Love and Marriage

Once a couple came to me to discuss getting married. After a few sessions about love and marriage, we started discussing the marriage service itself.  As we doing that hey asked if they could change some words in the marriage vows. I said I had no problem with making some appropriate changes in the wording and asked what they had in mind. It gave me pause when they asked to change the words, “Until we are parted by death,” to, “For as long as our love shall last.”  At that point, I suggested that perhaps before we went any further making wedding plans, they should decide whether they were ready to make a real commitment to each other.  Oh, they said, they were ready for a real commitment, as long as it was a conservative one. (They were both accountants.)

We live in a world in which we can get just about anything we want with some kind of guarantee, except for real love and an honest relationship.  Openness, vulnerability, affection, sacrifice, fulfillment, ecstasy, companionship, honesty, and all the rest of the descriptive words that are applicable to what people experience and share when they are in love, never come with a guarantee.  Where love and marriage are concerned, there is no way to make a conservative investment of ourselves which will guarantee that things will work out, or be the way we expected them to be. Maybe that is why many people are unhappy and unfulfilled in their marriages, friendships, romances, and other relationships. 

Most of the time our expectations are at the root of serious relationship problems. Instead of looking at the other person as they are, we tend to look at what we want or expect that person to become, and oftentimes we work very hard to mold them into our expectations. And very often they are willing to make every effort to try and fit our mold, at least for a while. But at some point the mold gets too confining and far too uncomfortable and that's when either the mold breaks or the loving relationship does. Now there can be freedom and new life when the mold breaks and the couple learns how to move forward into a relationship of openness and a willingness to discover each other. But there is always pain, loss, and sadness when it's the relationship that falls apart instead of the mold.

It takes courage and patience, but it's a much greater adventure when we look to discover the real person rather than attempt to mold our loved one into our expectations. In discovering who they are, we generally let who we are peek out from under our defenses, and find ourselves to be pretty lovable as well. Most often we wind up discovering that the best part of a genuine loving relationship involves learning how to be as devoted to him or her as we hoped our lover might be to us. People who have lived for a very long time and who have loved someone for a very long time seem to know this lesson well. We might do well to listen to them, because good advice, especially about love and a happy marriage, is hard to come by.  

I’ve always found the following letter about love and marriage to be amusing and inspiring.

Expert Advice About Love and Marriage from Eve, The First Woman

Dear Iris,

So, I hear that you’re getting married to a nice young man from over at Mount Ararat.  I think that’s wonderful, and I couldn’t be happier for you.  In fact, I think it’s so nice that you’re getting all grown up and married that I’m going to give you a little grandmotherly advice.  Not that I’m trying to interfere and tell you how to live; God forbid that I should do something like that.  But you have to understand, it is the prerogative of grandmothers to give wise and unwanted advice about love and marriage, or anything else whenever they like.  It is something that comes with age, kind of like wrinkles, white hair and forgetting things.

When you’re young, it’s easy to believe that you already know everything there is to know, and that you don’t need advice.  When I was young, I didn’t take advice from anybody.  But then I was the first woman and I didn’t have a grandmother, or anybody else for that matter, to give me advice.  Once there was a talking snake, who was full of advice.  But we aren’t going to talk about that.  Now that I have grown older and possibly wiser, I can’t help feeling like it’s my responsibility to pass on some things to you that I had to learn the hard way.  So, Iris dear, just sit back, relax, and listen to what your grandmother has to say about love and marriage.  After all, it’s not like you have a choice.

First of all, on the subject of love and marriage, I’m an expert.  When you’re first at something, it always makes you an expert.  Besides, I was married to your grandfather Adam for 650 years.  Experience makes you an expert too. So I can tell you as an expert, that marriage is like a bed of roses; it looks and feels wonderful when you first lay down in it, but you find that the more time you spend there, the more often you get stuck with the thorns. What I mean to say is that when I got married to your grandfather (not that I had a whole lot of men to choose from) I expected that life would be perfect. I thought that we would be wonderfully happy and that our love for each other would overcome any obstacle. Needless to say, I was a little bit naive. But after all, I lived in Eden, and when you live there, it’s easy to be naive and to view everything through rose colored glasses.  When your Grandpa Adam and I first started out, we didn’t have to make any promises or vows about love and marriage. Loving, comforting and honoring each other was simple. Cherishing and being faithful were as natural as breathing.

In Eden, it seemed like we were all that there was, and everything about our lives was perfect.  But Eden didn’t last very long. It never does. It was even in Eden that we had our first real crisis. I couldn’t believe it when your grandfather tried to tell God that the whole forbidden fruit eating incident was my fault. I could have kept all the fruit for myself, but he was my husband, so I shared with him. I thought he’d like to be included. And he thought it was great too — until we got caught.

After that, he didn’t back me up and appreciate the fact that I shared with him. Oh no. Just because we got kicked out of Eden, I never heard the end of it. That was the first time that I realized the bed of roses even had thorns. But over the next 600 years or so, I got stuck with them a whole lot more. There were problems to be overcome, and sicknesses, and children, and stresses, and the pressures of living day-to-day. Sometimes that perfect marriage I had expected seemed like a fairy tale. But every now and then, there were glimpses of Eden again, moments that reminded us why God had put us together in the first place. All in all, there were lots of roses and lots of thorns. But don’t get me wrong dear, it’s not just the thorns, or just the roses, that I’m talking about. Because you see, every marriage is full of both, but neither thorns nor roses will make or break one.  

Good times and bad times, happiness and sadness, sickness and health, promises, commitments and responsibilities, roses and thorns, they are all a part of love and marriage. But they’re not the most important part. Sharing yourselves with each other, that’s the most important part. Love and marriage are about sharing the good times and the bad times, sharing the happiness and the pain, and sharing the sickness and the health. Marriage is about taking each other seriously, believing in each other, and being free to share what you think and feel and dream. Those are the things that will either make or break your marriage.

When God made your grandfather and I, he made us male and female, each incomplete. I think he did that so we would never have to be alone.  Because we realized early on that, without someone to share ourselves with, there was no way for us to be whole.  Sharing is what marriage is really all about.  In fact, I’m pretty well convinced that sharing is what life is all about.  And, it’s not easy.  

All in all, there isn’t much of this love and marriage business that has been easy over the years. There have been times when I’ve wished that God had made the first man a porcupine for a companion instead of me. And there have been times when I’m sure that your grandfather has wished for the same thing. There have been times when we’ve both wondered if all the pain, frustration, and aggravation of living together was worth it.  

But my dear, let me tell you it was, and it is worth it all. That’s because there have been other times when I’ve realized that I could not be Eve without Adam. There have been times when I have known that the sun would not shine as brightly, or the sky would not be as blue, without Adam to tell about it. There have been times when, even through anger and tears, I could still see so clearly that holding on to each other was much more important than what was trying to tear us apart. I can honestly say that for all the things that I can count as gifts in my long life, the fact that God gave me someone to share it with is the one for which I am most thankful.  

So, Iris, get ready.  It’s finally time for the grandmotherly advice. After you’re married, don’t expect miracles. Don’t expect a bed of roses or the Garden of Eden. Don’t expect him to be everything you ever wanted, and don’t try to be everything he ever wanted. Instead, expect him to be nothing more or less than himself. Sometimes that will be wonderful, and other times it will be something that you wouldn’t want to mention in polite company. Iris, my dear child, you be yourself as well, and know that you won’t be easy to live with all the time either.

Expect marriage to be nothing more or less than the sharing of your lives. Be sure to share the good times and the bad times; share the anger and the joy; share the wealth and the poverty; share the sicknesses and the health.  But, above all, share the work, because love and marriage are work. Marriage is work that can make your life together mean a great deal more than your lives ever could have meant apart.

Okay, that’s enough of grandmotherly advice. We’ve got a wedding to plan. Make sure you let me know when you go to pick out the dress; I’ll help. And tell your mother to call me so she’ll know how to plan the reception the right way.

I wouldn’t want to interfere, but I’m an expert in these things too.

Let me hear from you soon.

 Love,

Grandma Eve

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