Til Our Contract Expires?

Dear Blog Reader.

I hope that this finds you doing well. I am fine. The fall is proceeding apace. Apples and apple cider no longer excites quite as much as those first tastes in early September. Saturday the daylight hours equaled the night time hours, reminding me that I would dislike living in the constant mediocrity of the equator. Come on, take a chance, give up those winter hours for a glorious summer of long days.

Today’s blog has been a long time coming. As you may remember, Grace was married in June. Later this summer, one of Grace’s friends, Becca, wrote a blog that has had me thinking. In it, she wrote that “No single physical, emotional, or intellectual element seemed to point to the true foundation of what makes a couple "married" to one another, beyond the public statement itself.”  The bold was hers. Coupled with the other passage in bold, “After all, beyond tax-discounts, what use is there in spending thousands of dollars to get "married,"” I am assuming that those were the most important statements in the blog. I want to be careful here. I do not want to attack the blogger. I would like to debate some of the ideas she brought up. The need to be careful stems from a certain talent that I have to be snarky. It is my “oh yeah?  Well your mother wears combat boots.” It is a retort that is unattractive and provides nothing relevant to the debate.

In thinking about the blog, another interesting aspect has surfaced; almost all of the points that I have to make come from other people. Nothing has been synthesized in my brain from marriage experiences in the building of a framework for this blog. In short, this blog will be attributed plagiarism taken to a new level.

It seems that taking the stance that “no single physical, emotional, or intellectual element” ignores the role that the spiritual or religious element may play in the underpinning of the marriage vows. The two shall become one flesh after leaving mom and dad from Ephesians 5 is a mystery to me. It is a spiritual mystery that Bev and I are bound together in oneness. It connotes mutual support. Two people bound together would have each other’s back when facing all that life would throw at them.

I suppose that religion was human kind’s way of wrestling with the unseen spiritual and giving it a physical, ritualized underpinning, the public statement, that mankind could grasp, see and feel. Even now as the population becomes more irreligious, many of its members flock to the church in search of talismans for a long and happy commitment. Do the rituals themselves have the juju for success? It would appear not divorce rates being what they are. After all, moderns have substituted the religious manifestations of the spiritual and many wedding have become a costume ball where the revelers aren’t what they seem. As Wendell Berry wrote in The Contrariness of the Mad Farmer, “If I have cried at many a wedding it is because I know where the groom has sunk his manhood and I know it will not be resurrected by a piece of cake.”

Even before religion showed up and got ancient man dressed in a tuxedo toga in front of the church with his lovely bride, in her exquisite toga gown with the intricate bead work and lace, making their public statements, wouldn’t the mutual support of oneness have been a driving factor for prehistoric people whether they spent “thousands of dollars to get married” or not? Wouldn’t prehistory have fallen apart without the commitment to this very physical reason of mutual support? I know that having the lovely Miss Beverly watching my back when attacking the wooly mammoth would have been a comfort.

Even in modernity, the evidence appears to be overwhelming for the existence of physical and emotional foundations of marriage. The experts repeatedly say that children from intact families are better off. The severed bonds of marriage are not put right by the contractual dictates of the court system. One is reminded of this every Friday evening and Sunday afternoon as the custody handoff is repeated in fast food parking lots near interstate exits across the country. A wise friend once told me that if he had spent as much time relearning to like his first wife as he spent in working through all of the “issues” of divorce, his marriage would still be intact. He had made the divorce work. His family is well adjusted on into middle adulthood. That was his point. Divorce is hard work; harder than marriage because by definition you lose the comfort of mutual support.

What about the public statement; those vows? I must admit that I am lifting the ideas and surely some of the words and phrasing from C.S. Lewis as he described marriage in Mere Christianity. Are nearly 50% of those standing up front intentional liars when they say “til death do us part”? I would think not. Not many people want to be known as liars to the general public. I would suggest that they are unintentional promisers. All dressed up, under the peer pressure to say the right thing, they make promises they really didn’t mean. Would society be better off to take a more business like approach and promise to remain true and married for not less that 5 years and not more than 7 years? That would free society up to practice the serial monogamy (someone else’s phrase) that pervades modernity with much less guilt.

How would that affect the alchemy of the interaction between emotional, intellectual, and physical elements? Would that be a deal breaker? How would people behave in the 6th year of the “contract”? As I contemplate the possibilities, it strikes me that each of those elements would be weakened. It raises my anxiety level. Surely, couples facing the 5 to 7 year plan would start to disengage in year 4.5. Who wants to be left holding the emotional baggage when your partner doesn’t want to pick up the final two year option because they are not satisfied? Wouldn’t it be better to get back into the market 2 years early because you’re not getting any younger and those laugh lines will only get deeper in 730 days?

Even if the public statement were eliminated, the act of covenant making becomes public eventually. Companies enter into private contracts all of the time but at the breaking of the contract either through expiration or avarice the future actions of the parties make it clear to the world what the contract was; how both parties were bound. The contract ends, the couple ends and the terms were met and they move on to the next contract or one breaks the contract and the courts find a way to “mend” it.

Where does that leave us? I have no idea. I do know that I am more blessed at 28 years with the lovely Miss Beverly than I was at 7 years. That at some point I slowed down trying to change her and worked harder at liking her thanks to the wisdom of a good and wise man. I also feel that the words we shared with the world about refinement of gold and its simile with marriage were words of prophecy for our marriage and were good to say out loud in “front of God and everybody.”

Take care,

Roger.