An Honest Heart-to-Heart Chat on Marriage

I was talking with a friend about the state of marriage in America, and the one thing that continually came up was the notion that "love" or "happiness" was one of the reasons people chose a wedding partner, i.e. "I love her," or "he makes me happy" or "I respect him".

Now, before you accuse me of saying "marry someone who makes you miserable" or "marry someone you hate" or "marry someone you can't respect, let me clarify what I mean.

An imperfect man and an imperfect woman do not a perfect marriage make, so let's put away the Wedding Barbie and Wedding Ken and think this through.

First off, you are responsible for your feelings. Even if someone does something you don't like, you can control how you will react to it. You've been mastering the art since your toddler years (though, we all hope you've matured beyond having an emotional meltdown every time something doesn't go your way.) Sooner or later, the man you respect, or the woman you love will become unrespectable or unlovable. That’s just the way it is.

Secondly, marriage isn’t a game. It’s not something you jump into and hope that you ‘win’. It’s work. It’s 128 hours a week-no pay-no health care benefits-work. It’s all about learning to respect him when he’s being a jerk and learning to love her when she’s being irrational, because love means more than an emotion—it’s a commitment to the true good of another person, the same way your mother loved you when she comforted you when you were hurling or reassured you when you saw monsters under your bed or changed your diapers dutifully. Ladies, there will be days when you have to build up your husbands. Men, there will be days when you have to comfort your wives, even if your spouse isn’t grateful for your efforts at the time—you probably weren’t very grateful at diaper change time.

Thirdly, marriage isn’t about you. It’s not about showing off your husband or wife as a trophy at parties, or about getting your spouse to do things for you. If you make your marriage about you it will fail big time, and you will be picking up the shards of your marriage. Understand that, and do your best to understand your husband or your wife. Ladies: don’t treat your husband like your girlfriends; Men: don’t treat your wife like your buddies.

Marriage isn’t for the weak. It separates the men from the boys and the women from the girls. If we want to heal marriage in our society, we need to heal the foundation of marriage by educating people in what it takes to make a marriage work. Until or unless we do so, by our negligence, we will have doomed ourselves, our posterity, and our country.