When we begin our life together, we sometimes imagine that the right
choices will be obvious. Enemies of our relationship will loom large and
ugly in the distance, and opportunities to express our affection will
announce themselves with neon lights in our faces.
But if you’ve been married for more than five minutes, you’ve
probably discovered that this isn’t true. The true enemies of marriage
don’t always come with clear warnings and easy names, like infidelity or
mother-in-law. They’re often more subtle. Things like canceling dates,
losing our creative bent, leaving hard things unsaid, or pretending that
we can let our relationship stagnate without drifting away from each
other – these are the real traps.
We have a tendency to overinflate the importance of big things. In some
ways, we’re trained to expect love to manifest itself in sweeping
promises and grandiose gestures – and the enemies of love to emerge with
scales. We ingest cartoonish love at a young age and equate falling in
love with a rescue from a tower or a daring lunge into the path of
danger. At the altar we swear that we’ll accomplish a whole host of
noble-sounding things. We employ big-concept words like honor and
cherishwith no chance of knowing what they’ll mean next week, unless it
involves scaling a tower over a fire-breathing dragon, in which case
we’ll be ready.
We see this in our faith, too, sometimes. We debate the ranks of
callings, like motherhood or missions, and ignore the people in our pews
who fill their days with understated faithfulness. We kowtow to public
leaders and super-Christians instead of honoring those who quietly bring
life to their corners of the world. “Greater love has no one than
this,” said the Lord, “that one lay down his life for his friends” (John
15:13). But since he didn’t add, “And pick up your socks,” we forget
that love means little things, too.
Sacrifice and bravery still serve as important expressions of love,
but instead of relegating them to fairy tales and Braveheart, we need to
recognize that we face opportunities every day to exhibit those very
qualities. Some of us can point to specific days when we turned our
marriages around, laid ourselves on the line, or accomplished something
worthy of being passed on through legend. Instead, marriages are made of
a million defining moments, many of which slip past without our notice.
The trouble with ignoring these would-be defining moments is that the
decision is not benign. It’s betrayal. Shame researcher BrenĆ© Brown
explains this as a kind of “covert betrayal,” because although these
choices appear innocent enough when they stand alone, the accumulation
of decisions not to enter your partner’s world triggers our deepest
fears of “being abandoned, unworthy, and unlovable.” Every time we opt
out of a decision that would have drawn us closer to our spouse, we add a
little space between us.
You didn’t pledge to coexist in relative peace for the rest of your
lives. When you promised to love, honor, and cherish, you promised to be
fully present. Every time you tap out early or refuse to show up in the
first place, you surrender the chance to be daring and brave, and you
effectively tell your spouse, “You’re not worth it.”
Sometimes I wish that we could all swap ultra-specific promises on
our wedding day. Although the idea of being ready is my personal holy
grail, total preparedness is, of course, an illusion. No matter how
thorough our investigations are before we bind our soul, material goods,
and apartment lease to another person, life together promises to be a
learning curve. Not knowing is part of the adventure.
Facing this reality is nearly enough to scare us off from marriage in
the first place – why swear that we’ll stay with someone who’s bound to
become someone else? But recognizing that we can’t know in advance what
we’ll face should drive us continually back to our assignment to know
this changing person – and to let our changing selves be known. Grand
demonstrations of love won’t keep us in step – instead, little everyday
acts form the relational glue that gives us a fighting chance.
The good thing about little things is that there are lots of them.
You don’t have to wait for an anniversary or for your partner to be
stranded in a burning building to prove that you love him. You can just
take out the trash. Marriage isn’t, after all, composed of many neutral
decisions. Nearly everything we do takes us either closer to or further
from our partner.
Life together isn’t so much about avoiding the dark, menacing threats
looming on the horizon as it is about tiny acts between the two of you
that either build or erode trust, love, and respect. When you encounter
your next chance to love well, take it. It will probably take place in
the next five minutes.
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