The love we knew as children may have come entwined with other, less pleasant dynamics: being controlled, feeling humiliated, being abandoned, never communicating, in short: suffering. Preparing us for marriage is, ideally, an educational task that falls on culture as a whole. We have stopped believing in dynastic marriages. We are starting to see the drawbacks of Romantic marriages. Now comes the time for psychological marriages. Interesting piece, and I wholeheartedly agree that our culture as a whole needs to work on shoring up marriage and educating itself about marriages ends and nature. But I fundamentally disagree with many of this articles premises. The article recognizes the inadequacies of marriages based solely on trying to bottle the romantic feelings of dating and courtship. However, it still seeks to scientifically control what cannot be controlled, the relationships of beings in a constant state of becoming from potential to actual, who cannot know themselves because they themselves are ever changing in myriad ways. My counter proposal to the psychological marriage the article suggests is marriage based on embracing precisely what the article blames for marital failure: suffering. Life without suffering is death. Christ taught that the power of death can be conquered by a God willing to suffer, and marriage is a human institution ordered as an analogy to the ultimate wedding between God and His faithful at the end of time, which consummates a beginning, not an end, of the redeeming work of sanctification - which proceeds on this earth through suffering. But in suffering there is grace, like endorphins during and after a long run, like forgiveness after sin, like healing after a wound. Instead of accepting a certain amount of tragic imperfection in the world, especially in fallen, fallible human relations, the modern world errors by attempting to avoid all suffering by over-analyzing marriage beforehand or by dissolving marriage afterwards. Happiness is a constant being-at-work under the immovable and transcendent good, and recognition of that fact could go a long way toward preserving marriage. Lets not ask, is this the right person? but rather, Can this person and I work together toward more fully becoming in the image of God through Christ? thephilosophersmail/relationships/how-we-end-up-marrying-the-wrong-people/
Posted on: Sun, 16 Nov 2014 21:05:50 +0000
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