On Marriage

Beginning a Marriage

Why bother to get married at all?

In the words of the traditional Christian wedding service, "God has established and sanctified marriage for the welfare and happiness of humankind." While true, that cannot be the end of the discussion for modern people.

This is a more pressing question now than it has ever been in previous times. In the past it was a given that to become an adult member of society you married and had children, and the vast majority of people did so. But younger adults in Western countries today postpone marriage at unprecedented rates. Nearly a third of all millennials in the United States may stay unmarried through age forty, and 25 percent may not marry at all, the highest proportion of any generation in modern history. Why? There are two reasons that so many marriages never begin: economic stress and the rise of individualism in culture.



Fears About Marriage

The economic factor is seen in the widespread belief of single adults that they must be financially secure in a good career before they marry and that, of course, their prospective mate should be as well. The background assumption is that married life is a drain on resources, especially with the arrival of children. Before marrying, it is therefore believed, you should have a guaranteed income stream, adequate savings, and perhaps even an investment portfolio.

However, this view flies in the face of both statistics and tradition. Traditionally, you got married not because you were economically secure and stable, but in order to become so. Marriage brings with it unique economic benefits. Studies show that married couples save significantly more than singles. Spouses can encourage one another to greater levels of self-discipline than can friends. Spouses also provide each other with more support through the trials of life, so that they experience greater physical and mental health than singles.

The other factor in the decline of marriage to which experts point is "expressive individualism." This is a term popularized by sociologists to describe a growing cultural trend. In traditional cultures our personal identity was worked out in our relationships. "Who I am" was defined by my place in a family and community, and perhaps by my place in the universe with God. I became a person of worth as I fulfilled my responsibilities in these relationships. In modern times, however, we have turned inward. "Who I am" must not be determined by what anyone else says or thinks about me. I become a person of worth as I discover my own deepest desires and feelings and express them. Once I determine who I am, then I can enter into relationships, but only with those who accept me on my own terms.

This modern approach to identity is instilled in us by our culture in countless ways. In the 2016 film Moana, the crown princess of a Polynesian island has been told by her father that she is the island's future leader and will have to submit to many traditional responsibilities. But instead, Moana has a desire to set out to sea to find adventure. Her grandmother sings her a song that tells her that her "true self" resides not in her duties and social responsibilities, but in the expression of her inmost desires. She tells Moana that if a "voice inside" her heart tells her to follow her desires, "that voice inside is who you are."

We are assailed by this message at every turn-in television, movies, advertising, classrooms, books, social media, and casual conversation-until it is an unquestioned, virtually invisible assumption about how we become authentic persons.

The effect of this modern self on marriage has been considerable. It means that we do not want to even consider marriage if we have not established our own unique identity. We don't want anyone else to have any say in who we are until we have fully decided it for ourselves. Further, today we expect and even demand that all relationships be transactional, provisional as long as profitable, and never binding and permanent. If impermanence is the standard, then marriage and particularly parenting are deeply problematic since leaving a marriage is difficult and leaving a parenting relationship is essentially impossible. What if a relationship with a spouse or a child gets in the way of your expressing your "true self"?

Many modern people only marry if they believe they have found a spouse who won't try to change them and who will provide emotional and financial resources to help them toward their personal goals.

But it is an illusion to think that we find ourselves only by looking inside, rather than in relationships with those outside of us. In every heart there are deep, multiple, contradictory desires. Fear and anger exist alongside hope and aspiration. We try to sort these contradictory desires, determining which ones are "not really me." But what if they are all a part of me? How do we make decisions about which are "us" and which are not?

The answer is that we come to admire and respect some individuals or groups whose views we then deploy to sift and assess the impulses of our hearts. In other words, contrary to what we are told, we do develop an identity not merely by looking inside but through important relationships and narratives that profoundly shape how we see ourselves. We do not merely look within.

The traditional approach to marriage was wise, in that people knew intuitively that it would profoundly shape and reshape our identity. And that's good-because identity is always worked out in negotiation with significant others in your life. As psychologist Jennifer B. Rhodes put it, "In previous generations people were more willing to make that decision [to marry] and [then] figure it out." What better way to discover who you are than to marry someone you love and respect, and then figure it out together?

So the contemporary decline in marriage is based on two mistaken beliefs about it, namely, that it is a drain economically and it is an impediment to the full realization of our freedom and identity.



Marriage Was Made for Us

Social scientists have marshaled evidence against these two mistaken views, showing how significantly marriage benefits us both economically and psychologically. In addition, they have demonstrated how crucial the traditional family is to the welfare of the young, that children do much better if raised in families of two married parents. But Christians should not be at all surprised by these findings. The book of Genesis tells us that God established marriage even as he created the human race. This should not be understood to teach that every individual adult must be married. Jesus himself was single, and since he stands as the great exemplar of what a human being should be, we cannot insist-as some cultures have-that you must be married to be a fully realized person. But neither can we see marriage, as our own culture does, as merely a development to guard property rights during the Neolithic Age that today can be altered or discarded as we please.

Wendell Berry famously addressed the modern idea that whether we have sex inside marriage or outside is "a completely private decision." He disagreed, saying, "Sex is not and cannot be any individual's 'own business,' nor is it merely the private concern of any couple. Sex, like any other necessary, precious, and volatile power that is commonly held, is everybody's business." Sex outside of marriage creates babies outside of marriages, it often spreads disease, and it habituates us to treat others as pleasure objects rather than persons. All of these have a major impact on social conditions, conditions that affect everyone.

We know this line of thinking is deeply counterintuitive to modern people in the West, but it has been quite natural to most human beings in most places and times. Your choice regarding marriage is not ultimately a private decision. It affects everyone around you.

Marriage was made for us, and the human race was made for marriage.



Fear of Failure

There is another reason many people give to explain the modern reticence to marry. "I saw how difficult my own parents' marriage was, and I don't want that for myself." A fear of strife and marital failure keeps many people from seeking a spouse or, at least, makes them look for a prospective mate with virtually no flaws or personal weaknesses. Some people assume that if their parents divorced, their own future marriage is much more likely to end in divorce.

Joe Pinsker, in an article in The Atlantic, argues that not only does recent research show this is not true, but exposure to bad marriages can give you the resources to build a good one. He gives the example of a man named Justin Lange. After his parents' divorce, Justin saw his mother remarry twice and his father three more times. He concluded that marriage was simply too hard and that he would never enter into it. But he met a woman, fell in love, and is now happily married after all. Why? "He attributes his present happiness . . . to going against the example his parents set." He learned how to build a good marriage by not doing what they had done wrong.

Above all, he recognized his parents' biggest failure-to verbally make a lifetime commitment and then "not be willing to back it up." Divorce is sometimes necessary and the Bible allows for it. But longitudinal studies show that two-thirds of unhappy marriages, if they continue, become happy within five years. Lange learned it was an illusion to believe that if he found the right partner they wouldn't fight like their parents did. He overcame the fear that marriage would be difficult. Of course it would be. He also overcame his fear that there would be fights. Of course there would be. But the secret is not to let these things weaken your commitment to love each other through it all. He said, "You may be upset about whatever mundane thing it is today, but is it going to matter later on? Just let it roll and focus on the important things."



Misunderstanding Sex

There is another reason often given by both researchers as well as men themselves: why males are less interested in marriage than in the past. Researchers point out that the ready availability of sex is one reason for the decline in marriage. We have often heard men tell us the same thing directly: "It used to be that you pretty much had to get married to have a sexual relationship, but that's changed completely."

This attitude views sex as a commodity that used to be expensive. At one time you had to give up your independence through marriage in order to get sex. It was costly, but now it is available more cheaply, as it were. All such talk, however, conceives of sex as a physical and emotional experience that can be just as good if not better outside of marriage as it is inside.

From its very beginning, Christianity brought a revolutionary new understanding of sex into the world. It was seen as just one part-one uniquely joyful, powerful, and inseparable part-of mutual self-giving. To be loved and admired but not truly known is only mildly satisfying. To be known but rejected and not loved is our greatest nightmare. But to become vulnerable and so fully known and yet accepted and fully loved by someone we admire-that is the greatest possible satisfaction. In marriage, spouses lose their independence and so become vulnerable and interdependent. They do not hold themselves back so that they only relate temporarily, provisionally, and transactionally. They give their entire selves to each other-emotionally, physically, legally, economically.

The startling sex ethic of the early Christians was that sex is both a sign and a means for that total self-giving, and that it must not be used for any other purpose. To engage in sex for any other reason was to misunderstand it. Granting access to our physical bodies must be accompanied by the opening of our whole lives to each other through a lifelong marriage covenant. Only in that situation, the early Christians taught, does sex become the unitive and fulfilling act it was meant to be.

This new sexual code of "no sex outside of marriage" startled the Roman world because it seemed highly restrictive. But it actually elevated sex from a mere commodity of pleasure into a way to create the deepest possible bond and community between two human beings, as well as a way to honor and resemble the One who gave himself wholly for us so we could be liberated to give ourselves exclusively to him.

Flee from sexual immorality. . . . Do you not know that your bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have received from God? You are not your own; you were bought at a price. Therefore honor God with your bodies. (1 Corinthians 6:18-20)

Like the citizens of ancient Rome, modern people see the biblical sex ethic as restrictive and unattractive. And yet there are signs and evidences that the supposed outdated Christian view still resonates with our deeper intuitions about sex.



Superconsensual Sex

A woman writing in The New York Times described a sexual encounter with a man she had met on Tinder. She was nearly thirty and he was twenty-four, an age difference that did not seem significant until he began "asking for my consent about nearly everything." He asked if he could take her sweater off and after she said yes he also asked if he could take off her tank top, then her bra. She snorted that he didn't have to ask permission for every little thing. "A dramatic shift" had taken place in the "sexual training" of younger men, leading them to repeatedly ask for verbal consent. After it was all over, she said, "In fact I had liked it as a form of caretaking. I just wasn't used to being taken care of in that way." It had felt very intimate.

Later, however, when she texted him, he did not answer; he simply "ghosted" her. When she told her roommates how hurt she was, they couldn't understand. "Because he asked for my consent, over and over," she explained, "sex felt like a sacred act, and then he disappeared." They didn't understand why she was so hurt but,

. . . in the days and weeks after, I was left thinking that our culture's current approach to consent is too narrow . . . Consent doesn't work if we relegate it exclusively to the sexual realm. Our bodies are only one part of the complex constellation of who we are. To base our culture of consent on the body alone is to expect that caretaking involves only the physical. I wish we could view consent as something that's . . . more about care for the other person, the entire person. . . . Because I don't think many of us would say yes to the question "Is it O.K. if I act like I care about you and then disappear?"