There are, to be sure, marriages in which one spouse makes inordinate sacrifices for the other, has little or no sense of self apart from that other, and is unable to make even the most basic decisions without spousal direction. Clearly, these are marriages in which one person is over-dependent and enmeshed.
But healthy marriages, characterized as they are by both inter-dependence and deep mutual involvement, are hardly examples of co-dependence or enmeshment. Do we, in fact, observe either of these pathologies if two married people simply long to be with each other, obtain enormous satisfaction from spending time together, and have learned over the years to depend on each other? I think not.
As human beings, we have been created to depend on each other, especially on our spouses if we’re married. Contrary to what some suggest, it is not those who can trust and depend on others who are impaired, but those who cannot.
In the Gospel of John, Jesus prays for the disciples, that they may be one as he and the Father are one (John 17:21). He might have prayed this even more urgently if he’d been petitioning specifically for married believers. We will return in later chapters to what it means for two people in a marriage to grow closer.
The Problem with Mutual Dependence
There is, however, a cost associated with married people coming to depend on each other and enjoy true mutuality: this makes them more vulnerable to pain and suffering triggered by loss. What if your beloved spouse develops a serious health problem, so that you can no longer rely on him or her for support? The giving and receiving, which used to go both ways, is now largely one-way, with you on the giving, not the receiving, side. Or, worse, what happens when one spouse dies? Was Alfred Lord Tennyson right when he wrote, “better to have loved and lost, than never to have loved at all”?2
I believe that he was. Two people discovering and living in the awareness that they can count on each other for support is among the principal benefits of marriage; the other person is always there. Mutual dependence is, in fact, central to the definition of genuine marriage.
Neither my wife nor I are passive. Nor are we inclined to drift or look to others for direction. Those who know us describe us as independent and resourceful. But, in the best sense, we depend on each other and love the life we share. When we’re apart, we soon miss being together, and we long to resume the ongoing conversation that any good marriage entails. We yearn for the comfort, once again, of being with the other person, which feels like coming home.
Some people, as mentioned above, are incapable of allowing mutual dependence and involvement to develop, even though they go through the motions of getting married. Such damaged souls, incapable of giving themselves to anyone else, have little capacity to tolerate feeling vulnerable. They are insulated and guarded, and are unable to marry in any true sense. These people can take on the legal obligations of marriage, acquire the social status it sometimes affords, and legitimize their sexual activities. But the idea of becoming ever more intimate with a spouse eludes them and remains a foreign concept. Stoic individualism and rigid self-reliance are not virtues but vices.
God, I believe, wants us to be inter-dependent and mutually involved, which in their healthy forms are indicative neither of frailty nor deficiency but of strength and resilience. They reflect an emotional capacity that, in the ideal, continues to mature and develop. Being able to entrust yourself and your welfare to someone else is central to what it means to be a complete person. Without this, people remain prisoners of their limitations. This does not mean that everyone has to marry. It does mean, however, that any fully developed human being has the psychosocial capacity to do so.
The Truth About My Own Marriage
I’d like to respond to two questions that are likely to arise. The first is about the quality of my marriage. Am I saying one thing and doing another? Are Anna and I pretending a level of happiness and satisfaction that, if the curtains were pulled back, would turn out to be a lie? What is the true character of our relationship? Are we putting on false fronts?
Emphatically, the answer is no. You will find quite a bit of self-disclosure woven through these pages. But, you won’t find any spin. At the end of each chapter, you’ll read Anna’s response to what I have written. I’ve encouraged her to be candid, and as you will see, she’s had no trouble doing this.
Anna and I have been married for over thirty years. I will share what I believe about how to make a marriage work, one that in our case is between two strong people. Timid, we are not. I’ll tell you about our difficult times and even about the quality of our intimate life. And, I’ll share how we’ve learned to work out our differences so that they don’t turn corrosive and how we keep romance alive.
Superficial Answers and Trite Solutions
The second question concerns the quality of what you’re likely to find online or in a bookstore by way of marital advice. So, I’d like to make a few comments about this material and the kinds of seminars, study guides, and DVDs you may encounter at church.
There is a lack of high-quality resources available for Christians who want to ensure that their marriages will be satisfying, resilient, and enduring. People are astonishingly complex. What they bring to a marriage is not easy to understand, certainly not by the simplistic and formulaic application of clichés or truisms. Human behavior is multi-layered and, even in the best of us, fraught with psychospiritual baggage.
Part of what makes this so is that when people marry, it’s not long before they begin to perceive each other in ways that are distorted. I will go into detail about why this happens in a later chapter, where I discuss the psychology of transference. Here, I merely want to suggest that helping people with their marriages, whether through counseling or educational activities, requires in-depth savvy. It’s not a job for those with only a superficial understanding of interpersonal dynamics—how person-to-person behavior actually works.
I once sat through several sessions of a recorded marriage conference. The speaker was entertaining and engaging, and he had no trouble holding the attention of his audience. Some of what he said was well worth listening to, but I couldn’t see how most of it could help anybody. A lot of the advice he dispensed merely restated what God intends for marriages, not what to do to help them move in that direction, how to make them actually work. Or, if they’re not working, how to fix them. It was all should and little how.
There are, however, a number of excellent books on marriage, including those by Cameron Lee and by Les and Leslie Parrott. All three know what they’re talking about. Cameron is a well-known family life educator, minister, and the author of a fine book published in 2015 by the Fuller Institute for Relationship Education: Marriage PATH: Peacemaking at Home for Christian Couples. Les is a clinical psychologist and his wife Leslie is a marriage and family therapist. Of particular interest is their recent, Saving Your Marriage Before It Starts: Seven Questions to Ask Before—and After—You Marry.3 They have also produced companion workbooks, one for men and the other for women, and developed a widely used online questionnaire.4
Tim Keller, in collaboration with his wife Kathy, wrote the best theological treatment of marriage: The Meaning of Marriage: Facing the Complexities of Commitment with the Wisdom of God.5 They are unwavering in their understanding of marriage as having been instituted by God, and, like this book, theirs contains a good deal of self-disclosure. It is also practical. He was the founding pastor in 1989 of Redeemer Presbyterian Church in New York City; its weekly attendance now exceeds 5,000. His books and sermons are impressively intelligent and filled with penetrating insights into the nature of Christian faith.
Developing the Necessary Skills
Successful marriage requires specific skills, and these skills are acquired through appropriate and earnest practice. You may be born with a certain aptitude, the capacity to acquire a particular ability, but without diligently undertaking