by A R Bernard
So, with no further delay, join me as we take a closer look at the culture of marriage.
— QUESTIONS FOR REFLECTION —
Before starting this journey, think about the importance of the four traits in your own life. Do you agree that these are the four essential traits? Is there a trait you’d add or replace? What are you first thoughts on this experience?
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MEN: What trait seems the hardest to develop? Which one looks easiest for you?
WOMEN: What trait do you appreciate the most in a partner? Which have you valued the least?
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— PRAYER —
FOR MEN: Dear God, as I begin this journey to develop these four traits, I ask that you keep my heart and mind open and allow me to embrace this process fully. I want to be a better man and a better partner. Lord, help me to be willing to embrace change and grow closer to You. In Your name I pray, Amen.
FOR WOMEN: Dear God, please be with my partner as he embarks on this journey. I want to be the best support I can be for him. Open my heart and mind to your will. In Your name I pray, Amen.
— 2 —
THE CULTURE OF MARRIAGE, THEN AND NOW
“Define yourself radically as one beloved by God. This is the true self. Every other identity is illusion.”
—Brennan Manning, Abba’s Child
We tend to think of marriage as a static, unchanging institution. But it’s not. Throughout history, the roles played by husbands and by wives have been transformed. And so have their expectations.
Your ancestors had a very different view of marriage than you do. The same culture that shaped their world also shaped the way they structured their relationships. They lived in a different time; they survived in a different society; they built their families according to different norms; they lived, loved, worked, and died in a culture you might scarcely recognize.
Culture is that integrated system of beliefs, traditions, customs, values, products, technologies, and ideas that constitute the life of a people. Culture is humanity’s way of making sense of the world around us; it is our way of determining the most efficient and effective strategies for dealing with our own reality, our own particular circumstances, our past, our present, and our future.
Cultures are formed by mankind’s response to basic needs; the more creative the response, the more advanced the culture. Today, as we look around the world, we see the stark contrast between advanced cultures—where basic needs are almost always met—and third world societies where even elemental needs such as food and shelter often go unmet. The gap between the haves and the have-nots is vast, and so are the ways that they must approach their daily lives.
Some cultures are broad and diverse, like mine. I live in New York City. My hometown has cultures within cultures. On one block, you may encounter a distinct ethnic tradition; walk around the corner, and you’ll find a completely different vibe, with different customs, traditions, mores, and styles. It’s what former mayor David Dinkins called “the mosaic of New York.”
In other places, cultures are more homogenous: people tend to think alike, dress alike, and behave alike. Their collective realities are shaped not by variety, but by consistency of thought and action. Yet even in these homogeneous societies, customs evolve. In today’s world, the pace of cultural evolution is quickening, and there’s no indication that things will slow down anytime soon.
When any culture begins to redefine itself, people feel adrift. In the 1970 bestseller Future Shock, Alvin Toffler described the confusion that results when traditional values are in flux. He called this phenomenon “rootlessness.” What was true for Toffler forty years ago is just as true today. As societal norms change at an ever quickening pace, both men and women may feel uprooted, confused, and disoriented. It is within this context that the relationships between husbands and wives are being redefined by popular culture.
What was considered extreme fifty years ago may be considered normal today. What was considered outlandish—or even illegal—then, may be considered quite ordinary now. Don’t believe me? Turn on your radio or TV. Pop culture reinforces the new rules and sends out messages that describe a “new normal”: the latest fad, whatever it happens to be. Then pop culture tries to convince us that the new norm is the solution to all our troubles.
But there’s a problem: although culture undergoes constant change, the hearts and minds of men and women are not nearly so malleable. Societal values change, the world changes, and our culture is transformed day by day. But our hearts and minds, which were engineered by a Higher Power, are not so readily altered. Like it or not, our hearts and minds have been hardwired. Society can change the programming and even install a new operating system, but we can’t change the circuitry that we’re born with.
Even if the culture says, “Don’t worry; you can do this, or you can do that,” new norms are doomed to fail if they aren’t congruent with our internal sense of right and wrong. The world can tell us “It’s okay,” but if our conscience disagrees, society’s “new” value system will self-destruct along with the people who have embraced it.
Historian Stephanie Coontz and sociologist Andrew J. Cherlin have written extensively on the topics of marriage and divorce. They’ve attempted to answer an important question: why are we, as a society, marrying less and divorcing more? It’s a simple question with a very complicated answer, but the CliffsNotes version is this: our twenty-first-century attitudes toward marriage and divorce have changed because our nation’s culture has changed. The transformation has been remarkable.
America began as an agrarian economy. Most families lived in small farming communities, far from the big cities. These folks earned their living from the land. Families were large because children were expected to work in the fields. Without large institutions or mass media, parents assumed almost total responsibility for educating and acculturating their children. Values were taught in the home; etiquette, religion, and conduct were handed down from grandparent to parent, from parent to child. Coontz and Cherlin call this “the era of institutional marriage,” and it lasted from the founding of America until the middle of the nineteenth century. During this era, marriage was considered as an essential institution. Divorce was almost unheard of.
A century ago man’s chief concern was his spiritual life; now his chief concern is with his physical and temporal affairs.
—BILLY GRAHAM
In those days, people approached marriage differently. If they fell in love with their spouse, that was undeniably a good thing. But it was not the primary thing. People didn’t marry for love. If you were a man, you married because it was the accepted way to live with the woman who would bear your children. If you were a woman, you married for provision, for shelter, and for protection from the violent realities of life on the frontier. For married couples, strong emotional connections, while desirable, were not essential.
Then, the culture began to change.
From 1850 until the middle of the next century, Americans experienced an industrial revolution. People began moving to the cities, where they found better-paying jobs. During these years, women earned the right to vote and the right to join the workforce. They also earned the right to attend institutions of higher learning. Children were increasingly socialized in big-city neighborhoods and in public schools, not at home or on the farm.
With their newfound freedoms, marriageable women began to expect different things from prospective husbands. Marriage became a search, not only for protection and provision, but also for affection and companionship. People viewed marriage as the way to find love and to experience sexual fulfillment. This period (1850–1955) is known as the time of “compassionate marriage.” It was a time when couples married for reasons of the heart, often tossing practicalities aside. The compassionate model of marriage was reflected in the romantic movies of the post–World War II era: Boy met girl; b
oy and girl fell in love; boy and girl got married and lived happily ever after. Roll the credits.
Until the 1960s. That’s when America experienced another revolution or, more accurately, a series of revolutions. Americans experienced a social revolution, a sexual revolution, a musical revolution, political revolutions, and religious revolutions, to name but a few. As these revolutions took hold, society’s view of marriage evolved from the “compassionate” to the “self-expressive,” which is where we are now as a society.
In the self-expressive marriage, spouses seek to discover who they “really” are. Each partner is on a mission of self-definition, a journey toward self-actualization. This means that more and more people are marrying, but not for provision, security, or even for love. People are searching for personal growth and individual satisfaction. This view of marriage is self-centered, which is one reason that our divorce rates are skyrocketing. The self-expressive marriage is “me based.” It doesn’t work because marriage is not a “me-based” proposition. Marriage is an empathetic union, not a discovery of one’s “true” self.
“I don’t know how many times I’ve heard couples part ways saying, ‘We have just grown apart,’ or ‘He doesn’t meet my needs anymore.’ I think the greatest threat to a marriage is selfishness. Being self-absorbed and self-centered is no way to build a team.”
—JACKIE P.
The self-expressive marriage is a recipe for midlife crisis because it inevitably leads to a crisis of identity when wives or husbands convince themselves that self-actualization is more important than commitment. They believe (wrongly) that self-gratification is the goal. They seek self-satisfaction, not mutual satisfaction. And, if that weren’t bad enough, both husbands and wives can be surprisingly impatient. They know what they want and when they want it: now.
This is the culture in which we live.
As a pastor and counselor, I often speak with couples who are trying to make sense of their relationships in a world where self-expressive connections are the norm. Sometimes these couples are married, trying to avoid divorce. On other occasions, I speak with men and women before they exchange their wedding vows. Although their particular circumstances vary widely, the underlying issues are remarkably similar. All too often, couples are focused on the wrong thing. They’re focused on themselves as individuals, not on themselves as part of an indivisible union.
The very same culture that brought us Twitter feeds and selfies has encouraged us to value partying above responsibility, fun above maturity, self-expression above humility, and pleasure above commitment. Couples seem anxious to receive the benefits of a permanent relationship (happiness, security, love, sex, and companionship), but they’re often unwilling to make the sacrifices required to reap those benefits. What’s required, by the way, is total commitment, in good times and hard times. It’s a price, unfortunately, that many couples simply aren’t willing to pay.
Given the new cultural norms, it’s no surprise that couples are waiting longer to get married. Even living together is becoming passé. The idea of committing oneself to another human being for an entire lifetime may seem too confining—too permanent. So we’re staying single longer and divorcing more frequently than ever before. Cherlin describes this as the “deinstitutionalization” of marriage, and it’s redefining the way we think, the way we live, and the way we raise our children.
Marriage should be an empathetic union where the needs of one are felt by the other. But we’ve gotten away from that. Instead, modern culture has convinced us that our marriage partner should be the unofficial tour guide on our own personal journey of self-actualization. So here’s what happens: a spouse cruises along for a decade or two, fulfilling all the socially accepted obligations—earning a paycheck, raising the kids—expecting the “self-discovery part” of the marriage to begin any day. Then, one morning, the spouse wakes up, perhaps on the wrong side of the bed, and experiences an epiphany: time’s running out! So the spouse announces, “I just realized that I haven’t been realized!” In this fashion, the marital gauntlet is thrown down, and the midlife crisis begins.
So what are we to do? The answer lies not in pop-culture solutions, but in solutions we find in Paul’s letter to the Ephesians. He wrote, “Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her” (5:25 NIV). Christ loved His church unconditionally and sacrificially. That’s how men are instructed to love their wives. No exceptions.
Sacrificial love is, by definition, long-term love. It’s not about the pleasure of the moment; it’s about consistent respect, day after day, year after year. Sacrificial love requires generational thinking, which means that couples consider the impact of the success or failure of their relationship on the next generation. And it’s about loving the other person, not just when it’s easy, but also when it’s hard.
In the last chapter, I shared with you my sin of transposition, having my priorities out of order. I began the process of change, but Karen offered her forgiveness on an installment basis. She watched for consistency and gradually began to forgive. She was treating forgiveness as a reward instead of as a gift that flows from the value you place on the relationship. What I didn’t know until a few years later was that her resistance grew from a root of bitterness that had formed in her heart from all we had gone through.
It came to a head in 1994. Ten years had passed, and our relationship had experienced dramatic change for the better. But at times we found ourselves arguing over the slightest thing. One morning in our new home, we got into this big argument about where to place the television in the kitchen. I know: ridiculous! Well, I thought so, but she was very serious. When the temperature hit the boiling point, I felt it was time for me to head to the office.
On my way, I prayed and asked God, “What am I missing?” A word of revelation hit my mind like a bolt of lightning. Bitterness! I began the process of self-examination. Was I bitter toward her? Was she bitter toward me? What is bitterness, really? I was compelled to share it with her, but I had to be wise. I found the text in Hebrews chapter 12, verse 15, “Looking carefully lest anyone fall short of the grace of God, lest any root of bitterness springing up cause trouble, and by this many become defiled.” So I called her and shared the text with her, never mentioning the word bitterness. I apologized and said, “Let’s talk about this when I get home.” She agreed. The rest of the day was spent understanding this passage of Scriptural wisdom focusing on the word bitterness. I was amazed at what I found.
Bitterness must take root before it springs up! In other words, it festers in the heart and begins to manifest in your relationships. It stems from disappointments that accumulate over time but are not acknowledged or addressed. These disappointments result from expectations that were never met; whether they were reasonable or unreasonable doesn’t matter. What matters most are the feelings of hurt and grief. Bitterness begins to color the lens through which we see and interpret the words, attitudes, and actions of the one we believe has hurt us. Even a loving “Good morning, dear” becomes suspect. The hurt begins to overshadow the relationship, creating an environment of tension that easily triggers a major argument from the slightest disagreement. This was the environment in which Karen and I lived. Now I had the words to explain it.
When I got home that evening, I waited until things settled down. Then I casually popped the question: “What did you get out of that verse?” She was hesitant at first, then she turned to me and said, “Bitterness.” I was floored! This was the word! Karen proceeded to tell me that she had her own moment of repentance. She didn’t want to believe that this was what was in her heart, but it was the word that stood out as she read the passage. She asked God to forgive her and to release her from this bitterness. She began her own journey of change and renewal. It was a liberating moment similar to my own ten years before. Imagine that something can be rooted in the heart and continue for years until it is discovered and rooted out. Forgiveness released both of us that day!
> I share this story because I want you to know, without a doubt, that marriage is a work in progress. If there are two words that express the secret to longevity in a relationship, they must be adapt and adjust. Adaptability is having the knowledge and the willingness to accommodate new conditions. Growing relationships are always facing new conditions that challenge the strength of the union. Adaptability has to do with major changes. Adjustment, on the other hand, has to do with the slight alterations, the small changes that are necessary for the good of the relationship. Adapting and adjusting is a never-ending process and the key to longevity.
God’s objective for marriage is to model two interrelated concepts that we have a problem with in this society: love and commitment. We want to fall in love, but we’re unwilling to commit for the long term. We want love without commitment. We want involvement without commitment. We want the benefits of marriage—sex, security, and children—without the sacrifice. So we put conditions on our spouse based on society’s unrealistic expectations, and when those faulty expectations go unmet, we grumble or worse.
Our attention spans are short. We live in a world of text talk (LOL, OMG! BFF, L8R) where almost everything is condensed and distilled into brief, instantaneous bursts. So we’ve become short-term thinkers, seeking immediate rewards, avoiding long-term communications and long-term relationships of any kind. But that’s not what marriage is about. Marriage is not a short-term proposition; it’s not designed for instant gratification. It’s about thinking generationally.