Marriage as Manna, Part 3
- By Jon Hagen
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- 01 Sep, 2018
Marriage was not Designed to Exist Alone
| "There are things I want to tell you but don't feel like I can because you're too easily hurt." It was a Saturday night, years ago, and I was speeding down Pelham Road with my wife beside me. I was ticked. We had just left the house of some friends where we spent two hours discussing a chapter in a book on marriage. The evening had gone well until the last few minutes of the meeting when Tamarah let the other couple know we had had no real conflicts since our last meeting because we hadn't really talked at any depth during that time.
I couldn't believe she exposed us like that to the other couple. So in my passive-aggressive style, I was giving Tamarah the silent treatment and driving like a hellion to let her know I wasn't happy. Eventually, when I couldn't stand it any longer, I asked her why she made the comment to the other couple at the very end of our meeting. That's when she gave me the, "There are things I want to tell you" comment.
That proved to be one of several important turning points in the history of our marriage. Her observation stung me, but it also got my attention. What if there was some truth to what she was saying about me? So I kept asking questions about the validity of her experiences of being married to me. The more questions I asked, the more trouble I discovered. It was both painful and transforming. It was also generated in the context of meeting with another couple.
As I've noted in previous posts, most of the really troubled couples that come to see me for marriage counseling share a common denominator: they are functionally isolated from other marriages as a couple. It's one thing for him to have his guy friends and for her to have her girl friends; it's another thing for couples to have couple friends. Biblical wisdom says that two are better than one, and if that's true for singles then wouldn't that also be true for marriages?
A well-tended marriage grows into a storehouse of embedded knowledge that is meant, at least in part, to contribute to the wellbeing of other marriages. Neglecting this truth and gift is to once again treat marriage like manna. Not only do you have to wake up to the same thing every day for forty years, there's also the real and serious attempt within marriage to get more out of your spouse than any spouse can give, to create a narrative about your spouse's thoughts and motives that are self-serving, and to romanticize your past and fantasize your future.
For those very reasons, we should take seriously the Bible's teaching that we not trust ourselves regardless of how healthy we think we are. It's entirely possible that we're being blinded by our pride. Or that we're misapplying the Bible. Or that we're seeing "signs from God" when we're really fooling ourselves via bias confirmation. Or that we're assessing the situation culturally and listening to our worldly ambitions instead of to what God may be doing.
To account for all of those potential weaknesses, Tamarah and I have intentionally placed our marriage deep in other marriages who are aiming for the same goals we are. We've been building relational bridges to our marriage like this for nearly two decades now. It's a risky proposition, just as all transparency is.
What we can tell you is that the reward is worth the risk. Recent examples come from meeting with one couple over dinner at the back of Fuddruckers in a corner booth, and the other just nine days ago with another couple that ended up with an impromptu prayer time at a table and chairs on Main Street on a crowded Saturday night.
The dinner at Fuddruckers included the husband asking me a couple pointed questions that ended up challenging me pretty significantly. I was caught off guard, I didn't have good answers, and I had to sit there for a few minutes to take it in. As hard as it was to hear what he had to say, his willingness to "go there" is one of the reasons we value their friendship. The other couple's very public prayer time with us was pure encouragement as they did what they could to support and hold us up with the burdens we carry.
Because marriage was not designed to exist alone. |
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