposes. For more information and other queries, contact drkellyflanagan@gmail.com.
CONTENTS
Acknowledgments Preface Introduction: Consuming Marriage Chapter 1: Marriage is for Losers Chapter 1 : Marriage is for Boundaries Chapter 2: Insurrection in the Vows Chapter 3: A Newlywed Uprising Chapter 4: The Rebellious Way to Fight Chapter 5: Revolution When the Loneliness Sets In Chapter 6: A Rebellion for the Years of Familiarity Chapter 7: An Uprising on Easy Street Conclusion: Beyond Marriage About the Author
Acknowledgments
To my wifemy best friend and co-conspirator. To my childrenwho have shown me that rebellion can be dignified. To my friendsbecause every rebel needs a safe place to lick his wounds. To my clientswhose courage inspires me to write. And to youif it werent for your readership, this would be written in a journal and stashed in my bedside table.
Preface
I recently pulled Stephen Kings On Writing off the shelf. I opened its pages to discover them warped and water-stained. Mold had grown inside the cover. The book was fattened by moisture long since evaporated. I scratched my head, wondering when it had last rained in my office. And then I remembered. In the spring of 2004, my wife and I packed up all of our belongings and our nine-month-old son in a small U-Haul, and moved from State College, Pennsylvania, to a western suburb of Chicago. We had completed our course work in clinical psychology, and we were setting out to begin our internships at two Chicago hospitals. Chicago was having a rainy season, and the U-Haul roof had a hole in it. My books got the worst of it. I remember that day clearly, because it was the first day of the most difficult year of my life and the most painful year of our marriage. My wife was commuting into the city at 6am every day, arriving home near dark most nights. In between, I was delivering and retrieving our son from daycare, squeezing in my own internship, and trying to remain sane. When your back is against the wall like thatwhen you have no money (thankfully, the Chipotle restaurant manager thought our kid was cute and gave us plenty of free food), no time, no energy, and no way outyou have two choices: get scared and run, or get angry and fight.
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We fought. In one of our deepest valleys, a door was slammed so hard in our tiny, rented apartment that the frame was cracked right out of the plaster. My wife and I are pretty determined people, and our marriage has always been number one. But I think there were plenty of moments in that year when we wondered if we could make it. The truth is we might not have, if we had continued to expect our marriage to fulfill all of our hearts desires. The brown-tattered pages of On Writing are a reminder to me. They are a reminder of what can happen in our lives when we remain determined to redeem the pain and to make the place of suffering the birthplace of transformation. When we decide we will trade in our competitive selves for a sacrificial life. When we trade in divisive blame for a healing compassion. When we trade in comfort for the long-hard work of companionship. When we trade in our neediness for service. When we trade in our strength and perfection for weakness and vulnerability. When we trade in certainty for wonder and mystery. The pages of our lonely, painful stories may remain warped and stained by our historywe cannot change the past. But we can begin to write new, redemptive chapters in our lifestories. And your marriage can be a beautiful new chapter. Are you ready to write your story?
We are persuaded of this by advertisements for the new gadget with a slightly higher resolution screen, by supermarket aisles with fifty kinds of cereal in any flavor we prefer, by clothing stores with twenty styles of blue jeans, by six different coffee shops within a mile, by churches in which we can choose the caffeinated drink of our choice to sip on during the worship service in the style we prefer on the day we want to attend. As I write this, the world is anticipating with bated breath the release of the iPhone 5. On the day it is released, millions of consumers will stand in line and trade in perfectly good in fact, greatphones in order to receive the newest product. The new phone will cost hundreds of dollars. And Ill be honest, if my current contract permitted it, Id be tempted to join the lines. How does this happen? We have been convinced. Convinced we have a right to the newest things, the best products, and any commodity that will make us happy now. Convinced the world is meant to provide us with what we want. Convinced we are entitled to all the things we need. Even if it means we have to choke down the turkey like its a speed-eating contest, so we can get on with the buying. And I think there is even worse news: Thanksgiving may have succumbed to consumerism only recently, but marriage succumbed to consumerism decades ago. Without even knowing it, many of us have begun to experience marriage like a product.
marriages to survive, they must become the site of rebellion against a commodity culture knit together by our narcissism and selfishness. If our marriages are to survive and to thrive, we must rebel against our role as the consumer, and we must become the consumed. We must be consumed by love. The way our children love stands in stark contrast to the way we have been encouraged to love by our global culture. Whereas we love something based upon what we choose and what it can do for us, our children love because love has chosen them. Every one of my children has had a beloved stuffed animal: a ragged bear named Mimi, a tattered carnival prize called Moaning Myrtle the Turtle, and a soiled rabbit named Fidel. Three kids, and not one of them ever approached me and said, Daddy, my stuffed animal just isnt doing it for me anymore. I think its time to upgrade. My children love their stuffed animals unconditionally. Not because the animals are perfect and not because there are no other alternatives. Our kids love their stuffed animals because, in the cribbefore they were bombarded by a consumer culture of commercials and store aisles and toy cataloguesthey were consumed by love. They were consumed by a deep and unconditional attachment and commitment to this stuffed thing. And once we are consumed by that kind of love, it becomes a stronghold against the commodification of our loved ones. Places of unconditional love in this commodified world are, quite simply, pockets of uprising.
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Marriage is a call to this kind of rebellious lovean opportunity for souls to learn the insurrectional art of unconditional love and sacrifice. It is a training grounda rebel training camp for a people preparing to invade a broken, aching world with a grace-filled love. In these pages, we will sound the rebel call. Chapter 1 will lay the groundwork, exploring the radical transformation that occurs when we rebel against a competitive culture and become sacrificial. Subsequent chapters will provide a roadmap for rebellion at the various stages of marriage: The wedding vows as rebellious, authentic commitment (Chapter 2) The newlywed years as an opportunity to trade in self-protection for vulnerability (Chapter 3) Inevitable periods of marital conflict as the way to let go of our egos and find unity (Chapter 4) Times of loneliness as the site of rebellion against a culture of achievementand an opportunity to become true companions (Chapter 5) The long, familiar years of marriage as an opportunity to trade in certainty for wonder and mystery (Chapter 6) The successes of marriage as the doorway out of compulsive progress and into a life of gratitude (Chapter 7) Are you ready to live your marriage as a radical, redemptive rebellion?
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These are the truly abusive marriages, the ones in which one spouse dominates, the other submits, and in the process, both husband and wife are stripped of their dignity. These are the marriages of addicts and enablers, tyrants and slaves, and they may be the saddest marriages of all. But there is a third kind of marriage. The third kind of marriage is not perfect, not even close. But a decision has been made, and two people have decided to love each other to the limit, and to sacrifice the most important thing of allthemselves. In these marriages, losing becomes a way of life, a competition to see who can listen to, care for, serve, forgive, and accept the other the most. The marriage becomes a competition to see who can change in ways that are most healing to the other, to see who can give of themselves in ways that most increase the dignity and strength of the other. These marriages form people who can be humble and merciful and loving and peaceful. And they are revolutionary, in the purest sense of the word.
physically and emotionally. But even in the best of situations, we found ourselves trying to win the competition for our parents attention and approval, for our peers acceptance, and for the validating stamp of a world with one message: win. And so, cultivating a marriage in which losing is the mutual norm becomes a radically counter-cultural act. To sit in the marital therapy room is to incite a rebellion.
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A Marriage Rebellion
In marriage, losing is letting go of the need to fix everything for your partner, listening to their darkest parts with a heartache rather than a solution. Its being even more present in the painful moments than in the good times. Its finding ways to be humble and open, even when everything in you says that youre right and they are wrong. Its doing what is right and good for your spouse, even when big things need to be sacrificed, like a job, or a relationship, or an ego. It is forgiveness, quickly and voluntarily. It is eliminating anything from your lifeeven the things you loveif they are keeping you from attending, caring, and serving. It is seeking peace by accepting the healthy but crazy-making things about your partner because, you remember, those were the things you fell in love with in the first place. It is knowing that your spouse will never fully understand you, will never truly love you unconditionallybecause they are a broken creature, tooand loving them to the end anyway.
Transformed Losers
Maybe marriage, when its lived by two losers in a household culture of mutual surrender, is just the training we need to walk through this worlda world that wants to chew you up and spit you outwithout the constant fear of getting the short end of the stick. Maybe we need to be formed in such a way that winning loses its glamour, so we can sacrifice the competition in favor of people. Maybe what we need, really,
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is to become a bunch of losers in a world that is being torn apart by the competition to win. If we did that, maybe wed be able to sleep a little easier at night, look our loved ones in the eyes, forgive and forget, and clap for the people around us. I think that in a marriage of losers, a synergy happens and all of life can explode into a kind of rebellion that is brighter than the sun. The really good rebellionsthe ones that last and make the world a better placeare like that, arent they? They heal, they restore. They are big, and they shine like the sun. And, like the sun, their gravitational pull is almost irresistible.
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We become terrified of this loneliness. Dark bedrooms and boogie monsters and playground anxiety and new schools and no one who understands and countless ways of feeling abandoned. But then our adolescence rolls around, and we discover a solution to our loneliness. Its called dating. We discover that our romantic partners shine light into the dark places of our isolation. Our boyfriends and girlfriends are one with us. And so we cling to them. People call them crushes, but we know the truth: we feel like we cannot exist without them. We decide this is the way out of the loneliness and fear. All this is well and good. Normal development. Natural. Unless we are also ashamed.
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We are terrified of loneliness and convinced we are damaged goods. So, when someone takes us inwhen a boyfriend or girlfriend or husband or wife actually commits to uswe decide we will do anything to maintain the relationship. Even if it means sacrificing our self-respect and dignity and right to be treated humanely. We drop our boundaries completely and take on all the responsibility for apologizing, sacrificing, affirming, and being generous and supportive. I think we all carry some shame and we are all seeking to solve it in some way: through popularity or achievement or by constantly seeking the winners circle. We all engage in some sacrifice of healthy boundaries, even if it is simply sacrificing healthy sleep patterns in favor of work and the hope of accolades. However, for the Type 2 loser, the sacrifice of dignity in the hopes of maintaining a relationship becomes a daily shame-management practice and marriage is the playing field.
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In your case, marriage is about beginning to believe in your own worthiness. Redemption will look like you reading the rest of this book and deciding that, finally, it is time for someone to sacrifice for you. It will begin with facing your fear of loneliness, embracing the truth that loneliness is a part of life and not your fault. You will learn the art of being alone and you will discover you are worthy, even if no one is around. Believing you are worthy, you will find places in the world to which you belongpeople who value you and are willing to sacrifice for you. They will accept your imperfections and shower you with grace in your mess. And as you enter into all of this, you will begin to learn the fine art of balancing love and sacrifice with good boundaries and self-respect. So, dear Reader, if this is you, read this book with a new vision. Give it to the people in your life who need to hear it. And if the ghosts are lurking and their whispers are loud, give yourself the grace of finding a therapist. But not a marital therapist. Find a therapist to see you individually. Make a courageous stand and face into all your shame and sense of unworthiness. Do it with someone well-trained to lead you through it, not with your spouse whose lifestyle is dependent upon you not changing. If you do this, your marriage may thrive. Or it may end. But one thing is for sure: nothing will ever be the same. And that kind of redemption will be very good. Very, very good.
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courtroom battle, because our marital commitments are a faade. I think at the wedding altar, many of usprobably half of usare making a consumer commitment, not a marriage commitment. Ill prove it to you.
A Smile or a Grimace?
Watch them. He stands waiting. Brow glistening. His friends lined up behind him like faithful penguins. And the doors open and she appears radiant and bathed in white and she begins to glide toward him and her face is like the sun. And his smile widens and now his eyes are glistening. With a blessing from her father, their hands are joined and they turn to face the person who will walk them through the ritual, joining them forever. The questions are asked. Do you take this man to be your husband? Do you take this woman to be your wife? For better or worse? And, from both, I do. Watch them. Watch closely. Something is off. They make this for-better-or-worse promise, this eternal commitment of their hearts, this gutsycourageous vow to remain through anythingheartache and a lost baby and a house fire and joblessness and sickness and pestilence and even death. And how do they make this promise? With a smile. In fact, they look downright relieved. Watch them closely, because they are finalizing their marital commitment with the kind of smile you would wield while making a 1-Click purchase on Amazon.
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treat our marriages like a business. Or approach them the way we would the PTA or the kids guitar lessons or our blogs and other social commitments. With focus and intentionality and regularity. Can you imagine investing your entire lifes savings into a business, opening the doors, and then sitting back and heaving a sigh of relief, as if the hard work is already done? It would spell doom for the business. And yet, in the most valuable endeavor of our lives, as the moment of the wedding day vow fades into memory, we abandon intentionality in our marriages. The birthday flowers no longer get purchased, the kids get a hug on the way out the door but your spouse doesnt, your time together is focused on others rather than each other, and your energy is given away to every other priority. I think this is actually a key secret to the success of marital therapy. As a marital therapist, Im not doing anything miraculous. I dont often have a bunch of cards up my sleeveno magic. But I do provide a dedicated space, an hour of intentionality every week. An hour to face each other and to say in words and action, You matter, we matter, this is my first priority right now. An hour a week to slow down, to communicate meticulously, to go deeper into the most important parts of our hearts, and to rediscover the promise of the wedding altar. This kind of intentionality is hard work, but the muscles of our love are starving for the exercise. They need to be stretched and torn and to become stronger in the healing.
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Not so long agoas my wife was ambushing me with her brilliance and her beauty and our kids were still beyond imaginingI was a young, eager, graduate student and researcher at Penn State University. And I was determined to unearth the secrets to marital bliss. More than one hundred couples participated in my dissertation research, and I watched hundreds of hours of videotaped arguments between spouses who had been married for less than a year. And I was shocked by what I observed. Although the marriages had just begunthe taste of wedding cake had barely faded from their tonguesthe conversations revealed that every spouse was already blaming their partner for inflicting deep wounds upon them. I was confused and intrigued. These were newlywed couplesthe lifespan of the marriage was too short to have already produced the depth of wounds these spouses were ascribing to each other. So, what was going on?
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Inevitably, though, when the honeymoon tan has faded and the challenge of day-to-day loving has begun, the person to whom we have so recently pledged eternal allegiance begins to rub up against our wounds. Unknowingly, they pour salt on the wounds of a lifetime. And as the wounds are rubbed raw, we howl with the pain. We begin to blame, and we unwittingly enter into another liewe tell our partners they have caused our wound, and we lay the full responsibility for its healing at their feet. But it simply isnt true.
an aching need to be treated gently, or to have your worthiness affirmed, or to be granted ample freedom and space within your relationship. But regardless of how the wounds got there, they hurt. And the more a wound hurts, the more we protect it. We protect it because our wounds are our vulnerability. Our wounds expose us and reveal the painful fullness of the stories we have lived. Blaming our spouses is less painful than wading into the origins of the wound itself, and it is certainly less risky than explaining and exposing our vulnerability to our new life partner. So, we protect our wounds with blame and contempt and bitterness and angry demands for healing. But in the process, we become enslaved to the wound and to the cycle of blame.
Freedom in Confession
Freedom from the wound and the blame can only be found in confession. Confession is the redemption of blame and invincibility. The couples who transform my psychotherapy office into a confession booth are the marriages that find healing. They confess the lie, first to themselves and then to their partner. Although this kind of honesty can be terrifying, they do the gutsy-courageous thing, and they trade in blame for vulnerability. They become story-tellers, sharing the fullness of their own stories and the depth of their life-long wounds. They confess that the needs they brought into the marriage were born in a particular relationship at a particular stage of life, and they share the ache of a wound that may never be fully healed, because the people who originally inflicted the wound cant (or wont) be a part of healing it. They quit demanding for their partner to bestow a healing word or a corrective action. Instead, with fear and trembling, they
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enter into the vulnerability of a powerless request for a graceful love. The power of this kind of confession is transformational, no matter where it happens. I remember witnessing this kind of confession. In my living room. I stay home with my kids on Fridays and, invariably, while Im grilling the cheese sandwiches for lunch, the playful, other-room noises of my four-year-old son and twoyear-old daughter morph into a wail of injustice and hurt. After one particularly loud wail, I walked in to find Quinn standing over Caitlin, and he was holding something pink. You dont have to watch CSI to dissect what had happened: There was a fight for something and the smaller kid got knocked down. I looked at Quinn, and his chin jutted out so far I was surprised he didnt fall over. His eyes got hard and defiant and his protest began. I struggled to stay calm, I looked at him, and I asked for the truth. And my broken, hurting, lovely son confessed. The chin went from jutting to trembling, the eyes went from hard to wet, and the sadness welled up in his voice, a softchoking confessionDaddy, I'm sorry, I pushed her because it isnt fair that I have to share my stuff but you never make her share hers. Quinn confessed the wound of a middle child, living sandwiched in unfairnessDaddy, heres my wound, and Im sorry about the ways I try to heal it with demands and violence. And do you know what happens when a confession like that takes place? Quinn tumbled into my arms, and Caitlin got up and hugged him, and we walked out of the room together.
honesty and authenticity and vulnerability and tenderness and connectedness. And the act of confession becomes an event of transformation. The shame of our wounds loses its power to bind us and isolate us. The walls we build around ourselves are torn down and our broken places become a place of connectedness, instead of places of wounded hiding. We become creatures set free to live and to love. We become fractured creatures sutured together into a beautiful new creation. It doesnt look perfect, but it looks like the brilliant paradox of two remaining two, yet becoming one. I think it's time to turn the verbal boxing rings of our living rooms and bedrooms into confessional booths. This kind of honesty would be revolutionary in our world in which invincibility is king, confession is an invitation for a lawsuit, blame is the fabric of politics and religion and kitchen table debates, and vulnerability is thought of as weakness. If, as newlyweds, we entered into the vulnerability of a confessional way of life, what kind of stories would we tell a world mired in isolation and loneliness? I think we would tell stories of a selfless love and of a redemptive, healing connectedness. So, are you ready to be revolutionary? Will you dare to be vulnerable?
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at it like a magic eye poster. We need to stare past the glitz and glamour of the wedding day, stare past the false promise of life-long satisfaction and personal gratification, stare past the false hope of turning chaos into order with the exchange of two metal rings. And as we look more deeply into the marriage altar, we may glimpse a new image emerging from the randomness and chaos. We may see the wedding altar for what it is: an altar of sacrificea place our egos are meant to die. If we look long enough, and if we can embrace this image of the wedding altar, we may yet have a fighting chance of standing with our partner, rather than constantly facing off against them. As our egos dieand our need to be right and powerful and safe dies with themwe may become free to embrace a radical kind of acceptance. We may be free to accept: Our spouse is another flawed creature, with whom we are trying to solve the real problem of life and living. Our lives are stressful and chaotic and sometimes no one is to blame for it. Our partner is not responsible for taking away all of our loneliness and inadequacy. The redemption of this life is not found in being right, but rather in being together.
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might stand side-by-side and march out into the world, armed with a sense of unity, a willingness to sacrifice themselves for something bigger, and a commitment to love others regardless of the cost to ourselves. That we might decide, finally, to find an enemy worth fighting against. Enemies like hunger and homelessness and parentlessness, and conflict itself. Tonight, one in seven people on this planet will go to bed hungry. Tonight, in the wealthiest country in the world, more than a million people will be without shelter. In the time it took you to read this chapter, approximately fifteen African children became AIDS orphans. In 2012, a record-setting 275 Chicagoans had been murdered. By the beginning of summer. Primarily due to gang violence. Says one Chicago police officer, "Instead of a bullet with somebody's name on it, we have a bullet that reads 'To whom it may concern.' And yet, tonight we will go to bed with our backs to each other, fighting about who started the fight, who is most responsible for the kids disrespect, or who left the toilet seat up. Or the color of a coffee mug. Lets stop blaming each other, and lets find an enemy worth fighting against. Lets put our egos to death, and lets stand with our spouses. Somewhere right now, there is a person, not so different than you, with an empty stomach and empty pockets. Or a family with no support, and no place to lay their heads. Or a kid dying for a story to live and a set of parents who will narrate it for her. Or a teenager with no authority figure except his
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gang and his gun. The world is aching for people who have learned the freedom of unity and compassion, who are ready to wield them like weapons, firing salvos of love into dark and crumbling places. And in the midst of the training, may you learn that your partner is not an enemy combatant. You may come to know them as another freedom fighter, one who will always have your back, one who will never leave you alone in the trenches.
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Psychologists have a catalogue of disorders. Its called the DSM, and its thicker than a Bible. But one disease is not listed, and its one that destroys marriages. Its called loneliness. It corrupts marriages. But it may also be the answer to saving them.
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Lonely is the growing man in a freshman dorm, surrounded by noise and scared to death. Lonely is the new employee on her first day at a new job, sitting in a bustling cafeteria at a table of one. Lonely is the earnest effort to reveal your heart to another, and confusion on the face of the person you love. As long as you are human and breathing, there is a little lonely kid with big eyes and a trembling heart somewhere inside of you.
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But we ultimately discover the lonely space is infinite, and no crowd is big enough to fill it. We think we can erase the loneliness problem with sex. At the moment of orgasm, most people will describe a sense of oneness with their sexual partner, even if they dont know their name. The distinction between self and other is erased and our loneliness is obliterated. For a moment. But by the time we wake up, our psychic walls have returned and we are lonely again. So, we become dependent on the sexual experience for connection. We turn our partners into machinesdispensers of onenessand when they fail to do so we go looking elsewhere. We think we can conquer our loneliness with achievement. As lonely little boys and girls, we look around and the winners seem to be saturated with attention and adoration. So, we find something to conquer. We seek fame and wealth and accolades. Yet, when the admiration rolls in, the loneliness seems bigger than ever. We end up with big jobs and big houses and an even bigger hole gaping in our hearts.
and think we have, finally, earned the companionship that will annihilate our loneliness. But if the many cant heal our loneliness, how can the one? The answer? They cant. Despite our best efforts, we will come to discover that, in this life, our loneliness can never be taken away completely. But the hopelessness of this possibility seems too much to endure, so instead we blame. We accuse our spouses of being defective. We get bitter and angry and resentful. And in the process, we make our loneliness complete.
And this is love. Real love is not adolescent romance made eternal. Real love is two souls, lonely by nature and nurture, caring enough for themselves and each other to make their loneliness tangible to the other. No more crowds, no more sexual plunder, no more achievement. Just the courage of a naked vulnerability. The grace of two souls holding each other gently in their loneliness. Isnt the world desperate for this kind of light, this kind of communion? Isnt this the way we learn to minister to a world with big eyes and trembling hearts? As the long years of marriage roll out ahead of you, you will find yourselves in valleys of loneliness. Its inevitable. But rather than a valley of despair, may it become a place of companionship, and may you take that kind of radical love into a humanity that is hanging on to hope by the thinnest of threads.
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the answer to our disconnectedness, or that a particular neighborhood is the answer to our childrens education and future. Or we eat kale and expensive vitamins and we think we have found the answer for perfect health. Or we settle on a particular religion or theology, so we wont have to wonder anymore. We can purchase a sense of certainty and safety. For a while. But, inevitably, something happens: an accident, or a diagnosis, or an affair. Or maybe nothing happens, and we simply notice the gnawing sense of unease has returnedthe questions are back, and we resume our desperate scramble for answers. As it turns out, solutions do not bring the peace and freedom for which we are so desperately searching.
We even come to marital therapy and believe it is an event with a conclusion; we think it too is a process that resolves. We hope we will find the Promised Land of marital bliss. But approaching marriage in this way is devastating to the people we love. The dictionary defines the word resolve like this: to settle or find a solution to a problem; to break into component parts; to disintegrate. When we try to make our partners less messy, when we seek a final understanding of who they are, we disintegrate them. We take the awesome, breathtaking complexity of a whole creature with an infinite interior world, and we fragment them into something less than they are.
peace and freedom with which they were uttered. As it turns out, peace and freedom come when we relinquish the safety of certainty and embrace the wonder of mystery.
Mysterious Marriages
How might we enter into this kind of mystery and revel in it? I think we can begin by dipping our toes into the on-going, unsolvable mystery of the people to whom weve committed our lives. I think our marriages could be a training ground
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for a people learning to revel in the mystery. Because the truth is, we are all walking mysteries, even to ourselves. If we can never fully know our own depths, how can we expect to fully comprehend the depths of another? Our husbands and wives are bottomless mysteries that defy solving, and we are left no choice but to live in their mystery. If we could embrace our spouses as a mystery, we would realize that when our spouses say to us, You dont know me, they arent actually asking for us to figure them out they dont want to be solved like a puzzle. They are hoping we will step into the complicated and messy process of connecting with them, and they are hoping we will make it the endless work of our lives. Lately, Ive been encouraging couples to stop looking for solutions to their marital problems. Ive been encouraging them to quit trying to clean up the mess of marriage by organizing their spouse into known parts. Instead, Ive been encouraging them to wade knee-deep into the glorious catastrophe of two souls pledged to each other for life. If our marriages could become that kind of racea race that forsakes the finish line and seeks only the messy joy of the marathonI think we would transform our running partners: they would cease to be dis-integrated problems to be solved, and they would become never-ending mysteries with infinite value and dignity and freedom. And we might be transformed into a childlike people, trading the safe harbor of feeble, temporary answers for the vulnerability and wonder of endless questions. I think we might live our relationships and our lives soaked in the freedom and peace of a child discovering. We might stare entranced at a spider web and wonder at its complexity. We might look at a night sky and marvel at the vastness. We
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might look into the rebellious eyes of our child and melt at the mysterious universe behind them. We might trade in the violence of certainty for the aweinspiring peace of the mystery, and in doing so we may unleash freedom in our marriages, and in our families, and in our friendships, and in a world being held captive by the need for certainty. And the mess of marriage would remain a mess. But it would become a mysterious mess in which we can joyfully make our home.
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questions define our worth. Everything is headed somewhere, and if you arent headed somewhere with your hair on fire, youll be left behind. We absorb this obsession with progress, and our marriages and families are not spared. Never satisfied with where we are, we seek better jobs, bigger homes, more prestigious schools, and earlier retirement. But if our marriages are to satisfy, they must be a sanctuary from this kind of compulsive progress. We must find a way to anchor our souls in the things we knew about our spouses on our honeymoon. I know what youre thinking. Isnt this some kind of Pollyanna-rose-colored-glasses view of marriage? Hasnt this manifesto been arguing that marriages are sunk by exactly this kind of idealism? But here Im not talking about idealism. Im talking about realism. Realism saturated with gratitude.
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not they will stay together. Not what they say. But how they say it. The couples who recall the early days of their relationship the good and the bad timeswith smiles and laughter and softness are more likely to stay married. When I meet with a couple for the first time in my office, I administer this interview, and I look for the signs. I want to see if this couple can remember. Can they remember those early years? Have they protected that place in their hearts? Have they clung to a sense of gratitude for the dawn of their relationship?
Grateful Realism
The early years of a relationship are, circumstantially, often the most difficult. Early careers, job transitions, lean finances. Rented apartments and sketchy landlords. Drafty windows and thin walls. Clothes from resale shops and wine from the bottom rack. Leftovers and cheap fast food. Tiny televisions and rabbit-ear antennae. Toilet seats always up and clothes never in the hamper. Broken pasts and uncertain futures. The early years of our romance and marriage are often a mess. And yet we find ourselves, in the midst of it all, deeply grateful for the otherthis person who wants to be with us in the mess and somehow transforms it into the deepest of satisfactions. We cherish our partners in those years. When their fuse is short, our patience is long. When they screw up, we take them out to dinner. We forsake the to-do lists for long mornings under the covers.
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And we are able to do all of this because it is enough. The compulsion to progress and get better and have more has not yet overtaken us. We are lost in a sense of thanksgiving for all of it. The truth is, the couples who can hold on to this place of thanksgiving in their hearts are the couples who heave a deep and contented sigh during their 50th anniversary dance.
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And we must remember with gratitude. We must forsake our thirst for progress and allow ourselves to be quenched by love. We must be determined to find that place of thanksgiving and satisfaction in our hearts. If our marriages can be this kind of redemptive event nurturing our sense of gratitude, regardless of circumstance and situation and statuswe may yet be transformed into a resilient and courageous people. If we can remember that peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and crappy wine and love was enough to see us through anything, the fear of uncertainty and messiness will recede. We will float on the calm waters of gratitude, and the undulating sea of life will lose its power to sicken us. And next to us in the boat of life? A life-long shipmate, the same one who set sail with us, and the very one who will disembark with us on the other shore.
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of your marriage, but if even a single opening remains, your marriage will continue to be infested with a consumer mentality and your spouse will remain just another beloved commodity. We need to find the last hole and close it for good. For most of us, this is the final hole: we want to redeem our marriages from this consumer mentality so that our marriages will become everything we have always wanted. But if the desire to eliminate a consumer mentality from our marriage is rooted in the hope that our marriage will finally become the product we have always wanted, then the consumer mentality remains inherent in the reason for transforming the marriage. Our motivation for change actually acts like a Trojan Horse, smuggling consumerism into the marriage. So, how do we escape the reaches of consumerism? How do we fill this final hole? If we want to keep consumerism out of our marriages once and for all, we have to change the very reason we are transforming our marriages. We will have to realize that marriage was never intended to be an end in itself.
Rebellious Marriage
We must not transform our marriages for the sake of the marriage. We must embrace the truth that marriage is always intended to point beyond itself. We must decide that marriage is not an end, but a means to an end. Marriage is never meant to be the place where we are finally satisfied. Marriage is meant to be the beginning of an insurrection. An uprising on a global scale.
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I think marriage is intended to be a rebel training ground, an institution that undermines all others. I think marriage is meant to be a redemptive event through which the broken systems of our world are turned upside down. I think marriage teaches us to live in radically counter-cultural ways, because this broken crumbling world cannot be healed by anything less than a radical, crazy love. In a hyper-competitive world, our sacrifice is rebellion. In a world of instant gratification and whimsical exchangeability, our commitment is rebellion. In a world of strength and might and power, our vulnerability is rebellion. In a divisive and condemning world, our unity is rebellion. In an isolated and fractured world, our companionship is rebellion. In a world obsessed with certainty and safety, to live in mystery with hearts ruptured by wonder is rebellion. In a world of compulsive progress and dissatisfaction, our gratitude is rebellion. In a world seeking comfort and pleasure, our compassion is rebellion.
Its Time
Go. Be a loser and live sacrificially. Go. Be committed and give birth to the joy of it. Go. Be vulnerable and heal the world with your authenticity. Go. Be unified and shower the world with compassion. Together. Go. Be lonely with a world aching for communion.
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Go. Be a mess and create space for wonder in a mysterious world. Go. Be grateful and bring peace. Right here and right now. And may your marriage turn our world upside down. May your marriage be a sacred doorway through which you walk transformed and prepared to transform a world simply bursting with the anticipation of a redemptive event. And may your marriage be a beacon for a world of souls hungry for a new way and thirsty for a love that finally quenches.
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