Is it looking past the mark to think of our marriages as eternal rather than thinking of what we need in the here and now and in the near future? Do we focus so much on eternity that we are just barely enduring to the end in the day-to-day marriage?
Last week I re-posted a review of Stephanie Coontz’s book Marriage, A History: How Love Conquered Marriage under the title The Myth of Traditional Marriage. One of the commenters when I had originally posted this at BCC was author Susan Pease Gadoua who recommended I read her book The New “I Do.” Here’s her comment, for those who are interested:
I appreciate your overview of marriage in this article. I know Stephanie Coontz as well as the Cowans through an organization called the Council on Contemporary Families. You might want to join! Cutting edge info there.
If you’re interested in the future of marriage, I’d invite you to read my latest book (co-authored with journalist, Vicki Larson) entitled, The New I Do, Reshaping Marriage for Skeptics, Realists and Rebels (Seal Press, September 2014).
I’d love your feedback and I hope your readers will check it out as well. Thanks again for your post.
In the book, she talks about the different types of marriages and the different reasons for marrying and recommends having contractual shorter term marriage partnerships rather than expecting one marriage to be elastic enough to last a lifetime (or longer). It’s an interesting premise, and not just to Tom Cruise. Even if you don’t go so far as to have a time bound short-term contract instead of a traditional marriage license, a concept from the book that resonated for me is to renegotiate as circumstances change so both partners know what they need at this next stage of life, and then to decide if this partnership can continue into that next stage of life and its goals and what success will look like.
While it sounds scary to some people to even talk about the possibility of divorcing if we can’t agree to terms in these renegotiations, I think there’s a lot of merit in getting that discussion out in the open up front, while everyone’s still friendly and happy, rather than waiting until feelings are hurt due to unarticulated, missed expectations. Even if we are simply setting short-term goals as partners, the approach creates a much stronger marriage than the usual method of assuming we are in sync until proven otherwise.
First, a word about setting goals. I think we do a fairly good job in marriage of dealing with the superficial things or setting the easy goals: a budget, dividing responsibilities, what car to buy. Where we seem to fall short is in addressing the big things: our parenting philosophy, discussing sexual needs, dealing with health issues, handling changes in belief, and generally being vulnerable.
We often enter marriage without setting concrete expectations, goals and boundaries. Then we fail to communicate throughout the marriage and we hide our resentments rather than dealing with them. This is particularly difficult in Mormon marriages because marriage is such a focal point of our religion. The more important something is, the more vulnerable we are if it fails.
We also aren’t really (within cultural Mormonism at least) considered adults until we are married, and although gender roles are often touted as ideal, they are discussed in very vague terms. Is it providing or nurturing to do the grocery shopping or pay the bills? Is it providing or nurturing to keep the family medical records or attend school functions? This is why it’s important for partners to discuss their needs and goals openly before and during marriage.
We also tend to just throw people into marriages, tell them to have kids, finish their education, and stay together for life in total fidelity, but this is conflating various stages of life. Additionally, it’s unrealistic to believe that we can comprehend our future needs when we first choose a partner. Gadoua talks about different reasons people marry and the different goals at each stage of marriage. Here are a few that seem directly applicable to Mormon marriages, although more are discussed in her book:
- Starter Marriage. Usually when young adults are just starting out, and they want to pool their financial resources, to finish their education, to start their adults lives with a partner. These marriages are usually romantic and sexual in nature. Financial stability and parenting skills are less important (or not even considered) in the selection process and in making the marriage successful at this stage.
- Parenting Marriage. When a couple is ready to make a child or children the focus of their adult lives, they enter a parenting marriage. They seek someone who is going to be a good parent and partner in parenting, who will pull his or her weight, who wants the same things and has a similar disciplinary or child-rearing philosophy. They want someone who will complement their parenting skills and not contradict their values.
- Companionship Marriage. When children are grown, a couple wants someone who is a friend and partner. Financial stability matters at this stage, as do common interests and mutual respect.
- Security Marriage. In advancing years, people need a partner to help them when they are sick or infirm, to remind them to take medications and visit the doctor, to be a good influence on their health and well being (optimistic and supportive). Common interests become less important than being reliable and helpful. People who marry to be dependent on a provider also prefer a security marriage so that their financial needs are met by the union.
In my own marriage, when we first got married, I didn’t want to have kids. As a youngest, I didn’t have skills or much experience with kids, and I wasn’t sure I would ever feel differently, so I told my husband that if he was just marrying me to have kids, we might as well not get married. Although it was a temple marriage, and for eternity, we entered into what Susan Pease Gourda would call a Starter Marriage. At this stage of life, marriage is about pooling financial resources, learning to live with another person, and to some extent romance and sex. These marriages succeed or fail on those grounds and on those terms. People enter a Starter Marriage with expectations about those aspects of life: contributing financially and domestically, household habits, and a sexual or romantic connection.
About four years later I became curious about kids. I thought it might be interesting to have one and see how it went. [1] But again, I renegotiated. I said I was willing to give it a shot, but I was not going to be saddled with the primary care of the child. I had a job, and we still needed both our incomes, and I was earning more. I had seen other Mormon marriages in which the woman’s entire life changed drastically when a child was born, but the man’s life was nearly the same as it had been before. I wasn’t going to be in a situation where it was assumed that I was always the default parent, the one who had to leave work for a sick child or the one who had to be up all night. We talked about discipline, and we read books about parenting and discussed them.
Fortunately, we had similar views. We watched the shows about getting the child to sleep at night through self-soothing. I clearly stated that if I was going to have a child, we needed to not only be equal partners, but I needed to be the lesser partner in the areas where he was more skilled (as an oldest child) like teaching the child to read or tie shoes or just knowing what to do in general with kids. I was willing to try and to learn, but I had no experience and limited interest. As it turned out, he was vastly more skilled at those areas than I am, and he still is to this day. I’m better at some things, and he’s better at others. And like most couples, both of us are terrible at some things.
Now that our kids are teens and starting to leave the nest, we’ve begun to enter into a more companionable stage of marriage. We talked about what we needed to do to have the financial resources to retire the way we want, to be able to travel, to be free to move to another country if we want, to stay healthy (although not as fit as we have been in the past), and to live as long as we will likely live without feeling imprisoned by a fixed income. Those plans could go awry, but the conversation we’re having in our marriage has begun to change in that direction.
The book would suggest that for each stage of life, we create a short-term contract and keep to it, being prepared to exit the marriage on friendly terms if we don’t want the same things at the next stage of life, celebrating the successes of the past. There is something very appealing to this logical, planful approach as opposed to our Mormon tendency to assume everything will all work out in the eternities without trying to make it better today, assuming that divorce is not an option.
I agree with many of the book’s conclusions, and yet, I think the same aims can be achieved within a long-term marriage rather than a short-term contract by simply being more open about our own changing needs and the parameters of support within the partnership. This approach would eliminate some of the shortfalls that Mormon marriages seem prone to:
- Gender-role assumptions that lead to entitlement and resentment on both sides and a lack of empathy.
- Too many kids too quickly, leading to financial hardship, sleep deprivation, emotional stress, sexual apathy, and lack of personal fulfillment for the adults.
- Lack of financial resources due to single breadwinner marriages in a dual-income economy, leading to debt, marital strife, and increased stress on the earning spouse.
- Too much focus on eternity and not enough on creating happiness and enjoyment today.
Do you think the suggestion of a short-term marriage contract is a better alternative? Do you think Mormon marriages are happier on average or less happy than other marriages? How would you improve the quality of Mormon marriages? What are your best life lessons to improve marriages?
Discuss.
[1] Twenty years later, the jury is still out.
Wheat & Tares 
I do agree with your list of shortfalls in Mormon marriages. I do think that a long-term marriage CAN provide this, but it will be harder in the parts where one (or both) partners are a bit lacking in and clear expectations. Just as your example of not feeling like being a mom was the most important thing in the world to you, your husband was able to handle that and the two of you were clear on expectations. It can be a problem if it isn’t discussed, such as a husband expects his wife to have several kids and the kids are “her responsibility” (because the Proc. on family says so). If that would have been the assumption in your marriage, you would have probably moved on to a “companionship marriage”.
I do think marriage is the one place that we really grow and we each have different issues that the stages will make us work on. So it is POSSIBLE, but I assume you are asking more, is it usually the best.
As far as if Mormon marriages are happier than other marriages? Hard to answer. There is such a thick veneer of happy smiles that it can be hard to tell. There is also such pressure against divorce within the church that I think many marriages that are much less than ideal stay together in the church, but would end outside of the church. Sometimes that is good in that eventually the couple works things out and sometimes bad in that people feel trapped in a very poor marriage.
Best lessons? Not to be philosophical – Socrates says it best. “By all means marry. If you get a good wife, you will become very happy; if you get a bad one, you will be come a philosopher.”
The notion of short time marriages was explored at MMM April 2, 2012 “Negotiated Love. “http://www.modernmormonmen.com/2012/04/guest-post-negotiated-love.html#more
I think all marriages go through phases of one kind or another as life circumstances change. I don’t know how healthy it would be for children to be subjected to the whims of a couple who were only concerned with their own immediate happiness.
IDIAT: I think you are arguing against the same thing the author is without accepting the whimsy inherent in human decision making. The author would say it’s irresponsible to start a new phase of marriage whimsically (as many do) without setting specific goals and knowing what your outcomes should be. Staying together without setting goals or communicating can be its own form of irresponsible parenting. After all, in half of divorces children are better off because the terrible marriage has ended and parents can quit fighting and learn how to co-parent.
Thanks for this–the types of marriages ring very true for me. But I do see them working sequentially with the same two people as well. I have been known to quip that everyone has second marriage, the only question is whether it is with a different or same person.
I actually got that idea out of an Ensign article, from a wife who was nearing the empty nest stage and asked herself, if I died tomorrow, what kind of wife would my husband want now? And set out to become that wife.
The advantage of staying with the same person during all the phases is that you can plant seeds for a later stage while you are going through another. When the children were little, we would go out to lunch with a goal of not talking about kids or work–and this set the stage for some of our travel goals and involvement in a political organization that were not realized until much later. When our last baby was born, I had two nights a week when my husband handled things after dinner while I went and did something else. At least one of those evenings was spent at the academic library, mastering research skills that would lead to a paid job when that baby was in kindergarten.
Our choices might have been different if we were just focusing on that one phase and not looking forward to the next.
I think Mormon marriages also bring some great things to the table. For us, planning to serve a mission together is a great companionable activity. I am learning the language in the country where my husband served, we travel there. Not sure if we will actually fulfill the dream of the mission, but even the prep has been a fun project together.
“Gender-role assumptions that lead to entitlement and resentment on both sides and a lack of empathy.” Although I find gender roles to be incredibly valuable during the parenting years, I agree that it should not be based on assumptions, but always something that is negotiated by both partners. In the case of my marriage, after the first pregnancy we had data suggesting that I was too ill during gestation to do anything else, and that led to our decision to arrange things to that I could be at home fulltime during that phase of our lives. But it was agreed to by both, not a source of resentment or entitlement. And we considered ourselves as making equal yet different contributions to the family.
I believe that turning marriage into just another contract significantly weakens it.
Marriage and parenting is the hardest thing I’ve ever done. I think God intended it to be that way It’s forced me to become more selfless, more patient, more understanding, more Christlike.
I’m not the type of guy who loves young kids and chaos. I might be happier married to someone else. BUT, by working through the hard times and difficulties, I have become a better person, and gained precious insights into how my Heavenly Father interacts with his children.
If walking away from everything was an easy option, we’d all lose; as individuals, as families, and as a Church.
I also think these different partnerships can develop along a long-term marriage. Having points where expectations are discussed and negotiated are definitely a good idea, but tying those meetings with a mutual understanding that the marriage will be dissolved if one partner is dissatisfied doesn’t seem like a great idea to me. I still think the best foundation is laid at the beginning of marriage when expectations are discussed and the prospective partners have done whatever they can to prepare for a long-term union. For people who look at marriage as eternal, you’d think we’d prepare ourselves much more carefully to find (and be) a good companion for the long haul. I think the concern for morality issues (or just plain hormones) tends to encourage jumping into unwise starter marriages among Mormons.
I’m not sure that Mormon marriages are necessarily happier than others, but when couples are on the same wavelength and consider their religion a beneficial part of their marriage it can add a layer of support and satisfaction. If there are existing negative issues, though, the religious element can also add a layer of stress and discontent.
Hawk, your TYPES of marriages described could also be phases that a marriage goes through. Though a couple may be old enough to at least legally marry and they may have enough maturity and life skills to at least start out on their own, by no means are they done growing. And I would be kidding myself to believe that at age 56 that I don’t yet have further potential, opportunity, and NEED for growth…else, what am I doing here?
While a temple marriage may have the covenant and the promise to be eternally binding, it is built in the “now”, one brick at a time in the intricate and massive edifice.
The trouble with some of the Saints is that they have unrealistic expectations of the flowery promises that we hear at Church versus the gritty and often distasteful realities of life including this that many seem unable to face: a happy marriage, though worth above everything else, is a lot of damned work and involves fairly much the putting away of self!
‘Happy Hubby’ – Socrates also was condemned to perform his own execution by drinking poison. Supposedly his crime was ‘corrupting’ the Athenian youth with his ‘heretical’ beliefs (no evidence, contrary to popular rumor, that he was corrupting them in more carnal means). I dunno if I’d trumpet too many of the old boy’s witticisms, even in jest.
Short term marriages don’t appeal to me. I suspect most Mormons would find issue with them. I suppose they could be a good idea for much of the secular world. I agree that many Mormon marriages may not be very happy and they are enduring to the end in hopes of something more satisfying in the afterlife. Many LDS people have a martyr complex. They think if they are living a life of unhappy, unfulfilled, drudgery that they will be blessed for enduring the suffering with a glorious afterlife. I refuse to accept this. God loves us. He wants us to be happy. He allows us to live however we choose. I choose to be happy. Communication and friendship help a couple transition between the stages of a marriage. That is why Hawkgrrrl and her spouse have a marriage that works. They discuss openly what they want and what their expectations are. If you are not willing to love someone enough to allow them to achieve their goals and live the life that will make them happy then how can you expect things to be any different in the hereafter?
“Marriage and parenting is the hardest thing I’ve ever done. I think God intended it to be that way It’s forced me to become more selfless, more patient, more understanding, more Christlike.”
Right on the money with that comment. That is precisely the point of putting a Man and a women together in marriage. Some settle for easier routes like shacking up or same gender marriage. Marriage is designed to make us, or break us and the items Hawkgirl cited are the challenges: financial hardship, sleep deprivation, emotional stress, sexual apathy, and lack of personal fulfillment for the adults.
If Marriage were easy, it wouldn’t be so hard.
I think the more we communicate what our desires and expectations are, the better chance we have of making things work out. Most of us enter into a marriage with the expectation that it will last a lifetime; in the Church, we tend to be less likely to see divorce as the escape hatch for dissatisfaction except in dire circumstances. (YMMV, of course.) The notion that marriages, like people, pass through life stages is a very useful one for me, and underlines the importance of continued communication.
I don’t think there are very many people whose marriages stay in “starter” phase for a long, long time, even if they don’t have children. Some may have the expectation that marriage should always be romantic bliss, and the dissonance can destroy a relationship unless they come to grips with reality. Being realistic about it – in effect, recognizing that we’ll have several different marriages, hopefully all with the same partner – is a big help in showing us how to roll with the punches.
I agree that it’s unhealthy to expose kids to the whims of parents who are only looking out for their own short-term happiness. I think it’s much healthier to expose them to the whims of parents who are only looking out for their own long-term happiness. I’ve been surrounded by countless lds couples who would not be married anymore, except that a) they believe that divorce isn’t an option, and b) they actually believe that the amount of blessings they’ll receive in heaven is directly proportionate to the amount of suffering they endure in this life. And I believe unequivocally, that that kind of environment cannot possibly be better for a child than one in which parents have split, and are living healthy, happy lives of their own. I despise the idea that marriage is useful because it keeps couples together who would otherwise split and go their separate ways. That’s a lovely archaic, paternalistic institution. We’re too stupid and impulsive to make decisions that are good for ourselves and our children, so let’s create a system that’s so difficult and shameful to get out of that we’ll just stay together. I find that pathetic.
My wife and I were married 6 weeks after I finished my mission, in early 1970 in the London Temple. The prophet had given a talk in conference saying missionaries next job on returning home was to get married
There were also conference talks on the evils of birth control, so we got pregnant on the honeymoon.
We did not have to negotiate any of this it was all dictated by SL. We started making our own decisions after 3 children in 4 years and a near death experience after the delivery of the 3rd.
We have taught our children to be more aware, to make conscious decisions.
I do like the idea of making decisions about how you plan to live the next stage, though we would compromise to do it with the same partner. Separating would be too difficult to sort out the finances.
One daughter (who is 36 and single) has just been invited to the wedding of a friend who is a medical doctor of similar age who is marrying (in the temple) a man who is legally blind and unemployed. The daughter asked about baby plans and was told the lord would provide, and if she got pregnant the lord would provide her husband with a job to support them.
Lots of faith and no plan, by the sound of it. I hope for their sake it works.
Ken: “That is precisely the point of putting a Man and a women together in marriage.”
Whoa, there. I think putting polygamy on the table is going to complicate things *a lot*!
(Sorry to give you a hard time. It was just such a perfect typo! 🙂 )
SOURCES. Each year a random sampling of about 1,500 U.S. adults is interviewed in the National Opinion Research Center’s Cumulative General Social Survey (NORC). From 1972 to 1988 this yielded a sample of 23,356, of whom 288 (1.2) were LDS, a very small sample of the total Church population.
MARITAL HAPPINESS. Sixty-six percent of married Latter-day Saints say they are “very happy” in their marriages, compared with 65 percent of Protestants and Catholics and 57 percent of those with no religion. LDS women tend to report more marital happiness than other women, particularly Protestant and Catholic women. On the other hand, LDS men report lower levels of marital satisfaction than all other men except those with no religion.
DIVORCE AND REMARRIAGE. The divorce rate is lower among Latter-day Saints than among Protestants, “other,” and “none,” but higher than among Catholics or Jews. Eighteen percent of Mormons report that they have been separated or divorced, compared with only 11 percent of Catholics and 10 percent of Jews. In the survey of Latter-day Saints by Heaton and Goodman (1985), they reported that 17 percent had been divorced. NORC data for 1978, 1980, 1982, and 1983 showed considerably higher rates of divorce for the non-LDS or “other” religious groups than those shown in [the study] (additional research is needed to resolve this discrepancy). After divorce, Latter-day Saints are more likely to remarry than persons from other religious groups (Heaton and Goodman, 1985).
We aren’t very peculiar. Apparently divorce is a popular option, and we’re not staying in marriages simply because “we hope to have an eternal reward.” Maybe people are projecting their own unhappiness and frustration within their own marriages into what they perceive are the reasons other couples stay together.
Ziff,
I thought the same thing about Ken’s comment. I also wondered if capitalizing “Man” while leaving “women” uncapitalized was done on purpose. 🙂
My husband and I have been married for just over 5 years, and I need more than two hands to count the number of temple-married LDS couples I know who have gotten divorced during that time period. Most of them are around my age (26). Out of all of them, only two couples have children. I wonder frequently if more of my LDS friends would be getting divorced if they hadn’t had children right out of the gate, especially with most of the wives being financially dependent on their husbands upon moving into the parenting stage of marriage. Maybe it’s less about the “eternal martyr” complex and more that established gender roles + children make ending a partnership that much harder for religious couples.
Watching friend after friend become a divorcee in their early/mid-20s made me much more practical when I worked with the YW, however. Why do we keep telling youth that any two righteous people can make it work? It takes more than reading scriptures and FHE to make a relationship last.
As a divorced woman, I think this view of marriage is like adding salt to a dish that is too salty. It isn’t eternal marriage that is the problem, it is the Disney idea of “happily ever after”….that marriage is supposed to be personally fulfilling.
I would never have divorced had there been any other way. I begged the Lord night after night, wrestling with all my strength to find some other answer. Had my personal safety and the safety of my children not been at stake, I would never have ended it.
When we look at marriage and family as a convenience, to be renegotiated when it no longer fulfills our expected needs, we miss the chance to form real relationships. We possess little honour and no loyalty to anyone but ourselves. We will never know what it is like to love imperfection and be loved by it.
I didn’t divorce my ex because I no longer loved him, or because he wasn’t living up to his contract. Despite everything he has done to me, everything he is, I love him still. (Don’t get me wrong. I have less than zero desire to be married to him.) But I still mourn for him and for the choices he even now continues to make in the name of gratification: choices which sabotage his happiness and leave him ultimately unsatisfied.
Any two righteous people CAN make it work. That doesn’t mean you can run out and marry just anybody. But it means that successful marriage isn’t a series of negotiations and mutually satisfying contracts. It means that when two people have faith, practice forgiveness, and rely on the Lord, their hearts can knit together and they can become one. They can learn to taste the kind of love which only exists after being forged in the furnace of mutual sacrifice.
It is a microcosm of Zion. If you don’t believe it is possible in marriage, when you have physical and social pressures to support a choice to become unified, you reject your own access to divine power in favour of a painted fairytale.
I’m with those who think it better to renegotiate as required with the same person where there is already love and trust towards each other. Starting over with someone entirely different has to be a lot more hard work.
Ziff/EBK,
I for sure was not implying Polygamy, and credit the Typos to the IPhone. It will automatically cap some terms and it is a pain to go back fix. I did not intend to cap man and not woman.
Silver rain,
I enjoyed (don’t know if that is the right word, perhaps respected) your comment and I am sorry things did not work out as expected.
Geoff-AUS,
I liked your comment as well and wonder what impact getting married so quickly and having kids so quickly had on you and your spouse.
My experience was similar. It was really quick with both marriage and kids. We had no money for years and went from bill to bill. I think the experience made both of us better.
“When we look at marriage and family as a convenience, to be renegotiated when it no longer fulfills our expected needs” Since I read the book, I feel I need to point out again that this is a mischaracterization of what the author proposes. It seems that the idea of short-term marriage so rankles the majority of Mormons that they only see it as a “convenient” or “selfish” arrangement. The author wasn’t talking about “easy” marriages that are easily cast aside. She was describing a short term marriage contract as a way to work together toward a specific set of goals rather than assuming every marriage is elastic enough to fit every mold for one’s entire life. What I found appealing about what she said is the idea that when divorce is the assumption and short-term goals are stated, for some of us, we may actually work harder to make things work, and with the extra benefit of communication and examining our goals and our needs we might just create more reasons to stay.
I think I see your point, Hawkgrrrl. But my point wasn’t the duration of the marriage, it was the focus.
Approaching marriage like a contract still focuses on personal fulfillment, rather than on mutual sacrifice. It’s quid pro quo, rather than an opportunity to emulate the Savior. It’s a contract, rather than a covenant.
And while each of those dichotomies may look similar at a brief glance, the differences between them which are understood in a closer look are something that I believe is the entire divine purpose of marriage.
SilverRain, you all but stole my ‘thunder’ by mentioning the Disneyesque ‘Happily Ever After’ view of ‘Eternal Marriage’ that we fill our youth with (esp. the girls) from the point they start the MoonBeam class (coincidence?). It’s not that I’m so jaded that I don’t believe that a married couple can live ‘happily ever after’, indeed, isn’t that the objective? No, it’s that we sell our young women on this notion that if she keeps herself ‘pure’ (gee, isn’t keeping one of the most important commandments reason enough?) and marries her “RM”, fresh off his mission where he’s slayed the spiritual dragons and now comes dashing in on his steed to sweep the fair maiden off her feet and carry her off into the clouds, temple marriage certificate in hand…
For some reason the ending scene from ‘Grease’ came into mind. Oh that we had a picture of some GA (Emeritus, maybe?) and his dear eternal companion, from their ‘flaming’ youth, wearing a leather jacket like the Fonz with a matching ‘DA’, and his bride wearing tight capri pants, a ponytail ‘a hangin-down’, and sporting pointed sunglasses.
‘Reality’ oft sets in for the starry-eyed and ambitious young couple, say about five years hence, when she’s got a rambunctious brat tearing about the house like a one-boy wrecking crew, a crying toddler girl with a snotty nose, and another in the oven. It’s a wonder how she lately got in THAT condition, as her hubby, working two jobs to make the rent and the payments on the “Mormon mover” AND putting himself through night school, is perpetually sleep deprived (though his Elders Quorum duties don’t get ‘neglected’). And yet…many an elderly couple, looking back, will swear that THESE were the best days! It is truly a point of view argument.
“when divorce is the assumption and short-term goals are stated, for some of us, we may actually work harder to make things work, and with the extra benefit of communication and examining our goals and our needs we might just create more reasons to stay.”
See, this is the part that gets me. Isn’t it kind of an adage that if you plan to fail you’ll most likely achieve it? It’s like running a relay and deciding at each handoff whether or not you’d like to continue running the race.
I’m not even sure how this would work out for “some”. If you’re working harder to make things work, then your assumption is not divorce.
The trouble with the ‘tentative’ approach to marriage, like with a short-term contract, is that it implies lack of commitment or trust as entering into marriage has traditionally demanded.
Think of “Slaughter-House Five”. How did Billy’s dad teach him to swim? Threw him in the deep end without further ado! I did same with my boys and they were better for it. Now, with my DAUGHTERS, different approach…they I picked up, carried in with me, and I coaxed them into letting go and start dog paddling. Still, got them all into the water and swimming on their own at a fairly early age.
Likewise in their personal affairs and especially with regard to marriage they are doing as dear ol’ Dad intended, if not, frankly, better.
I think I understand a bit of the view Hawkgrrrl is attempting to present. When you are faced with a very real possibility that you will lose your spouse, sometimes it can inspire you to take a good look at your own behavior that has contributed to the dysfunction. But it’s not consistent among individuals. It’s like when a family is confronted with tragedy – sometimes it ties members closer together, and sometimes it becomes a wedge to drive members apart.
As I said before, having stages in marriage where needs and expectations are discussed is always a good idea. Where it rankles people is when separation is considered equal in value to staying together. Most Mormons and other religious folk would prioritize staying together and want to relegate separation as an option only “when all else fails.” It kind of feels like in these short-term contracts you’d lose the desire or even expectation that your marriage *should* extend past the contractual period.
LOL – the idea of car leases versus car purchases popped into my mind after I posted. It seems flippant, but I think the comparison works well when you consider how people choose depends a lot on preconceived notions and priorities. People choose both for maximum value, they just have different ideas of what maximum value entails. If short-term contracts were to become a part of our culture, I think you’d have just as many people for it as you would against it. The idea of a pre-nup is already considered mainstream among certain socioeconomic classes, and conservative arguments against it are based on the idea that it essentially dooms the marriage to failure when you admit up front that there could be a separation.
I can see the logic behind what hawkgrrrl is saying. I don’t think it’s that we should be making plans to get divorced (who would? no one I know has eagerly anticipated the experience), but understanding from the beginning that divorce is an option, and that it requires constant communication and adjustment to avoid it. I think the recognition that there are things that can end even an eternal marriage makes me work harder to keep mine–it doesn’t make me relieved that there’s an emergency back door.
I don’t know anybody who thinks divorce isn’t an option. That knowledge keeps a great many people from marrying at all. Even in the Church. Maybe especially in the Church.
A buddy of mine, obviously not LDS, and a lifelong bachelor (though not “confirmed” as was once termed in polite society) lived by the credo: if it floats, flies, or (engages in sex), it’s cheaper to rent! Another friend, who unfortunately passed away a few years ago of cancer, was also a bachelor and attributed his living well on a Gov’t employee’s salary to not having ‘expensive hobbies like wives and children’ (methinks he meant serial monogamy with accompanying alimony and child support payments, not polygamy).
I almost like the vehicle lease vs. purchase analogy save for one fact: in almost no case does a car last forever, and a collector’s item (like a 1948 Tucker Torpedo) just sits lovingly in a garage as a ‘trailer queen’, to be admired but not truly enjoyed on the road. In the LDS perspective, a marriage does not fatigue or wear out, though as many, including myself will attest, for some marriage has fatigued them or worn them out!
We allow for divorce when the marriage has become dysfunctional and utterly beyond salvage. I can’t go through all the heuristics of what the criteria should be; save that in all cases the trust that is an inherent part of marriage is gone and can’t reasonably be restored. No man or woman should fear that they are sleeping with the enemy.
Hawkgirl
Loved this post. As someone who preparing to go through a major marriage transition in the next few months with my wife leaving for 6 months to get training to re-enter the workforce we have found it necessary to renegotiate many things in our relationship and our family life. Its been fun and invigorating. As someone who loves my wife dearly I am excited about supporting and helping her in her next stage of life. So are the kids (4) whose lives will also change dramatically. I agree with you that it is quite possible, even advised, to take this more staged view of marriage even within the framework of a long-term (eternal) marriage. Where love and respect exist the renegotiation is very likely to be successful even if there might be some sticking points. I especially like the stages idea because it highlights about how much value there is to each stage. I do worry that for many LDS couples they skip right by starter marriage way to fast. It is a wonderful time and one that can be so important for building a foundation for all the later stages. While each marriage and situation is different it is something I would definitely encourage young married couples to consider.
Great post and very relevant to what my wife and I are discussing right now. I guess from our experience we would add a stage. For couples that decide to follow a “sequencing” model where a parent decides to dedicate the early childhood years to staying home but chooses to re-enter the workforce before the kids have flown the coup that transition from a SAHP to two working parents again requires considerable renegotiation even as the parenting and kids is still the major goal of the couple. And in this case it requires engaging the kids in the renegotiation!
“Approaching marriage like a contract still focuses on personal fulfillment, rather than on mutual sacrifice.” In some cases, yes, but in the case of a parenting marriage or a security marriage, that’s not how the examples in the book were presented. In fact, I would admit that the loveless parenting marriage contracts in the book were perhaps less selfish than most parenting choices. These contracts were designed ALL about the kids, not about self or even putting the marriage first. It was all about focusing on what would make responsible adults.
I disagree. Sure, there’s a veneer of “for the children” painted over the top of the relationship, and that is surface-sacrifice. But there is no real investment in each other, no real risk.
From the children’s perspective, their parents have merely come together to work for the children’s short-term needs. There is no permanence, no real connection. That robs children of knowing what it is like to truly sacrifice. The contract says, “sure, we’ll work together for now, but as soon as the purpose is complete, there’s no real need to continue the relationship.” It’s like the difference between going to serve the homeless a meal and welcoming one into your home to help him get back on his feet. The first might give you a sense of charity, but it’s only the most superficial charity.
Seriously, if you can’t see that even a “contract for the kids” is still selfish even as it seems to be sacrificing, I have no real way to convince you. Lois Lowry had the value of it pegged back in the 90s.
A contract is a means to control. If you choose to settle for control in your human relationships, you’ll never access the power of God.
SilverRain: You may be right about the sacrifice of the long haul (not that living in misery is a virtue obviously), but it’s not really a self-evident virtue. The lack of permanence in those arrangements does bother me, but it’s not the way I’ve chosen to live. And yet so many do live that way, just without having intended to.
As to the distinction between a contract and a covenant, they are both intended to bind the parties. Both can be used as a method of control in that binding oneself to certain actions (fidelity, etc.) is an attempt to control oneself and one’s partner. When the controls fail, we clean up the mess. The benefit of the short-term contract is to set goals we can measure and to have conversations that are real and measurable rather than to fall apart over unrealistic expectations or vague unexpressed needs. Personally, I prefer to stay with the same person, and I see value in working through issues (obviously he has a choice in the matter, too). But this model creates a valuable way of assessing how we are doing in these long-term marriages and where we don’t measure up.
You are right, I’m afraid, that this is how most of us live. Even those who assume they have eternal marriage. They may still be married, but one or both have checked out of the marriage because it hasn’t met their needs. I’ve seen it more times than not.
The difference between a covenant and a contract is what you are binding to. Covenants are binding yourself to God, without conditions. Contracts are binding yourself to another person, contingent on behavior. Covenants bind yourself, contracts are an attempt to bind the other person.
I’m not against communication about needs, goal setting, etc. Of course not. But I balk at framing that in terms of a contract, which means I have no obligation if you don’t meet yours. In a covenant relationship, the spouse’s failure to meet expectations does not unbind you from the covenant you made.
My most recent blog post goes into my feelings on that in a little more detail, and I don’t want to clutter up the comments. The gist is that just such a marriage is what I did my best to live when I was married. It didn’t “work out” in the sense that my marriage is ended. But God didn’t release me from my covenant just because my ex was abusive.
In fact, ending the marriage was the only way to preserve the covenant for me. Once the Spirit convinced me of that (and it was a battle,) I was able to sacrifice the Isaac of my marriage. Nothing can really describe what that was like. There was no ram in the thicket for me, though I kept hoping for one.
But it was to God I was bound, and it was to His commandments I was obedient (to the best I could be.) I wasn’t a very good wife, I think. But I was ultimately successful in submitting to the will of God. My ex’s idea that marriage was a contract in which I owed him a certain list of things was exactly what justified abuse in his eyes.
We mortals rarely enter contracts to bind ourselves. Rather, we enter them in order to concede to certain things in order to bind others. That is not a covenant. Covenants are without guarantees. We enter them because we trust the One we bind ourselves to, not because we demand He perform according to expectations. (If we do, we are gravely erring.)
Great comments, Silver Rain. Really appreciated that addition to the discussion.
Ken #20 I am Geoff’s wife and I am pleased to say that we are still very happily married in fact just celebrated our 45 wedding anniversary It was hard work but we worked things out together and think we became better people because of the hard work. We are now in the stage of life where we do a lot of what we want to do. eg. travel etc.