Marriage and the Myth of True Love

A few days ago I jumped in, midstream, to a conversation on marriage that was bouncing around a few different blogs.

Anti-Climacus first alerted me to this in his post on 3.04.04 and mentioned that there was a discussion going on between Evangelical Outpost and Diotima.

I checked out Evangelical Outpost's post on the subject and left a comment and got an informative response from Joe Carter.

In addition, Josh Claybourn has weighed in on his April 4, 2004 entry with some thoughts on marriage, particularly when it comes to this whole debate about submission.

On Monday of this week I decided to try to get up to date on the whole thing so I read Diotima's post on marriage in her entry of Thursday, April 01, 2004.

It turns out that Diotima's post was motivated by her reading of an article in Psychology Today called Great Expectations.

The whole thing is a fascinating thread of discussion that I highly recommend everyone read. What started this snowball of blogspeak is the Psychology Today article and I think the one quote that best summarizes that article is this:

"Nothing has produced more unhappiness than the concept of the soul mate,” says Atlanta psychiatrist Frank Pittman

A very provocative quote indeed, and if you would like my humble addition to the whole discussion, keep reading.

First of all, let me declare my biases in this matter. I am one of those wild-eyed conservative evangelical Christians who believe that the Bible is inerrant, marriage is a sacred institution ordained by almighty God, and a host of other archaic things. I'm also a pastor who gets to deal with troubled marriages on a pretty regular basis, so my concerns are very practical and not merely theoretical. My bias in this regard is that almost every marriage can and should be preserved. I have a very narrow view of divorce - I think the Bible teaches that a marriage may only be dissolved in cases of adultery and desertion. Even in cases of adultery, I think that reconciliation is preferred, though divorce is allowed.

In stating all of this, I realize that I have biases that would not be shared by the folks at Psychology Today, or some other bloggers. My view may be far more narrow than some are comfortable with. However, I find myself largely on the same page as those at Psychology Today in this matter, particularly with regard to the concept of a "soul-mate."

In "conservative-Christian-speak," I think this whole idea of the "soul-mate" gets spiritualized and translated this way - "God's perfect mate for me." Both are forms of the "true-love myth." I recently heard Tim Keller from Redeemer Church in Manhattan speak on this topic and his concerns and the concerns of Psychology Today dovetail.

The "true-love" myth says that I will live happily ever after when I find my true love. It is the dominant myth in everything from Harlequin Romance novels, to blockbuster movies, to Christian singles groups. Of course, in Christian singles groups the Christian singles often feel badly for feeling this way, after all they know they should be happy in their relationship with God and not need a mate so badly. Yet, they still desperately want one. Or, if they don't feel badly, they spiritualize their desires into something more holy sounding.

The fact of the matter is that the "true-love myth" is indeed a myth, as is the concept of the soul-mate, per Psychology Today. The problem with true love in the movies is that they always end when the guy gets the girl, or vice versa. They don't describe what happens after the marriage - you know, the part where real life starts. In fact, I have a silly example, but it's the only one that comes to mind - I am thinking of the movies Speed and Speed 2. Though neither were great movies, and Speed 2 is one of the all time bombs, do you remember how Sandra Bullock and Keanu Reeves fall in love at the end of Speed and all looks good. But, at the beginning of Speed 2 they have broken up. Although it was a loser of a movie, at least it gave an honest portrayal of what happens after the movie - true love (at least the Hollywoodized, mythological version) doesn't last.

I think something like this happens in the lives of professing Christians - we embrace the "soul-mate" or "true-love" myth, then baptize those myths and add extra weight, extra pressure and extra expectations to our relationships. As Psychology Today points out, those "great expectations" are what kill marriages.

What happens in the lives of conservative evangelical Christians is that they read Proverbs 31 and Ephesians 5:22ff. The man then expects his wife to be this amazing superwoman, a la Proverbs 31 (while of course being submissive a la Ephesians 5:22) and the woman expects to find a man who will love her as Christ loves the church, a la Ephesians 5:25. So, here's the picture - the man expects a woman who looks like a model, cooks like Julia Child, makes money like Martha Stewart (ooh - bad example!), and submits like Sarah, who called her husband "lord." The woman doesn't ask much, she just wants to be married to Jesus.

I wonder if this doesn't explain some of those stats you see from George Barna and folks like him. He says that professing Christians divorce at as high or a higher rate than professing non-Christians (for now, we won't address the issue of what constitutes a "professing Christian" - suffice it to say his definitions are very broad). If "great expectations" kill a marriage then it is the professing Christians who come into marriage with the greatest of expectations and therefore set their marriages up to be especially deadly.

One might reply that this can't be, after all professing Christians enter marriage with a higher view of the sanctity of marriage, and a higher commitment to marriage. I have two responses to this. First, all who profess Christian faith do not possess Christian faith, so many of those professors are not possessors. Secondly, I think Harold Bloom may be correct in his argument in The American Religion, when he describes the crucial elements that mark American religion (read - American Christianity)

the feelings, acts, and experiences of individual men in their solitude, so far as they apprehend themselves to stand in whatever they may consider the divine.

In other words, American Christianity is, at its core an individualistic, experience oriented thing that is more driven by subjective impressions of what God wills instead of being driven by the standards of Scripture or a religious community. As such, American Christians have no problem re-imagining their faith and their Holy Book in ways that fit their subjective experiences. For example, when one man told me of his desire to leave his wife I asked him if she had committed adultery or deserted him. He admitted that she had not committed adultery and even though she wanted to continue living with him as his wife, he declared that she had deserted him in her heart. Therefore, the Scriptural principle allowing divorce in the case of desertion (which has always been understood as "physical" desertion, and at some points as physical abuse) was re-defined as a kind of "emotional desertion" that allowed divorce. As some have pointed out the statement "it felt right to me" or something like that, has now become the highest court of appeal in our land - no one can argue against such a statement.

Many professing Christians have adopted a syncretistic worldview, by trying to "sync" their subjectivity, individualism and experientialism with their Christianity. At its core, Christianity is an objective reality, not a subjective experience, it depends upon a written revelation which exists apart from and outside of the individual. It is founded on historical realities, not subjective experiences.

Christianity is communal in nature, not individualistic. Christ died for His bride - a community known as the church. His death was not for a bunch of freelance agents who live without regard for or relationship with one another.

Christianity has a different way of thinking. Christians think first of the good of the group before thinking about "what's best for me."

So, many professing Christians enter marriage with this syncretistic, subjective, individualistic worldview. They baptize this worldview with spiritual sounding words and phrases. Then, they load their marriages up with the great expectations that are inherent in the myths of "true love," the "soul mate," and "God's best for me." These marriages can't bear the weight of such expectations and the syncretistic worldview provides an escape hatch that enables people to tell themselves that it is God's will that they dissolve their marriages.

For all of you who are feeling really sorry for my wife at this point, let me go on record as saying that we do not have a merely utilitarian marriage and that we are very happy and truly in love with one another. I am not arguing for a stoic or utilitarian form of marriage. Marriage can be an exceedingly happy and pleasurable thing, in fact it can be the happiest of human experiences, as long as it is understood in the right context. And I do believe that there is a way you can know who is "God's best" best for you - its the one you made vows to on your wedding day.

A biblical view of marriage, from Genesis 1 and 2, sees man and woman first of all as partners in fulfilling God's cultural mandate, and secondly as lovers. Those who learn to be partners in service to God first, will then find that they can be better lovers toward one another. The reason they can be better lovers is that their lover doesn't have to bear the weight of being God in their life.

I realize that I have taken this entire discussion in a different direction than the Psychology Today article did, and I probably have some views and perspectives that they would find quite disturbing. But, I think we have some commonalities. Marriage can be a great and wonderful thing, if is built on "realistic expectations," not "great expectations."