Celebrating Thirty-One Years of Marriage: Ten Things I've Learned

Tomorrow will be my wife's and my thirty-first wedding anniversary. When I announced yesterday morning during worship that this day was coming, the congregation burst into applause, and one woman shouted out that this was an amazing achievement...by my wife.

But I have learned some things about marriage, not only from my own, but from others I've observed. Here are a few of them:

1. There probably is no "right age" to get married. I was twenty. I've spent most of the past thirty-one years trying to grow up. I still am and probably will continue to do this for as long as I'm living. No matter when you start your married life, you'll have lots to learn. So long as you're not married before the legal majority, it probably doesn't matter when you get married.

2. There is no "right amount of time" for dating prior to marriage. Although we'd known each other in high school--she hated me, for good reason--and had become friends before we began dating, my wife and I had only dated about six weeks when I popped the question. We were married less than seven months later.

My mother and father celebrate an anniversary today. It was on August 1, 1950, that they met on a blind date. Four months later, on December 2, 1950, they were married.

On Friday, we were visited by some friends. They dated for three years before they were married. They soon will celebrate their sixteenth anniversary.

The length of one's "courtship" has little relationship with the success of a marital union.

3. Love is essential to the success of a marriage. Love is not that feeling of romantic or sexual attraction, as wonderful as it is. Love is often what you do in spite of how you feel. It's that commitment you have after you've hurt her or she's hurt you, to accept and give forgiveness, and move on together.

As I've pointed out on this blog before, most of us know and aspire to the kind of love that Saint Paul talks about in First Corinthians 13. You know, not boastful or arrogant, not into collecting lists of wrongs perpretrated against us, and so on. Only one Person in the history of the human race has ever exhibited this sort of love. He also happened to be God. His Name was (and is) Jesus.

So when my personal tank of love winds down to "E," I fill up on Christ's love, asking Him to give me the supply of love my wife deserves. In fact, I fill up on it long before I hit "E." The last thing I want to do is hit the inevitable difficult passages of life and marriage and not have enough of real love, including compassionate and unconditional regard for my wife, on hand.

4. There is no leader in good marriages. Instead, there are two people who give themselves mutually to one another. Even in a New Testament passage from Ephesians which is often used (I think misused) to contend that husbands are superior to wives, close scrutiny shows that the apostle Paul who wrote it saw marriage as a relationship of mutual surrender between two equals.

5. Sex is great. God invented it. So that shouldn't be a surprise. He only makes good things. But be careful not to make it the focus of your marriage. Great sex is the byproduct of a great relationship. Sex can't take the strain of being the central focus of a relationship.

In a sense, sex is like happiness. Many people make happiness the ultimate objective of their lives and end up miserable and lonely. If we make the twin objects of our lives those two great commands that Jesus gave--loving God and loving others--happiness will be a byproduct.

Similarly, make loving and serving each other your goal and sex will usually turn out to be wonderful.

6. Fight fair. That means avoiding throwing insults, sarcasm, and accusations. Not to mention feeling sorry for yourself.

When you're upset with your spouse, avoid saying things like, "You are so inconsiderate." Instead, try saying things like, "When you do such and so, it makes me feel this way." You immediately disarm your spouse by deciding not to be accusatory, you take responsibility for your emotions, and you invite your spouse to solve a problem with you. You move from being uselessly confrontational to being productively collaborative. In addition, by simply idenitifying your feelings about something, you own the possibility that you could be anywhere from 1 to 100% responsible for the problem to which you're reacting.

This has been hard for me to learn because I can be so self-absorbed and I tend toward self-pity. Indulging these inclinations has only been a red flag waved before my wife when we argue. But when I simply identify my feelings in a firm, but fair, way, we can begin to resolve things.

Paul advises us to, "Be angry; but do not sin" and not to allow anger to become the means by which sin enters our mind or actions. We should try to work things out when we argue with each other. We should also avoid the constant rehearsal of our anger, either internally or even worse, with third parties.

It's also good to resolve our conflicts quickly. "Don't let the sun go down on your anger," Paul also writes.

7. Forgive! Eric Segal's characters in Love Story liked to say, "Love means never having to say you're sorry." What a crock! The only human being who has no reason to say they're sorry is dead.

We all make mistakes and will do so for as long as we live on this planet. We expect others, especially our spouses, to view our faults and sins charitably. We should strive to do the same thing for our spouses. In His teaching on the petition of the Lord's Prayer, "forgive us our sins as we forgive those who sin against us," Jesus makes it clear that if we choose not to forgive others, God will withhold His forgiveness from us.

But of course, forgiveness is another one of those things we don't do so well. It isn't native to us. So, we need to ask God to help us to forgive.

A pastor told me about a woman he knows who had an affair. Her husband was devastated when he learned of it from various sources, long after the event. He talked with his pastor about it and ultimately decided not to even bring it up with his wife. He knew that she had opted out of the adulterous relationship and he saw that everything about her subsequent behavior demonstrated that she was committed to the relationship and wanted to go on with it. This husband issued no grand pronouncement of absolution, which may only have been self-aggrandizing and condescending; he simply asked God to help him forgive and committed himself to being a good husband.

Usually, of course, the offenses perpetrated against by our spouses, big or small, will be known to us. Even when we confront, we should do so with the idea that you want to forgive, not humilate.

8. Express your appreciation. There are millions of ways to do this. But it's important to do it in ways that are meaningful to your spouse.

When my wife and I were first married, I bought gifts and flowers, things I thought that she would appreciate, for things like birthdays, Valentine's Day, Christmas, and anniversaries. But because of our poverty and because of her simple philosophy that if either of us really want something that we can afford, we should purchase it without folderol, I learned very quickly that gift-buying and flower-giving were not good ways for me to express appreciation or love to my wife. For our anniversary tomorrow, she'll find three cards scattered around the house with heartfelt inscriptions in each one. She'll like that!

9. Love and take responsibility for your kids, if you have children. Some men and women view their children as unwanted impositions, which is a tragedy. If you're not willing to take equal responsibility for the upbringing of your children, then don't have them. But if you are willing, they will bless you and your marriage.

And you're not allowed to change your mind after your kids are born or adopted! They don't go away; neither should your commitment.

10. Build your life and your marriage on the God made known in Jesus Christ. In Jesus' famous parable of different householders, the one who built on rock found the house standing even after the fiercest of storms. Saturate your day with prayers offered within your mind or in whispers, asking Christ to be at the center of your marriage and to give you guidance and help, constantly inviting Him into your inner counsels.

No marriage is perfect because no person is perfect. But when we invite Christ to be the foundation of our marriages, we learn the truth of the Biblical saying that His love covers a multitude of sins.

Let me be clear: I haven't mastered any of these lessons. But I'm asking God to help me with them so that in the next thirty-one years, I'll be a better husband than I have been the first thirty-one and a better counselor to those contemplating or involved in the adventure of marriage.

UPDATE: Welcome to those visiting the site from Glenn Reynolds' Instapundit. I hope that you'll find useful and thought-provoking stuff here. Thanks to Glenn for the link.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Robert at Bright Mystery links to this post and adds his own insightful comments.

STILL FURTHER UPDATING: Betsy of Lunar World linked to this piece through Instapundit and then, explored this entire site a bit. She said nice things about Better Living on her blog and then linked to a piece I wrote last week. Thank you, Betsy!

David at Ridgecrest Blog also linked to this piece and then presented his own additional--and sometimes very funny--bits of advice on marriage.

YET ANOTHER UPDATE: Sean Bradley of Lex Communis has linked to this post and amplified it with a few interesting thoughts.