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I Beg To Differ
marriage advice you shouldn't pay any attention to
Posted by Rebecca Teti in Marriage on Tuesday, August 19, 2008 10:30 PM
My task is to add three tidbits to the excellent and sometimes moving advice for engaged couples my colleagues and our readers have already laid out.
I can’t. It’s all been said. But maybe I can issue a friendly warning against some marriage cliches that my friends and I have found unhelpful or misleading.
1. Honeymoon, schmoneymoon. If your expectations are formed by romance novels, you may be bitterly disappointed—and I’m not speaking about the marital embrace. (Although I have a girlfriend who arrived with her spouse to Hawaii only to have her beloved immediately stricken with an acute stomach bug. They never left their hotel room alright—because he never left the restroom.) Faith & Family editors Tom & April Hoopes gave Dennis & me this advice shortly before we wed: “If you can make it through the first six months, you can make it through anything.” Bless them for that—it was the best advice we received! Culturally the assumption is that the first year is a period of moon-eyed bliss, but it can be a real adjustment to go from being “your own person” to being two in one flesh. Having to check with someone else before you just do what you want to do is a challenge to your pride and self-love and the older and more settled in your ways you are when you marry, the more that is likely to be true. Meshing the differing expectations you bring from your own families of origin about the “right” way to do things can be painful in some respects, and it doesn’t help when you are privately tamping down the flickering thought, “What have I done!” that everyone around you is gushing, “Oh, you’re newlyweds, you’re so lucky!” I’m not saying this will happen to you, but if it does, fear not, it does happen to many people, it’s perfectly normal, and you will grow into the wedded bliss you expected to happen all at once.
2. Go ahead, let the sun go down on your wrath…and any other negative feelings, too. See if your your problem rises with the dawn, because usually it won’t. I’m not talking about letting real problems fester, and if you’ve had a tiff, it’s only right to seek and extend forgiveness as soon as possible—in that case I agree with the cliche. Especially when we’re tired or tense, however, our imaginations can take a minor grievance and whip it into a marital crisis that doesn’t objectively exist. One of the Ignatian Rules for Discernment is don’t make decisions while in the throes of emotion, and it’s best not to talk about anything of consequence then either. If exhaustion isn’t the problem, sometimes that cranky or snippy feeling that nothing is going right is a sign you’re due for Confession and has nothing to do with the other person; at any rate it is not the time to analyze your relationship. Go to sleep first. Or to the sacraments. There is always time to revisit a matter that still needs to be resolved if you deem it necessary by the light of a new day. But you can never call back harsh—or even merely unsettling—words that shouldn’t have been spoken in the first place.
3. Marriage is a 100-100 (as opposed to 50-50) proposition? Nonsense! The promise of a sacramental marriage is that Christ himself perfects the couple and their bond—and his grace is infinite. You may be called to give far more than it is humanly possible to give—and you will be able to through grace, because you can call on Christ’s own heart to help you love. You will also receive far more than you can dream. In moments of reflection you will look back and marvel at what only God could have wrought. God has called you to be for each other the principal means by which he shows each of you that you are loved. There is no scale. There is only loving as hard as you can and following his will wherever it leads you.
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