The other day, I came across a fine post by Sheila Wray Gregoire of Belleville, Ontario, Canada. I thought that many of you might enjoy this as well:
If an alien were to peruse the magazines at the checkout counter, he or she would likely conclude that humans are all masochists: we’re inexplicably drawn to the institution of marriage even though we know our partners will cheat on us, denigrate us, and complain about our lack of bedroom prowess. Our kids, reading those same headlines, are likely to become disenchanted with the institution, too. Marriage is a pipe dream. The most we can hope for is a few years of happiness before it all falls apart.
After all, even beauty, that most prized possession, can’t keep a spouse in line. Tiger’s wife is beautiful. Sandra Bullock is beautiful. Jennifer Aniston was beautiful. But their husbands all ran around on them. And women aren’t that much better. Angelina Jolie, by some accounts, seems to be copying Brad Pitt’s infidelity in spades.
Disastrous relationships and celebrity seem to go hand in hand, of course, from as far back as Cleopatra. But today it’s not just celebrities whose marriages are failing. Many kids who have witnessed family breakdown firsthand. Those they know and love couldn’t make it work, so why should they expect to find lifelong companionship themselves?
Let me attempt to answer that question. Yes, marriage is hard. Yes, people can have affairs. But despite the epidemic of non-commitment in Hollywood, more than 50% of marriages do survive in the here and now—and the rate is higher for first-time marriages. Sure many marriages fail, but it’s not as if the institution is dead.
Thinking marriage is going to fail, though, can become a self-fulfilling prophecy. If we figure marriage is doomed, we’re far less likely to look for someone that we can see ourselves growing old with, and far more likely to seek someone to be with right now. That can cause immense heartbreak, but also more seriously it can lead to pregnancies that hand us the hardest job in the world—parenthood—without a partner to shoulder the burdens and the joys with. When we don’t believe in long-term relationships, we often get too involved in short-term ones, even if these short-term ones have long-term consequences.
The problems with forsaking life-time commitment don’t just fall on those who have yet to say “I do”, though; they chase those who have already promised it. When people think that they can run if things aren’t going their way, they’re far less likely to work on problems. And if you feel like your commitment isn’t solid, you’re less likely to bring up problems, too. Your marriage can’t grow.
Yet problems don’t have to signal the end of a relationship. In their book, The Case for Marriage: Why Married People Are Happier, Healthier, and Better Off Financially, Linda Waite and Maggie Gallagher reported on a five-year study of couples who rated their marriages as terrible. Those who divorced in that five-year span were less likely to be personally happy than those who stuck it out. But even more striking, 78% of couples who stayed in their marriages, even during the tough times, five years later rated those marriages as very good. In other words, if your marriage is in the toilet, it’s not necessarily time to flush it.
You have to believe in marriage to see it work: it’s just too hard to keep a relationship together when one person has left the escape hatch open. Yes, people can cheat on you. Yes, they can betray you. Maybe you’ve already been married and you’ve experienced this firsthand. But it doesn’t mean that all potential spouses will forsake you. Most marriages still work. And marriage is worth fighting for, because life is just too lonely without someone to walk through it with us.
(You can read Sheila Wray Gregoire’s blog here. You might also want one of her books including: Honey, I Don’t Have a Headache Tonight: Help for women who want to get more in the mood”)
What a wonderfully refreshing post. Marriage DOES work. The problem is one spouse bails when trouble hits. Sticking it out does make sense in the long run. There’s a real trend for WOMEN to abandon their husbands these days because they are not “happy.”
Is it time for a Promise Keepers movement for females?
David
http://www.redletterbelievers.com
There are far too many who are willing to abandon their relationships when trouble comes along. And the trend is for women to walk on their husbands. They expect to be “happy” and have read far too many books on the perfect mate. Is it time for a Promise Keepers movement for christian females?
David
http://www.redletterbelievers.com
At the risk of oversimplifying, I think you might have missed the point of the article, David. There was no blame placed on either party when a marriage fails. I don’t know who you’re listening to or what you’re reading, but nothing in this was about women who “walk on their husbands” as being a cause of why marriages fall apart.
The fact is that we bring all of ourselves into a marriage: the good, the bad, and the ugly. If we don’t know how to deal with each other’s bad and ugly, we’re setting ourselves up for disappointment. We are saying that we only accept the person for the good, and that is a really shoddy foundation for a marriage. It gives the partners an “out”: “Oh, wow, I had no idea he/she was really like this! Maybe I better just get out now before the stuff hits the fan”.
Rather, in a marriage, we accept everything, good, bad, and ugly. We support each other in making the good great, the bad into good, and the ugly into beautiful. If we are not willing to do this work, it shows up as willingness to walk away, since all we are doing is watching out for number one. If we don’t understand this, we’re risking playing the “perfect mate” game, failing to grow ourselves, and be the kind of people we need to be. Both men and women need to do this work; gender has nothing to do with it.