Unity, Liberty, and Charity

A few days ago while visiting Lily's school I came across an article in the magazine Restaurant Hospitality entitled "Is Your Professional Marriage Sinking?" The author quotes a line that his father once told him:

If you're going to get married, he said, pick a wife as if you were a policeman picking a partner because you're going to be heading down a lot of dark alleys in life and you want to make sure she has your back.

I began thinking of how many sinking domestic marriages there are in the US today. The divorce rate in America ranges somewhere between 40 and 70 percent, depending on the source. Marriages generally fail because they were not good to begin with, or because somewhere along the way something drives the couple apart.

Let's focus on the first of those, marriages that were bad from the start. As the quotation above so succinctly puts it, you want to be sure your partner-in-life has your back. The only way that can happen is if you and your partner have built a relationship grounded on strong and common values. Too often, people go into marriages against their better judgment (and perhaps against the judgment of their friends). Love and emotions can easily blind people from taking a hard look at their relationship. But there are a few important things to look at which will help guide people in determining whether they have a strong relationship.

Someone once told me that a good marriage follows this rule: "in essentials unity, in non-essentials liberty, and in all things charity." The wisdom of this is as profound as it is subtle. A couple must agree on their basic core values. These can be values such as the importance of family, how to raise children, and how you impact the lives of others. Non-essentials can be things like particular interests, social habits, or possibly political views. In these areas we are to grant the other person liberty, to agree to disagree. But in all things, we are to love, respect, and cherish one another.

No marriage can be ever be built on 100% understanding and agreement. Some will say that, statistically, the two factors that break marriage apart are finances and miscommunication. We can do something to secure the first one, but the second is something that is always a work-in-progress. Because people are not perfect, they are prone to hear what they want to hear and misunderstand what they want to misunderstand.

However, regardless of the arguments that you have with your spouse and the areas you might disagree in, you must have a shared set of core values that you both hold dear to your heart. A couple cannot flourish if they do not see eye-to-eye on something fundamental like family. Generally, disagreements on fundamental values lead to treatment that can be described as anything but charitable.

At the same time, you must also allow the other person to be him or herself in the non-essentials. These are areas that are not core to the relationship. Sometimes people have a very difficult time letting this one go (I know I have). They want to solve all the problems in the relationship so that there are no disagreements. That simply does not work. Sometimes there are things that you will not agree on, nor ever agree on. But those are not the things that define a couple's love for one another.

If you really expect your spouse to have your back, make sure you have a relationship founded on these principles. Otherwise, it will be at best a marriage where the couple makes themselves miserable more often than happy... and at worst a divorce.

Remember, "in all things charity."

The author closes with:

If you're involved in a bad professional marriage, nobody wins. 

That is true of bad domestic marriages. Nobody wins: not the couple, not the friends or family involved, and certainly not the children whose lives will be changed forever.