Re-Post - Marriage and the Myth of True Love

I've mentioned many times in the past that I hope to write for publication someday.  Actually it has happened to some degree as some of the things I have written here have been picked up and linked to by my friend John at Monergism.com. And, I have recently been invited to take part in a project involving a team of "citizen journalists" that will enable me to publish my writings off site.  I'll tell you more about that in coming days. 

But I've decided to take the plunge and start getting some of my stuff ready to submit for publication. I figure the worst that can happen is that I'll get turned down and hopefuflly get some helpful feedback.  This means I'm going to have re-edit some of my posts to be read in different formats and as I do this I will re-post some of those here.

In this post, I am re-posting my piece called Marriage and the Myth of True Love, which I originally posted on April 5, 2004.  It's not that this was one of my most popular posts or anything, but it is a matter that I have some strong feelings about and has a message I would like to get out to a wider audience.  I've pretty much rearranged and updated the whole thing and wanted to run it by you again.

So, along with the usual comments, complaints, compliments, criticisms, roses and rotten tomatoes, feel free to give me any editing suggestions or to tell me how badly this stinks and that I should abandon this idea of publishing it before I embarass myself.

Marriage and the Myth of True Love

"Nothing has produced more unhappiness than the concept of the soul mate,” says

Atlanta

psychiatrist Frank Pittman. Pittman is quoted in an article called “Great Expectations” by Polly Shulman in the March/April 2004 issue of Psychology Today. The article reveals the findings of psychologists who “provide insight into how the never-ending search for ideal love can keep you from enjoying a marriage or a healthy relationship that you already have.” 

Shulman defines the soul mate as “a partner who reflects our taste and status, who sees us for who we are, who loves us for all the ‘right’ reasons, who helps us become the person we want to be.” Further, she says that the soul mate is “the man or woman who will counter our weaknesses, amplify our strengths and provide the unflagging support and respect that is the essence of a contemporary relationship.”

And why does this concept of the soul mate keep us from “enjoying a marriage or a healthy relationship” we already have? Shulman says:

The pragmatic benefits of partnership used to be foremost in our minds. The idea of marriage as a vehicle for self-fulfillment and happiness is relatively new, says Paul Amato, professor of sociology, demography and family studies at

Penn

State

University

. Surveys of high school and college students 50 or 60 years ago found that most wanted to get married in order to have children or own a home. Now, most report that they plan to get married for love. This increased emphasis on emotional fulfillment within marriage leaves couples ill-prepared for the realities they will probably face.

Because the early phase of a relationship is marked by excitement and idealization, “many romantic, passionate couples expect to have that excitement forever,” says Barry McCarthy, a clinical psychologist and coauthor—with his wife, Emily McCarthy—of Getting It Right the First Time: How to Build a Healthy Marriage. Longing for the charged energy of the early days, people look elsewhere or split up.

Flagging passion is often interpreted as the death knell of a relationship. You begin to wonder whether you’re really right for each other after all. You’re comfortable together, but you don’t really connect the way you used to. Wouldn’t it be more honest—and braver—to just admit that it’s not working and call it off? “People are made to feel that remaining in a marriage that doesn’t make you blissfully happy is an act of existential cowardice,” says Joshua Coleman, a

San   Francisco

psychologist.

Psychology Today is not one of the first places Christians usually go for advice on marital happiness and healthy relationships. Yet these comments have offer a type of wisdom that is very close to biblical. The rest of the article is full of ideas and assumptions that are contrary to biblical teaching, but there is a nugget of truth in these warnings about the idea of a soul-mate that Christians ought to listen to.

The concept of the “soul mate” is a version of the "true-love myth." Tim Keller from Redeemer Church in

Manhattan

says the "true-love" myth is the notion 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. It is also a dominant myth in many Christian marriages.

Christians may not use the term “soul-mate” to describe their beloved, instead they spiritualize the idea. They seek out and think they find that one perfect person known as “God’s best for me,” or “God’s perfect mate for me.” They buy into a notion that Gary Friessen talks about in his book Decision Making and the Will of God that sees God’s will as a bullseye. In this line of thinking the Christian’s object is to hit the center of the bullseye. The center of the bullseye is defined as “God’s perfect will.” To the degree they miss the center, to that degree they miss God’s perfect will.

Whether it is a secularized soul-mate or a spiritualized “perfect mate” the idea is the same. There is one perfect person out there for me and when I find that one person, happiness, fulfillment and bliss will inevitably follow.

The same kinds of problems that Shulman, Amato, and McCarthy address in the people they study happen in Christian marriages. In a Christian marriage a day eventually comes where one or both parties becomes at least a one point Calvinist. They come to realize they are married to a totally depraved person, and this often comes as a terrible shock. Yet it happens because Christian couples frontload their marriages with impossible expectations.

Ken Sande of Peacemaker Ministries says that one of the great problems Christian marriages face is that the spouses read each other’s mail. In particular, many conservative evangelical Christians is read passages like Proverbs 31 and Ephesians 5:22ff. The man then expects his wife to be an 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, and submits like Sarah, who called her husband "lord."

In an earlier version of this article which was posted on my blog, a commenter mentioned that I forgot something. She said “you forgot one thing that even some Christian men want in a women: they want her to be as sexually responsive as the women portrayed in the porn they used to look at...or still look at.”

If the man expects all of the above, the woman doesn’t expect nearly as much, she just wants to be married to Jesus.

These great expectations set people up for even greater disappointments. Whereas a secular spouse may bemoan the lack of passion, a Christian spouse bemoans the lack of spirituality. The secular wife sings “you don’t bring me flowers anymore,” and the Christian wife cries “you don’t pray with me anymore.” A non-Christian husband may have had it up to here with his wife’s nagging and a Christian husband will get it up to there with his wife’s lack of submission.

This may help explain some of those stats we see from George Barna and others who point out 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.

I spent a long time listening to one man explain to me why he was leaving his wife. He recounted a long list of dirty deeds that included her constant tardiness, unwillingness to fix him the foods he wanted, and oh yeah, she once complained about him to her mother. It took me a few minutes to recover from the shock of hearing such sordid things. But then I asked him if his wife (in view of the atrocities she committed, we’ll just call her “Cruella”) was still willing to live with him. He said she was. I asked if she had committed adultery and to his knowledge she hadn’t. I then informed him that, as horrible as she was, he had no biblical grounds to divorce Cruella as she hadn’t committed the sin of adultery or desertion.

“Oh but she has deserted me” he said, “she has deserted me in her heart.” I tried to explain that “desertion in the heart” does not qualify as desertion in the biblical sense. I also asked him to pretend he was a Christian and take a Christian view of suffering in the matter, being willing to endure whatever suffering Cruella was inflicting for the sake of Christ. He was unwilling to hear any of it. In his mind, she had deserted him and he had biblical grounds for desertion.

This little story is one illustration of how “great expectations” kill marriages. This man obviously expected that “God’s perfect mate” for him would be one who was punctual, fixed the food he wanted when he wanted and would never vent a frustration to her mother. Those are all nice things, but none of them are biblical expectations for a marriage. Yet, we think they are, and that is because we have a skewed understanding of the Christian faith. 

One might reply that this can't be. After all professing Christians enter marriage with biblical convictions which bring about a higher view of the sanctity of marriage, and a higher commitment to marriage.  Yet there are two mitigating factors in this.

First of all, not all who profess Christian faith possess Christian faith. Jesus Himself said that there are many (not just a few, but many) who call Him Lord who will be very disappointed when they see Him on judgment day. According to Matthew 7:15-23 there are many who know Jesus but whom Jesus doesn’t know.

Secondly, syncretism is always a danger in Christendom and American Christendom is no different. Harold Bloom may be correct in his argument in The American Religion, when he describes the crucial elements that mark American religion (i.e. 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. It is more driven by subjective impressions of what God wills than it is 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. 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.

The trouble in this is that the notion of a soul-mate or perfect mate is driven by this self-centered, individualistic paradigm. The more depraved and less “soul mate-ish” a partner looks the more the professing Christian begins to think they have missed the bullseye of God’s perfect will for them. From there it becomes easy to rationalize the notion that one missed God’s “perfect will” in marrying that person.  And, like a string of falling dominoes it becomes easy to come up with reason upon reason why separation and divorce are allowed in their particular case.

This is why Paul Amato is on to something nearly biblical when he says:

The pragmatic benefits of partnership used to be foremost in our minds. The idea of marriage as a vehicle for self-fulfillment and happiness is relatively new.

Yet the idea of marriage as “a vehicle for self-fulfillment and happiness” predominates today, even in the church. We question someone’s standing as soul-mate or perfect-mate largely on the basis of whether or not they make us happy. Yet when it comes to marriage this is not a concern of the biblical writers at all.

The Song of Solomon gives us a wonderful picture of the beauty of passion in the marital relationship. Passion is a wonderful gift to a married couple, but can never form the basis for a marriage. At the inception of the institution of marriage in Genesis 1-2, marriage was given as a means of sharing a task and raising children. True, companionship was in view as it was not good for man to be alone. But the companionship spoken of there was companionship in fulfilling the tasks that God had given.

I’m sorry to be so unromantic about the whole thing, but the truth is that marriage started out as a very utilitarian thing. Certainly the glory of God was in view in the institution of marriage and companionship in the work of tending the garden and raising a family were in view. But personal self-fulfillment and happiness were not in view.

In his book A Godward Life, Part 1, John Piper has a reading titled “The Slow Fires of Misery: Enduring the Pain of a Flawed Marriage,” where he encourages us to endure the miseries that marriage brings. There are benefits to individuals, families and society at large that come from enduring the pain of a flawed marriage that far outweigh any temporal relief from ending the marriage.

And yes, all marriages bring misery to those who are consumed with their own self-fulfillment and happiness. Marriage can’t help but be miserable to such a person and the so-called soul-mate will be the bringer of those miseries.

There is an idolatry involved in the idea of the soul-mate or perfect mate. The idol may be the other person or it may be oneself. But idolatry it is because the idea of the soul-mate or perfect mate places a burden on the partner that only God can bear. The soul-mate becomes the savior, yet only Jesus Christ can bear the weight of being a savior.

I and many others have found that marriage can be a wonderfully exhilarating thing, if entered into from the right perspective. As I write an article like this I fear that there will be some who think I must have a rotten marriage and others who are probably feeling sorry for my wife right now.  Yet my wife and I consider ourselves exceedingly blessed and we are exceedingly happy and exceedingly passionate in our marriage.

This has come through accepting one another’s depravity and learning what it means to love and be loved by a flawed and sinful human being. We’ve seen the best and the worst in each other.

Also, our marriage is based on the idea that we are first and foremost partners in service to Jesus Christ. We’ve got more than enough selfishness to explode our marriage, but in His grace, God has kept it before us that we exist for Him, not ourselves.

We are also lovers. We even think of ourselves as “soul-mates” and we both think we have found God’s best in the other. But this is because neither one of us has to bear the weight of being a savior or a God for the other person.

Marriage can be a great and wonderful thing, but it must be built on realistic expectations, not “great expectations.”

Comments

[Paula]

David,
This is a really good piece. No rotten tomatoes, but some advice as someone who has written for publication: you may need to shorten it some. Write a little "tighter." It's easy to write long and difficult to write short is what I learned in journalism school. And I'm hoping your friends who are working with you to get published will also help you with your editing; I noticed some grammar stuff.
Overall, this is such a good piece I don't see why you shouldn't get it published somewhere, but in addition to citing periodicals and experts, many publications desire scriptural references (typed out). Of course, I don't know where you're looking to be published, but this is what I've seen.
I'm so much in agreement with what you've written (I'm a casualty of divorce) that I would have difficulty cutting anything. But when we want to write for publication, as I told my pastor today, "we have to edit ruthlessly."
Good job and God bless.
Pg

[dopderbeck]

Nice article, I agree. Re: publishing -- what are you looking to do, put a book together or publish articles in magazines and such? I know a guy (haven't seen him in years though) who writes for magazines and ghost writes books; my wife years ago was in the Christian publishing biz. My perception is that the most productive route probably is to publish some articles and then pitch your book idea to a publisher, after you've built some credibility but before putting your manuscript together. Unless it's a hot novel or you're a celebrity, an unsolicited book manuscript probably won't get much play. On the other hand, magazine and journal articles aren't that hard to place, at least outside of major market publications (e.g., Christianity Today). I've had many law-related articles published and there seem to be lots of outlets for those, particularly if you're willing to work for publicity and credibility rather than money. I'm not sure about pastoral type stuff, but I'd venture to guess that there are plenty of secondary market outlets there as well as a place to start. I'd be curious to find out if you come up with a list of potential markets to place pastoral / theological writing.

[David Wayne]

David - I do have ambitions of writing books some day, I've got a few outlines in my head and there are some things I've done here on the blog that could turn into books. But for now, I'm just looking to publish in magazines. What you said is kind of what I am trying to do - I'll try to get published in a few non-paying markets and hopefully build up some credibility for paying markets. Then, hopefully I can parlay that into book publishing someday.
For this particular article I was planning to look through the Christian Writer's Digest and find some magazines that are devoted to marriage and family issues. I may even take a shot at the CT market, for Marriage Partnership. The other stuff I write is more theological, so I'm looking at some online markets for those like Thirdmill and a few others.
If your wife ever reads blogs I would love any advice she could give me.

[David Wayne]

Paula - thanks very much for the advice. I am long winded in the pulpit and long fingered on the computer. I would not be offended at all if you wanted to share some areas where I could edit this and also some of my grammar mistakes. And thanks for the encouragement.

[Diane]

The American Christians do seem to forget that the "bullseye" of the Christian life is to be transformed by the renewing of our minds into the image of Christ. If Jesus learned obedience through the things He suffered, if it was fitting that He was made perfect through sharing in our sufferings, then why would we side-step the process and hope for the end result? It comes off looking like, "Yes, I want to be like Christ. Just leave me completely the way I am and make everyone else see me as Christ-like."

Our connection to reality is lost and we walk in delusion fully believing that it is someone else's fault or that we have suffered unfairly. How freeing it is to know that no matter how unbearable a marriage can seem for whatever reason, in the sovereignty of God we can be right on track for His character to be formed in us. Dying to our ideas, expectations and view of reality is imperative. Embracing the Word and the compassionate, awesome Lord as our supply of unfailing love, overwhelming grace, and infinite wisdom becomes "living water" by which we can determine to camp. There is no greater filling of purpose than to be daily connected to the One who makes us new.

[Milton Stanley]

The quality of your content and style is definitely ready for hardcopy publication. Just find the right outlet, and you'll be there. Peace.

[Dan]

Great post Dave!

You should try to get it posted in one of the CT magazines or websites. Unfortunately I can't help you with the details :-(
The article does beg for a followup (at least from a single readers point of view) that might give you a better chance of being published since I don't recall reading anything on the subject. And that is: given "Marriage and the Myth of True Love" what should the christian single look for in a mate?
One corollary is that you aren't looking for "the one" God has choosen but you yourself must "choose one". And I think taking that responsability is a lot scarier for most singles. Which is amusing given that most would loudly object to the idea of having their parents make the choice.
But now since the burden is on the person to make a choice one must wonder what is the wisest way to go about it? Scripture only seems to have one command: "Don't be unequally yoked". So should you just pick the first christian who will take you? After all if it doesn't make you happy at least it will make you more spiritual. Or should one look at biblical portraits like Jesus or the Prov. 31 woman and look for the best and expect the worst? Or maybe look at it pragmatically: If you want a house look for the person with the highest income. Or the most fertile/best parent if it's children you are after...
Anyway, I'd be interested in hearing your view on the matter.

[Teem]

As always another good post.
I'm not sure if my story (or our story) confirms your point or clashes with it but I'll share it anyway.
Most everybody who knows my wife and I quickly realizes we are very different in personality and temperament. We were aware of this when we were considering marriage. And there was not a lot of those warm emotions identified with love. But we felt God was in our relationship and we should, in fact get married.
God has, in fact, been in our marriage. There has been much blessing and growth. And as we have worked through the challenges of building a life together--out of two very different people--God has been present in the very midst of living out a commitment made before Him. And 11 years later (I was 40 when we got married) the emotions of love are genuine and growing stronger.
Marriage has been a great gift to me. But yes, there is much more than warm fuzzy feelings and looking for the "perfect" one.

[dopderbeck]

If your wife ever reads blogs I would love any advice she could give me.

It was long ago, and she had a baaaaad experience working in "Christian" publishing. She found it as bottom-line oriented and cutthroat as any "secular" business, but with the added stress of expecting that the authors and business people would act like Christians, which they didn't.

[Happy Batson-Jones]

David, I don’t think I’m a particularly good writer. I have a tendency to write awkward sentences, and I have to redo them dozens of times. On top of that, grammar drives me nuts. However, I still managed to get a non-fiction book published and a few magazine articles. In other words, I’m not exactly a novice, but I’m not an expert either. So feel free to ignore my suggestions if you don’t agree with them.

In my opinion, you’re not trusting your own voice. This article comes alive at the point where you start writing your own thoughts. Your writing style is lively, and you have something to say. Your passion about the subject shows in your writing. However, you’re hiding your excellent voice behind your references/sources, which are rather dry and academic. (You have a page and half in the beginning) Hidden in the middle of your work is a great hook. It would do wonders at the beginning, making your article sing. However if the market you're targeting requires a lot of references then ignore the rest of my comments.

Start with the second sentence of the thirteenth paragraph. Tighten up your quotations and seed them sparingly throughout the article and then only to prove a point you’ve made. Here’s how the beginning would look minus the page and half of references and with a slight tightening of the first two sentences, making one.

---
Marriage and the Myth of True Love

In a Christian marriage a day eventually comes where one or both parties realize they are married to a totally depraved person, and this often comes as a terrible shock. Yet it happens because Christian couples frontload their marriages with impossible expectations.

Ken Sande of Peacemaker Ministries says that one of the great problems . . .

----
The first sentence is a grabber. It makes a person want to read more. The second sentence is your theme. Here you’ve made it clear what your article is about. (I love your use of the word frontload) Then in the next paragraph you use a reference/quotation in an excellent way, following what you just wrote to prove your point. In my opinion your article is great from here on in, other than normal polishing. You can seed in some of the other quotations from your first page and a half, but you may find you only need a few of them.

I hope this is helpful, and I haven’t offended you in any way.
Happy Jones

[manasclerk]

Any advice on what the article should look like depends upon how you want to pitch it. Writing for a particular rag means having a certain range of voice. This is either too "academic" or not enough, depending on how you want to pitch it. So who do you want to reach? The content itself could be repurposed quite a few ways.

Most entry-level (for authors) periodicals (unless you happen to hit from the blog like RealLivePreacher did) is poorly edited anyway. Print folks still prefer to see print publications on your list: it means that someone spent actual money to publish something you wrote. And an editor at any decent publication will send it back with requests for changes to better fit their style. Even then they may never publish it.

Happy Batson-Jones is right about the voice issue, though.

As an editor, I've not worked in Christian publishing but my friends all tell horror stories. The stronger the beliefs the worse the work environment, it seems. Publishing is always a dog-eat-dog world and maybe that creates a problem juxtaposed with Christian ethics. I've spoken with the spirituality editors at Jossey-Bass, the publisher of an associate of mine, and they say more or less what dopderbeck said. They have to be assured that your book will sell so you have to show a level of "will buy" readers. I would imagine that this holds for the western Michigan and northern Illinois publishers, too.

The best advice comes from a friend of mine who spent twelve years writing before something hit, and then all at once: within a year, he had six of his novels published and got optioned for a teen comedy screenplay. "Write your muse and let the market worry about itself."

[Tammy/ Samiyah]

I have been married to a man that has never through the whole 29 years of marriage practiced his faith,I on the other hand have god to church and took my children with me,I was raised as a baptist but felt that I was not getting the full view of the Lord. 2 years ago I became a muslim and left my marriage and moved to Egypt 1 year before converting to Muslim I have been here a total of 3 years and need to end my marriage because I can not in the law of Islam be married to a christian man of which I was not happy with 3 months after my first son was married but I took an oath to honor and obey,but I did not see in the vows where the man had the right to accuse you of infedelity,abuse(physically and mentally) I stayed with this guy for 29 years putting up with mental abuse being disabled with fibromyalgia and him wanting things the way he wanted them.How can I write out divorce papers ending a marriage due to my Muslim religion and them mental abouse that I was getting..Please if anyone out there would please contact me and answer some questions that I have it would be greatly appreciated...as salamu alaykum(peace be with you)

[Weddings in Tulsa]

Very informative!!
i was bother to these Re-Post - Marriage and the Myth of True Love

that's was very great advice to the couple!!
thanks for the effort and also time to posts these kind of blog..