10. Peck, The Road Less Traveled.
A Woman’s Perspective: Anna’s Response to Chapter 2
If you fully enter into a marriage, chances are it’s going to be a wild ride. How could it be anything else? You’re bringing together two people, blending two lives to make one.
The question is whether that ride will be wild in a way that’s exciting and enriching or in a way that’s draining and disheartening. Will it feel like an adventure, or more like a burden?
If you want it to be an adventure, this will mean fully facing the more difficult aspects of building a life together. You have to learn to steer around the pitfalls this book addresses, such as these: making killer statements, insults that damage a marriage quickly and deeply; dishonesty, which even in minor forms can change your relationship in powerful and painful ways; and many more that you’ll encounter as you make your way through these pages.
The chapter you just read includes the idea of marriage as an achievement, and for good reason. Making two lives into one, and keeping them that way, is hard work. It’s not for the faint of heart. If you’re not together on the things that matter most, your marriage’s chances of surviving, much less thriving, greatly diminish.
The first year of marriage can be an awakening. Even in the best of marriages, people stumble. You learn each other’s preferences, including ones you may not have been aware of. From holiday traditions to how you plan a trip, you bring together not only your own backgrounds and experiences but your opinions—again, opinions you may not have even realized you had. The better you understand how to work as a couple, the better you’ll be able to navigate these challenges.
Marriage is a dance, one that together you learn to choreograph. You aren’t required to copy the steps of another couple’s dance. You couldn’t do that anyway. Though there may be things in common between one marriage and another, and certain features are central to all marriages, your relationship is unique, a dance with steps that only you and your spouse can determine. Sometimes these steps are big and life altering, such as where you’ll live and how you’ll raise children if you decide to have any. Other times, they’re as small as how to squeeze a tube of toothpaste.
Clinton brings up the fact that, in our house, we use two tubes. But he didn’t tell you why. It’s because he’s particular about the toothpaste being squeezed from the bottom, and I like to be able to squeeze it anywhere I want. Rather than hash out how we squeeze a shared toothpaste tube, we each use our own. The two-tube solution has worked for over thirty years.
Those toothpaste tubes are our reminder that creative problem-solving has a central place in marriage. During our first year, we had plenty of challenges that came with learning to live as one. Dealing with the little ones helped us with the big ones later on. We learned to yield or compromise on issues when it counted. But, when it came to the little ones like the toothpaste tube, sometimes I just wanted to squeeze the thing from the middle!
Sooner or later, you and your spouse will find yourselves facing the question of what kind of marriage you truly want. And since it’s going to be a wild ride in any case, this becomes a very important one.
Chapter 3. Communication in Marriage
Love each other as I have loved you
John 15:12 (NIV)
Perhaps another way to render the meaning of this verse is, “Love one another as I have already loved you.” Jesus did not toss this off as a request or suggestion. It’s an imperative from the Supreme Commander, a requirement that was and is grounded in what he himself demonstrated.
What I’m going to share in this chapter about communicating applies as much to other family members as to spouses. It’s applicable, in fact, to all relationships, whether with children, distant relatives, or casual friends. Before getting into specifics about the nature of communication, I want to discuss love—what it is that we’re to communicate.
It is far easier to delude ourselves into believing that we love others as Christ did by thinking of love in the abstract. We may, for example, imagine someone we know from church. This is likely to be a person with whom we have little history, and who therefore has had no opportunity to debate or oppose us. Such people are easy to love if we’re willing to fool ourselves about what we are, and are not, really doing.
Loving an imperfect spouse can prove far more challenging than loving the man or woman in the next pew. This is because to love someone in the flesh, in contrast to the imagination, forces us to move from the abstract to the concrete, to face the hard reality that love can be costly. Deep and enduring love is rarely acquired on the cheap or enjoyed without a price. Love demands sacrifice.
But of what? Precisely what does love require us to sacrifice, lay aside, and do without? What is the coin of its realm?
Love requires that we give up our never-ending need for vindication, self-justification, and having the audience, in this case our spouses, acknowledge that surely we were in the right all along. Sinners that we are, we know and demand our rights. Not imaginary or hoped-for rights, but real ones. We want the world to see that we have been wronged, treated unfairly, and in some way violated, especially when we know we’re right. When we clearly perceive that we’ve been the victim of injustice.
Of course, we have! Remember, you married a sinner. Never mind that we, too, are imperfect. We are quick to hold others accountable for what we explain away in ourselves. Without a nanosecond’s hesitation, we conclude that their bad behavior reflects character flaws, whereas ours was, well, because we had an off day.
When two human beings first establish even a casual connection, two material beings and two spiritual beings begin to engage. This implies that, however invisible the spiritual dimension may be, it is always there. Even if one remains oblivious to its existence and completely lacks faith in God, the spiritual remains inescapable.
All of us are beasts and angels, caught between two worlds, the animal and the angelic. We are like titans, struggling somehow to find the intimacy we need in the up-close-and-personal mini-verse of a marriage. Few of us may look, feel, or act much like demigods. Far from it. Yet, made in his image as we have been, our Creator has bestowed on us qualities that are indeed godlike. Our mental capacity is enormous, our power of invention almost limitless, and our potential to build up or destroy seemingly boundless. But, like the titans of Greek mythology, we have flaws and faults that make it hard for us to love.
Communication As Connecting
If you were to ask people to tell you what they mean by communication, some might say that it’s imparting or transmitting data. Others might suggest it’s the transfer of information from one person or group to another person or group. A few might focus on understanding and the expression of feelings. Still others, if they have studied semantics, might say that communication is conveying meaning, getting across what you intend.
Communication involves both sending and receiving. If you just talk, you’re only sending. If you just listen, you’re only receiving.
I once listened to a talk on communication given by a man whose family had worked in the film industry for decades as producers, directors, and actors. Rather than emphasizing proper diction, the mechanics of delivery such as not rocking from side to side, and avoiding fillers like “um,” he bypassed all that and focused on what he considered to be of paramount importance: connecting with your audience.
I’ve thought about this over the years and still believe it to be the best definition of communication I know. Depending on the purpose of the communication, we might add the phrase in ways that bring about change. But such change is secondary. Connecting with your audience remains the core concept. If you’re not connecting, you’re not communicating. It doesn’t matter how erudite you