Clergy/Leaders’ Mail-list No. 0-023

You don’t have to be an expert to know that marriage is trouble. Recently, we have been shocked by a media report, which suggested that the divorce rate is highest in the Bible Belt. On the heels of that came the report that the Baptist divorce rate exceeds the divorce rate among atheists. Some have questioned the validity of these figures and the methods by which the numbers were obtained, but there can be no question about the fact that marital breakdown is a serious problem. It is also a well-known fact that many people bypass marriage altogether and decide to cohabit with no intention of getting married.

According to Hebrews 13:4, marriage is honorable. Marriage will survive the attempts to tarnish its image. Unfortunately, many people are getting hurt in the backwash of anti-marriage sentiment. Many, perhaps most people, whose marriages have failed, wish it could have been otherwise.

As an institution marriage will gain greater respect when we abandon some of the widely held myths about marriage that are common in our society. These myths fall into two categories:

1. Flawed thinking about the dynamics of the marital union. 2. False assumptions about overcoming marital problems.

This week and next we want to review some of these myths.

Norman and Ann Bales

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Part 1: Flawed Thinking About The Dynamics Of The Marital Union

1. Myth: Marriage will bring total happiness.

Fact: Every married couple will have to deal with unpleasant and unanticipated complications sooner or later. Think about the first couple – Adam and Eve. Did they really envision the possibility of being expelled from their paradise existence? Adam would have to adjust to making a living by the sweat of his face. Eve would experience an increase of pain in giving birth to children. Could they have known that one son would eventually murder a brother? Neither can we predict the troubles that will arise in any marriage relationship.

But we can know this for sure. Crises will arise – health uncertainties, misunderstandings, communication failure, disappointments, thoughtless critical remarks, job losses, problems with children, changing economic circumstances. Actually there are hundreds of variables. The marriage road is strewn with potentially explosive land mines. How you negotiate that minefield determines the quality of your relationship, but if you expect there will be no land mines, you expect the impossible.

Besides that, we are flawed people. “Marriages can never be perfect because people are not perfect.” (Les and Leslie Parrott. Saving Your Marriage Before it Starts. p. 69).

2. Myth: Somewhere out in the world, there is a person who is just right for me.

Fact: God does not play a heavenly “match game” with us. God placed us on this earth with the capacity to make choices. In the Biblical story of Jacob and Esau, Esau did a poor job of mate selection. It so grieved his mother, Rebekah that she said to Isaac, “If Jacob takes a wife from among the women of this land, from Hittite women like these, my life will not be worth living” (Genesis 27:46). She clearly recognized Jacob’s power to choose and sought to influence him in the direction of making a more positive choice.

The “pool” of potentially satisfactory mates may be larger than we think. In Mark 12, the Sadducees, attempted to discredit the concept of the resurrection by setting up a scenario in which a man’s brother dies and leaves his wife with no children. By law, she then marries the brother, who subsequently dies. Eventually she marries seven men, all of which was legal and mandated by the law of Moses. In the Mosaic system, a person was expected to marry after the death of a spouse.

In 1 Timothy 5:14, Paul counseled younger widows to marry. It’s clearly within God’s will for a person to remarry when a spouse dies. So much for the thought that “there is one person out there who is right for me.”

Furthermore, the Mark passage goes on to say that there will be no marriage in heaven, which lead one writer to suggest, “Earthly limitations on love relationships will be removed in heaven.” (Frederick Herwaldt Jr. “The Ideal Relationship and Other Myths About Marriage.” – Christianity Today. April 9, 1982). Marriage is a “this world” concept for the fulfillment of relationships. We will have broader relationship fulfillment in heaven.

Billions of people live on the earth. It is irrational to think that only one person of that vast number is “just right” for you. It is even more irrational to think that you ought to leave a marriage because you didn’t choose the “right one.” John Fisher wrote, “The success of marriage comes not in finding the ‘right’ person, but in the ability of both partners to adjust to the real person they inevitably realize they married.”

3. Myth: My marriage partner will make up for all my deficiencies.

Fact: While your marriage partner may help you improve, no marriage partner can “make you whole.” Les and Leslie Parrott warn, “Couples who swallow the myth that their spouse can make them whole become dependent on their partner in a way that is by all standards unhealthy. These couples cultivate what experts call an enmeshed relationship, characterized by general reliance on their spouse for continual support, assurance and wholeness.” (Parrott and Parrott. p. 27)

When we expect our partners to make us whole, we inevitably set ourselves up for disappointment. We never stop they think that our partners expect the same thing of us. Such expectations are unrealistic and doomed to failure. It is only when we learn to profit from one another’s strengths and accept responsibility for our own shortcomings that we can grow in a marriage relationship.