What is the Point of Marriage? Part 2: To Grow Us Up

As I mentioned in my last post, Corey Allan of Simple Marriage argues that the purpose of marriage is to make us more grown up. It is not a tool designed to make us happy, but rather to make us more refined, more emotionally mature.

I couldn’t agree more.

But what exactly does maturity look like?

Corey paints a pretty clear picture of maturity, explaining that growing up “involves balancing two fundamental life forces: the drive for separateness and the drive for togetherness.” You should read his article on the subject to learn more.

Here are some additional things that I think characterize maturity:

• A capacity for bigger-picture thinking. Before sleeping with someone, a mature person thinks, “Will this be good for my future and overall well-being?” Before totally giving up on school, a mature person asks, “Will it be worth it for me to quit now or will it pay off in the long run?” A mature person can postpone gratification for the sake of the bigger picture.

• The ability to look past other people’s short-comings because you recognize your own. This might mean saying, “Man, my husband is an insensitive jerk when it comes to my fear of childlessness, but then again, I’m kind of a knob when it comes to his fear of job failure. I guess I should give him a break.”

• A less demanding mind-set, because you know you can take care of yourself. This might mean saying, “I don’t need my wife to fill my every emotional need because I’m a self-sufficient and resilient individual.”

• The ability to admit that you need other people in your life, even though you’re a self-sufficient and resilient individual. This might mean saying, “I could totally walk out of this relationship right now. But in the end, I still need to be loved, and I may never find love anywhere else. Plus, I totally can’t cook. I would starve if I left him.”

• The ability to eventually shrug off the stupid things that other people do and say. This might mean saying, “Yeah, he totally shouldn’t have said that. That was unbelievably heartless. But . . . Meh. I’m over it. I have better things to do than cry about his emotional constipation.” (Of course, you want to help your spouse become less emotionally-constipated and less heartless, but sometimes you will also just have to get over the stupid things he says. He’s never going to be perfect.)

• A willingness to make sacrifices for someone else. This might mean saying, “She totally doesn’t deserve this. I don’t have the time or resources to do this for her. . . . I’ll do it for her anyway.”

But how, exactly, does marriage make us more like this?

Basically, I think marriage forces us to foster the characteristics I’ve listed above. You have to start thinking bigger-picture, and to start sacrificing of yourself, or your marriage is never going to work. Your spouse is going to drive you crazy unless you start embracing these characteristics. You’re going to kill one another if you don’t start growing up.

Marriage throws challenges your way every day, and you have to learn to deal with them. Your spouse will be lazy, unkind, manic-depressive, forgetful, unsupportive and annoying. And you will be too. And you both have to learn to deal with that or go nuts. You both have to become bigger, better people.

Marriage teaches you that you’re not the center of the universe. It teaches you that you are a flawed human being, just like your spouse, but you are willing to live together anyway because you know you need each other.

You also learn that the choices you make affect other people, and they in turn affect you, so you better make good choices.

If you live on your own, you don’t have to face these challenges as much. You might become tempted to think you’re the most important person in the world. You might forget that you need other people.

Of course, all relationships allow for the developments I’ve talked about here – relationships with parents, siblings, girlfriends, roommates, coworkers, classmates. But I think marriage does this to a greater degree because it’s lifelong and daily.

With other relationships, you get to go your separate ways at the end of the day or at the end of the semester or whatever. When your lab partner or your cubicle buddy challenges your life by being unreasonable, irritating, or downright evil, you have plenty of opportunities to become more mature. But you can also get out of it by saying, “At least I’ll be graduating soon and then I never have to see him again!” or “At least she’ll be on mat leave soon and then I’ll get a break!”

Not so with marriage. When you’re married you have to learn to overcome emotional obstacles because you are stuck together for life. There’s no getting around it. You have to deal with your conflicts.

That’s the way it’s supposed to work, anyways. Many people don’t let their marriages shape them into bigger people, and in those cases the marriage fails. Many people duck out of marriage through divorce, too, but then marriage isn’t doing what it’s supposed to do, either.

The other major difference with marriage is that you love each deeply other and have invested a lot of time and emotion into your relationship, so you’re more willing to make it work. Out of love. With your coworkers or roommates, you have less motivation to work on becoming a better person because you don’t have that profound emotional bond that you have with your spouse. With your wife or husband, it’s a different story.

In this way, love motivates maturity. Because you love each other so much, you learn to grow up, for the sake of your spouse.

So that’s how and why I think marriage helps us to grow up. I know I’m not a psychologist or anything, these are just opinions from experience. What do you think? What other things characterize maturity? How else might marriage foster this?

Next: What is the Point of Marriage? Part 3: To teach us about God.

Tagged as: growing up, Love, marriage, maturity