“What do you do when you are happily married?”
The question isn’t “how do you become happily married?” but “since you are happily married, what should you do?”
Why, prepare for a divorce, of course.
At least that is the logic of Ellen Tien, in her essay “She’s happily married, dreaming of divorce.” [The original article appeared in Oprah’s O magazine, and was republished by CNN.] Here are some of her comments:
I contemplate divorce every day.…
Don’t misunderstand: I would not, could not disparage my marriage (not on a train, not in the rain, not in a house, not with a mouse). After 192 months, Will and I remain if not happily married, then steadily so. Our marital state is Indiana, say, or Connecticut — some red areas, more blue. Less than bliss, better than disaster. We are arguably, to my wide-ish range of reference, Everycouple.
Nor is Will the Very Bad Man that I’ve made him out to be. Rather, like every other male I know, he is merely a Moderately Bad Man…
She also spent considerable time contemplating why women do (or should) contemplate divorce, even if “steadily married:”
…we, we with our 21st-century access to youth captured in a gleaming Mason jar with a pinked square of gingham rubber-banded over the top, we are still visually tolerable if not downright irresistible when we’re 30 or 35 or 40. If you believe the fashion magazines — which I devoutly do — even 50- and 60-year-olds are (lick finger, touch to imaginary surface, make sizzle noise) pretty hot tickets.
We are also tickets with jobs and disposable income. If we jump ship now, we’re still attractive prospects who may have another shot at happiness. There’s just that tricky wicket of determining whether eternal comfort resides in the tried-and-true or whether the untried will be truer.…
I recently stood by as a clothing designer, a mother in her 40s, announced to a group of women that she was divorcing her husband. The women’s faces flickered with curiosity, support, recognition, and — could it be? — yearning. Not a one of us suggested that she try harder to make it work. No voice murmured, “What a shame.”
Because it isn’t a shame. Divorce is no longer the shame that spits stain upon womanly merit. Conventional wisdom decrees that marriage takes work, but it doesn’t take work, it is work. It’s a job — intermittently fulfilling and annoying, with not enough vacation days. Divorce is a job too (with even fewer vacation days). It’s a matter of weighing your options.
Our day comes down to choices — and it’s finally dawning on the long-term wives of the world that divorce may be the last-standing woman’s right to choose. We can admit that our marriages aren’t lambent, lyrical ice-dancing routines and still decide to push on together to the final flying sit spin. We also realize that divorce is an alternative that’s fully within reach, be it now or later or never. The more readily we acknowledge the solid utility of marriage (as one friend’s husband put it, “I’m essentially a checkbook and a sperm bank — but I’m okay with that!”), the more ably we can splinter the box of marital fantasy that makes us feel stuck, trapped, obliged. One eloquent swing of the ax and happiness is thrust firmly back into our own hands.
This is not to say that dismantling one’s marriage will automatically bring happiness; it’s the idealization of marriage that needs to be shredded, along with its accompanying bumper sticker WIVES MAKE BETTER WOMEN. If we stay, we stay because we decide to, not because our ankles and wrists have been locked into societal expectations. If, after various efforts, we finally leave, we have the confidence to be the leavers and not the left.
Having choices is a cornerstone of strength: Choosers won’t be beggars.
I first heard a woman utter some similar thoughts in a counseling session many years ago. The couple was having significant difficulties, and in the presence of her husband, she uttered the comment, “I’m looking around for who my next husband may be…” He did not flinch, semi-shrugged his shoulders, gave a wry smile, and said nothing.
While thinking about this topic, I did a quick Google search, and came across the following statement on the website of a divorce lawyer:
…if you wait until the divorce process has started to begin preparing for your divorce, it is too late; you will have already lost. The process of preparing for a divorce–or at least recognizing some of the important elements, and potential risks, procedures, and rules–must begin several years before the divorce has been initiated. For some people, that should mean starting to assess their situation as early as when they’re sipping Mai Tais on the beach on their honeymoon—seriously.
Now at this point, it would be tempting and easy to decry the state of marriage in our culture and create something of a small rant on the topic. I will avoid that temptation, because the problem for all of these different people is not that they have given up on the sanctity and value of marriage (though the couple did divorce, and Tien also concluded at the end of her article that marriage is obsolete). The problem is neither the continued proliferation of divorce, though it is continuing.
The problem is that the lawyer, and the couple in my office and Tien both accepted and grew in the belief of an idolatrous lie. Tien articulates the lie well — marriage is about me; marriage is about leveraging my assets to my benefit; marriage is about orchestrating my circumstances to the greatest value for me; marriage is about serving me. That is, she entered marriage committed to worship — not of God in heaven, but worshipping the meeting of her needs and providing her the greatest satisfaction and comfort. If that worship is impacted negatively, then the marriage must end and someone new to worship her must be found.
Again, the problem is not that marriage is dismissed as obsolete and the problem is not the lighteness with which divorce is treated. The problem is not even selfishness. The problem is that there is a false object of worship in place that is producing selfishness and divorce and distrust of marriage.
And this is the danger for believers in the church. The temptation for most believers is not to make the radical kinds of statements that Tien makes. But the temptation for believers to worship at the idol of my mate being given to me solely for my own comfort and well-being is alive and all-too-well.
It is evident from her essay that Tien missed the message that marriage is a demonstration of the glory of God — a picture of what it means to enfold a sinner into the family of God, redeem the sin, and embrace that sinner in committed love.
She missed the message that marriage is not a means (primarily) by which the individual gets his or her own needs met, but it is a relationship in which God places an individual so that he or she might use her giftedness (I’m thinking spiritual giftedness here) to serve another and glorify God. The danger for believers is that we will likewise disbelieve the truth of God.
A hsuband serves his wife by unconditionally loving (even if she scorns him in return!), consistently forgiving, constantly serving, always doing all he can to renew her by the Word of God so she is like Christ. In doing so, it may be that his needs “do not get met,” yet he fulfills his role in the redemptive plan of God and finds even greater satisfaction in being obedient to God and in finding the pleasure of God to be of surpassing value — even over and above the earthly love of his wife.
No, marriage may not always be as satisfying, joyful, and “fun,” as one anticipated on the wedding day. But the joy is found not in worshipping oneself, and preparing to leave the mate so that self-interests are served first. Joy is found in continuing to walk with that mate for the glory of God — so God is revealed in that relationship.
Words of Grace 