Marriage Rebranded

by Tyler Ward

  However, the flip side of the divorce statistic tells a dramatically different narrative—one that perhaps we have not given enough attention.

  MARRIAGE ISN’T BROKEN—IT’S SIMPLY MISUNDERSTOOD.

  Yes, many marriages end in divorce.7 The research is clear. But research also shows that when marriage “works,” it really works. In fact, if cultivated, marriage is actually better for you on all fronts—physically, materially, and emotionally.8 Studies show that healthily married people live longer, have better health, earn more money, accumulate more wealth, feel more fulfillment in their lives, enjoy a more satisfying sexual relationship, and have happier and more successful children than those who cohabitate or get divorced.9

  Happiness? You are twice as likely to be happy if you stay married. And married people, in general, report lower levels of depression and stress than non-marrieds.10

  Health? Robin Simons, a sociologist at Wake Forest University, has done research that reflects that “married people overall do better on virtually every indicator of health and well-being.”11

  Sex? According to Linda Waite’s research for her groundbreaking book with Maggie Gallagher, The Case for Marriage, over 40 percent of married women said their sex life was emotionally and physically satisfying, compared to about 30 percent of single women. The same trend is seen among men—50 percent of married men say they are physically and emotionally content versus 38 percent of cohabitating men. And 40 percent of married people have sex at least twice a week (not to mention those who have more!), compared to 20–25 percent of single and cohabitating men and women.12

  The list of perks goes on, but only perpetuates the countertrend that marriage is not, in fact, disappointing. It’s simply misunderstood. And we as a modern society seem to be largely unaware of its unique purposes.

  IT’S TIME FOR A REBRAND.

  Just as Analee and I were entering the painful epiphany that our marriage was missing something, we were invited to a friend’s home for a “marriage day.” We spent the day hearing timeless perspectives and honest reflections on marriage from older, more seasoned couples, and with every story they shared, a bit more color filled my picture for what marriage could be.

  This day at a friend’s home challenged my paradigm of matrimony. It painted just enough of a new picture that I couldn’t help but want more. It marked the beginning of a personal journey to cultivate a vision of marriage worth fighting for.

  It’s a journey I’m still on today and a journey in which I’d love for you to join me.

  I’ve spent the last three years putting the most basic assumptions about modern marriage to the test. Along the way, I’ve interviewed three New York Times bestselling authors, a molecular biologist devoted to family development, a prime-time TV star, a personality psychologist, two marriage therapists, and several couples whose relationships I simply admire. I’ve exhausted resources by Israeli Breslov rabbis, modern sociologists, sex therapists, Orthodox priests, university professors, and Christian counselors. And perhaps most importantly, my wife and I have explored these various ideas we’ve come across by conducting several experiments in our own marriage—every one of which has helped us change our marital narrative and learn the very unnatural art of loving another person.

  I began sharing some of my experiments and findings over a year ago and was astonished at the responses. My first article on the subject, “3 Things I Wish I Knew Before We Got Married,” was shared online over 350,000 times and the conversations started by readers clued me in to a few things.13

  I’ve noticed I’m not alone in my desire for a new brand of marriage. In fact, I’m walking alongside a vast amount of people—like you—who aren’t interested in accepting “marriage as usual.”

  I’ve noticed that most of us want something more from marriage than some quick fix for loneliness or romantic obsession or a tool of self-fulfillment. We want to invest ourselves deeply and see a deep return.

  I’ve seen that many of us believe God created marriage for more than the American dream and idyllic family Christmas card. We want to know what He originally designed it to be.

  Most of us know there’s more to life than happiness. Instead, we want a version of marriage that actually deals with the realities of life in radical proximity with another person.

  We all want to see the end of broken homes and raise children who grow up emotionally connected and confidently commissioned into adulthood.

  We want relationship. Real, challenging, relationships that don’t just enrich our lives, but play a role in showing the world a better way of life.

  In the end, we want a better vision for marriage—one that answers in the deepest parts of us why we stay married—a vision that’s worth fighting for.

  I have no intention of spending the next few chapters handing you a step-by-step formula to a better marriage. You can pick that up from your local Walmart. I simply want to paint a picture of marriage that’s worth endlessly investing into.

  Join me on this endeavor and we’ll talk about four misconceptions about love that accompany modern marriage—happiness, me-centricity, falling in love, and privatization. My hope is that by the end of this book, we’ll have replaced them with timeless truths that will play a leading role in writing a better marriage narrative for us all.

  However, before we jump in, here are five thoughts—in no particular order—that may help us get started.

  1. Different strokes for different folks

  This book is written under the assumption that if we want to change our reality, we must first change our own minds. Accordingly, we’ll use three types of content.

  Mindset. These sections deal with debunking common misconceptions and offering a better way to see marriage.

  Best Practices. These sections suggest practical ways to help walk out the proposed mindset shifts.

  Case Studies. These sections document real-life experiences, primarily through interviews, of those who have seen these mindsets and best practices make a difference.

  These three chapter elements are for people like me whose mood often dictates whether they want to chew on deeper ideas and philosophy, acquire practical life tools, or get proof via real life accounts. My hope is that when all three elements converge, a greater vision for marriage will start to come together.

  2. Reflection helps

  If you would like to dig deeper than this book has the page space to go, I’ve produced a downloadable PDF with questions as you read for personal or group reflection. It also includes suggested experiments and tools to try on your own. To download, simply visit www.tylerwardis.com/marriage-rebranded-reflections.

  3. Formulas are for institutions

  Don’t be fooled by the term “Best Practices.” I’m not suggesting a one-size-fits-all approach to marriage. These are simply practical insights and suggestions I’ve come across that have proved worth some experimentation.

  Though we’ll read plenty of cause-and-effect stories throughout the book, let’s be clear that every relationship is profoundly unique. The success or failure of every relationship is a combination of many variables. The goal of this book is to look at a few of those variables from several different perspectives—not to offer a comprehensive guide. If you’re looking for a way to avoid the process of trial and error required in developing any real relationship, there are plenty of books out there offering A + B = C. However, this is not one of them. Comprehensive formulas are for institutions, not relationships. And I think what we’re all after is the latter.

  4. My wife is going to join us

  I’ve invited my wife into our time together. At all the right moments, she’ll offer her own brilliant thoughts and perspectives.

  5. Why I wrote this book

  Let’s be honest. If I picked up a book about marriage by an author who had only been married for five years, I’d be skeptical too. In our digital age when seemingly anyone with access to Wikipedia can become an overnight guru, I’d be apprehensive to read o
n as well. If I’m being honest, I initially turned down the request to write this book because of this exact stigma. However, after months of feeling drawn back to the project, here are two reasons I decided to write it.

  One, I’m an expert. But only if by “expert” we mean what physicist and Nobel prize winner Niels Bohr means by it: “An expert is a person who has made all the mistakes that can be made in a very narrow field.”14 In fact, one could say this book is largely inspired by the documentation of all my mistakes in marriage, identifying the bad ideas behind them and attempting to replace them with better ones—key word here being “attempting.” My wife would be the first to tell you that just because I may be writing about a beautiful picture of marriage does not mean I’m not in a long and challenging process to cultivate it in my own relationship.

  But she can say it far better than I:

  Analee’s Point of View. Marriage is the beautiful, messy at times, unfolding of two people in which our growth is never meant to stop. No matter where we are in this lifelong process, WE ARE ALL learning. And there’s no question that I have my share of growing to do. But let’s just say that the running family joke—that Tyler coined—throughout this writing process was that he couldn’t make me his priority because he was too busy WRITING about making me his priority. In all seriousness though, I am incredibly thankful he has been so committed to finding the greatness in marriage and leading us toward it. I’ve never expected him to be perfect, but to watch him stay open and devoted to the process has been everything a wife could dream.

  I will be opening the good, bad, and ugly of our married life to you with the hope that you might see a bit of yourself in our story, or at least find a slightly better way to develop your own story. But in many ways, I’ll simply be a guide to an exploration of ideas and suggestions posed by far more experienced people than I. Most of whom (they’re all listed on the dedication page) took the time to sit with me, share life with me, and show me another piece of the beauty of this thing called marriage.

  And two, I couldn’t not write this book. The statistics are one thing, but I’ve watched nine young couples in the past two years walk away from their marriages. No doubt you’ve watched the painful process of marriages falling apart in the lives of friends and family, as well. And while it’s true that the decision to end each marriage was unique, I would venture to say many if not most of these relationships were severed under the influence of bad ideas they’ve inherited about matrimony.

  Don’t get me wrong—I’m not saying divorce is universally wrong. Or that I am some sort of hero, here to rescue our current state of matrimony. What I’m saying is simply that, after watching several friends have their relationships destroyed by modern yet misinformed ideas about marriage, I couldn’t not write this book.

  So regardless of how broken your ideas about marriage are or are not, or how functional your marriage is or isn’t, let’s start over together. Let’s wipe our slates clean and become apprentices to this thing called matrimony—or as I’ve come to know it, the very unnatural art of loving another person.

  CHAPTER TWO

  CARVING TO THE SKIN

  Happily Ever After Isn’t the Point

  “Marriage is a school of sanctity.”

  —Martin Luther

  Amanda did everything “right.” She’d been reading relationship books since she was twelve and only dated when the prospect had the potential for marriage. Sam and Amanda spent the first year of their marriage settling into a new town, buying their first home, and starting their traditions of weekly dinner, a movie date, and late nights drinking wine on the back porch.

  It was the beginning of a dream come true—or so she thought.

  Sam took a new job fourteen months into their marriage, requiring more travel and late nights even when he wasn’t on the road. Amanda quickly felt the loss but learned to cope with their new life. She supported him in his career by learning to require less of him and offering him space as he needed. As the demands of work became more intense for Sam, the weekly date nights became less frequent. Neither of them seemed to notice.

  Three years and seven weeks after they exchanged vows, Amanda sat in our living room a couple weeks after Sam filed for divorce. As she shared about their short married life together, her sadness was only rivaled by her confusion about Sam’s choice.

  “We started so strong … He was such a great husband … I couldn’t wait to see him as a father …”

  Sam’s story was a bit different. “There’s no question in my mind that we were in love at the beginning,” he said. “We had some of the best moments together. But as time passed, it’s as if we became indifferent. I felt nothing when I left for a trip and nothing when I came home. We just weren’t happy anymore.”

  Unfortunately Sam and Amanda’s story is a common one today. Many fall in love. Get married. The happiness that once validated this love inevitably fades. And many find themselves lost and confused.

  In our modern era, you and I are led to believe that happiness is a worthy guide in life and that—in one way or another—we have some sort of inalienable right to experience it. As we’ll see, our culture’s obsession with being happy often makes it far more natural for us to love happiness more than we ever love another human. And though being happy is a very real by-product of a healthy relationship, this inflated value we give to it makes us vulnerable to missing one of the more beautiful purposes of marriage altogether. We’re about to explore this in depth, but first, we need to reevaluate our misled ideas about happiness.

  Stanley Hauerwas, an American theologian and Duke University professor, articulates here the bottom line: “Destructive to marriage is the self-fulfillment ethic that assumes marriage and the family are primarily institutions of personal fulfillment.”1

  I learned this lesson like I learn most things in my life: the hard way.

  THE CHRONOLOGY OF A MODERN HEDONIST.

  1989. My mom tells me I can’t have another piece of blackberry pie at our family reunion. I happen to like blackberry pie very much, always have. To this day, she still recalls me uncharacteristically crying to the point of convulsing for an inappropriate amount of time.

  1999. I find the new pinnacle of human existence after kissing my first girlfriend. She dumps me a few months later, and for weeks I’m convinced all of life’s happiness is behind me.

  2001. I experience God for the first time and read that He wants me to have life to the full. I tell my friends that I’ve found the key to happiness and invite them to join me. It didn’t take me long to realize that even this kind of happiness came with a price that I often wasn’t willing to pay.

  2003. I’m not happy in the American suburbs, so I move to Kosovo, a recently war-torn nation where I hope finding the meaning of life will make me smile more than four years at a state college or a corporate gig. I drink a lot of coffee, make a lot of friends, but come home a year later with no sense of lasting fulfillment.

  2007. Since I was a kid, I’ve wanted to live on the West Coast. So after college, I jumped into my car with $800 in my pocket and drove to LA. I lived in the Hollywood Hills, worked a job that had me traveling the world for free, and only occasionally found myself fulfilled.

  2008. I meet a beautiful half-Filipino, half-Swedish actress in Hollywood. She loves God and kisses extremely well. After nine months of dating, I eventually convince her to marry me and we begin our happily ever after.

  2011. Though I happened to marry my favorite person on earth and the first couple of years of our relationship are a dream, I’m now certain that nothing in life has ever made me more frustrated than marriage. It often feels as if just when I think I’ve given all I can possibly give, it somehow finds a way to ask for more.

  The worst part of it all is that most of my wife’s demands aren’t unreasonable. One day she expects me to stay emotionally engaged. The next, she’s looking for me to validate the way she feels. The list goes on—but never ventures far from things she per
fectly deserves as a wife. Unfortunately for her, meeting her very valid needs at the expense of my own didn’t play nice with my idea of “happily ever after.”

  Though I’ve been largely unaware of it, most decisions I’ve made in life have been subtly influenced by my pursuit of happiness. Maybe the same is true of you. It’s human, after all—to want to be happy.

  In fact, it’s probably a bit more human than we think because the roots of our modern obsession with happiness reach deep into history.

  A HISTORICAL SNAPSHOT OF MARITAL HEDONISM.

  The Garden and Misaimed Desires. The hope of finding happiness through getting married is nothing new. According to biblical history, it reaches back to the beginning of human nature after an incident involving an apple and a mistake.

  When introducing the consequences of Adam’s fruit-tasting endeavor, God made it clear to Eve that …

  “Your desire will be for your husband, and he will rule over you.”2