“When I hear somebody sigh, ‘Life is hard,’ I am always tempted to ask, ‘Compared to what?‘”

* * *
I’ve grappled before with the idea that “marriage is hard work.”

But the above quote (which has been attributed to a number of prominent people, including Oscar Wilde) helps me to articulate my feelings on the subject a little better.

I guess what frustrates me about this undisputed truism that “marriage is hard” is that it fails to consider the alternatives.

Is single life easier than married life? Is cohabitation easier? Is it easier to live with your parents all your life than to get out of the house and move in with someone you love?

My answer to all of the above is “probably not.” Being single, for example, has its own challenges. If you live by yourself you have to deal with loneliness and paying all the rent by yourself. If you live with your parents or a community of friends, you have most of the same problems married people have: you have to share resources and deal with other people’s conflicting needs, schedules, personalities, and habits. The list goes on.

Being alone is hard. Being with people is hard. Sure, life is hard. But compared to what? Being dead?

That why I think it’s unhelpful to emphasize how “hard” marriage is. That’s like complaining that life is hard.

Being alive has its challenges, yes; but . . . we don’t really have any other alternatives.

Sure, marriage has some of its unique challenges, but so does every other life choice.

What do you think? Is it productive to emphasize the “hardness” of marriage? Why or why not?

I had been married for over a year when I had a panic attack in church.

It was in the middle of the most excruciatingly boring Christmas service I had ever been to. At the moment, a dozen or so middle-aged church members were clustered on stage with black folders in their hands and they were singing hymns. They were attempting four-part harmony, but the overwhelming majority of them were singing an ear-splitting soprano, while only a few confused altos, two tenors and a single bass worked hard to match their volume.  They sang wide-mouthed and dispassionately while a single pianist played along – not accompanying them, but playing in unison with them, note for note.

The men wore thick mustaches, pleated khakis, and nondescript black dress shoes. The women wore dyed perms that were intended to approximate their pre-graying hair-colour, roomy blouses, knee-length A-line skirts and low black pump.

In short, they were the picture of drabness.

While watching them I suddenly became anxious: was I staring into the face of my own future? In twenty or thirty years, was that going to be me and my friends? Lifeless, passionless, tasteless? Was this the natural consequence of getting married, having kids, and maintaining an “active church life”? Would we be so out of touch with reality that we would subject an entire congregation to such dispiriting noise?

I felt sick. I had already taken the first step towards this fate: I had accepted a marriage proposal. I was creeping towards this dreadful death-in-life. Dear. God. NO.

But maybe we could escape it, I thought desperately. Maybe if we refused to have kids and ran away from church there would be hope for us. Maybe I could do a PhD – in the UK or someplace hip – and become a cool professor. Or maybe Ben could become a rock star. His band was doing pretty well; maybe they’d go on tour and I could be the merch girl, hanging out back stage, wearing vintage clothes and talking about record labels and t-shirt sales.

After the performance I turned to a couple of my friends. “Guys, please promise me you will never, ever grow mustaches, even when you are forty,” I entreated them. My sister’s boyfriend grinned.

“When I’m forty, I’m going to grow the thickest, fullest mustache possible,” he declared. My heart sank. It was inevitable.

***

For years I battled an intense fear of middle age. I just kept picturing that group of despondent moms and dads coaxing reluctant notes of praise from their lungs. Heavenly Father, thou art so absent and so stern, please refrain from smiting us and our rebellious teenaged children. We told them, O God, not to drink alcohol or have sex before marriage, and now we are singing these songs. May we die in old age with relative ease.

It wasn’t just those few people, either. All around me, I saw folks in their late 30’s and 40’s who seemed to want nothing more in life than to pay off debt so they could buy more stuff – bigger SUV’s and nicer furniture. They were busy all the time with church committees and driving their kids to hockey practice. It seemed like getting married and having kids killed all your desires for real living.

***

I don’t know of any single event that made me realize my fears were silly and unfounded.

Part of it, I suppose, was through meeting a number of very cool and vibrant middle-aged people online. I discovered that dowdiness and middle age didn’t necessarily go together at all. It was all a matter of personality and choice. Some people seemed to get even more remarkable with age.  And these new acquaintances made me more aware of the ultra-rad middle-aged people who were already in my life, few as they were. [This is where I give a nod to my parents, whom I’m learning to admire more and more].

I’m not sure if this fear of growing older is a generational thing I share with my peers, or if it’s unique to me. But I have come across research that suggests that Gen Y-ers are more than usually reluctant to grow up. We’re reluctant to get married, get jobs, and move out of the house. We want to tour Europe and collect university degrees and go clubbing on the weekends. We want to evade responsibility for as long as possible – to drink beer and play video games and sleep with lots of different people before settling down.

Because to Gen Y-ers, adult life looks boring.

I blame the Boomers a little bit, with their self-absorption and boring consumerist American Dream. Work eight hours a day, buy a big house, have 1.5 kids, try not to get cancer. Big dreams.

But I also blame myself and others like me for being unimaginative.

We should be able to dream up better futures for ourselves. We should be able to imagine growing up and having kids without having to get stuck in tedious routine and life-sucking consumerism. Instead of fearing adulthood and the responsibility that comes with it, we should have the courage and creativity to say, “We’re going to do this well. Because we can. With increased age and experience, we have more power and thus freedom to rock.” We should be able to creatively pair responsibility with fun, passion, spontaneity, and novelty.

So I’m trying to be imaginative when I think about growing older. I’m trying to envision interesting, vitalizing, unique ways of being an older person with a spouse and kids, without being irresponsible or immature. I know it will take a lot of effort to age this way but I think it will be worth it.  I also want to seek out relationships with inspiring, energetic, innovative people of all ages and learn how to age with beauty and style. I know there are lots of admirable older people that I ought to watch closely and imitate.

I’m not scared of middle age any more. OK, I’m still a little scared, but the fear isn’t crippling any more. I maintain hope that my generation will learn from folks who have gone before us and defied the status quo, who have dared to be imaginative, and danced through mid-life more gracefully than ever before.

Some questions: Have you ever been afraid of middle age? Any ideas why? Or is it just me??

Do you think my generation is more afraid than usual of becoming like the generation before us? Can you point me to any research either for or against it?

Photo courtesy of greendragonflygirl.

After my last post, I wanted to share this more positive story.

This is how Ben usually handles my suffering:

This morning when my husband found me sobbing over my computer desk, he invited me to join him on a walk through the rain. I had complained earlier that just last night I had committed myself to walking every morning, and then woke up to an eternal rain. He knows that walks usually help me when I’m wretched. So I dried my tears, put on my corduroy jacket and the striped gloves he’d given me for Christmas, and headed out with him.

“This reminds me of England,” he said gently as we walked. I smiled a little because it reminded me of England, too. My thoughts turned to that blessed week, when we’d traipsed thought the rainy Oxford streets together, clutching our umbrellas in the gray drizzle — me with my plaid umbrella with the hooked handle, and him with his standard black compact. This time we didn’t have the adorable Headington cottages with their tangled gardens to look at, but we did have the occasional blooming magnolia. Blooming magnolias look glorious any time of day, but in the rain they are absolute miracles — beacons of beauty in a crushingly dismal world.

On days like this I thank God for magnolias and a husband who knows how to fix me.

Photo courtesy of StarbuckGuy.

P.S. I don’t just cry all the time. I also laugh a lot. Most of the time I’m just mildly gloomy.

I wrote this several months ago. So no need to comfort me – I’m over it. But I thought the message was still relevant.

Also, with this story, I risk making my husband out to be a really big jerk, but I promise he’s usually a super-nice guy and really supportive almost all the time.

* * *

The other day I got my period again after another 38-day cycle (Just long enough to merit another one of those “God, if there’s a baby inside of me, please keep it healthy” prayers). I wasn’t pregnant. Again. Later that same day I heard that yet another one of my friends is pregnant for the second time.

I did pretty good during the day. I only cried a couple of tears in the bathroom once, and a teensy bit in public but nobody acted like they noticed.

But then in the middle of the night later I woke up crying my face off. I asked God why he hates my ovaries so much and why he loves everybody else’s. I asked him why I have to pay so much for prenatal vitamins that give me funny-tasting burps and aren’t going to any use anyways. I sobbed and sobbed so that Ben woke up and instinctively started caressing my hand a little bit. I started to slow down, but then I started to think about my other pregnant friend whose baby shower is coming up, and I started thinking about how I was going to have to walk into Babies ‘R Us and buy her the things I thought I would be buying for myself by now. That got the waterworks going even harder. It went on like this for a while until finally Ben rolled over and, in an angry tone, hissed, “Why are you crying?” as if to say, “What’s with all the racket? Can’t you see that I’m sleeping here?”

That shut me up. I sucked in my breath, pressed my lips together, and woke up the next morning with swollen eyelids.

Nothing was spoken of the incident between us that morning as he got ready for work. He left, and I worked on my research project. It was one of those mornings where you decide that if you make it through the day without killing yourself you will have succeeded.

A few hours later the phone rang. It was him. Good, I thought. He’s ready to apologize for his insensitivity.

He didn’t apologize. It didn’t come up. We talked about our plans for the afternoon, and I kept my answers curt and stiff, and then he had to go. He didn’t even seem aware that he had been downright evil.

In the evening after supper he was at the computer, looking at some pictures that one of our friends had posted on Facebook. They were of a party we’d hosted at our house. I came and stood beside him as he flipped through the photos.

“You look like a famous person,” he said of a picture of us, scrolling the arrow over my face. “I’m so lucky to have such a beautiful wife.”

“Yeah, you are lucky,” I said. “You should treat me better.” I always joke around like that, so he didn’t realize that this time I was serious.

“I haven’t been treating you good?” he asked absently.

“Not last night,” I answered shortly. He didn’t seem to know what I was talking about. “When I was crying,” I added. He looked at me, concerned but confused. “When you yelled at me for crying,” I clarified.

“I didn’t yell at you.” He turned back to the pictures, with an expression that said You’ve obviously lost it.

“Yes you did. You sounded annoyed at me for crying.” I thought for sure I was getting an apology out of this conversation yet. He was visibly trying to remember. But his answer surprised me.

“I remember I wanted to yell at you, but I didn’t actually do it,” he finally said. He was actually starting to sound annoyed again as he spoke.

“You were annoyed at me for crying?” I asked incredulously.

“I was frustrated.” He sounded like it.

I couldn’t believe it. My husband was mad at me for inconveniencing him with my sorrow?

“Well, you yelled at me. In a whisper.”

“I don’t remember doing that,” he said, returning to the pictures. The conversation was over as far as he was concerned. Click, click, click, went the mouse. But I wasn’t going to let him get away with it.

“You did. You yelled at me for crying.”

He shrugged with exasperation. “I don’t remember doing that. Do you want me to apologize for something I don’t remember doing?”

I paused for effect. This is ludicrous, my silence said. “Of course!” I exclaimed aloud. And with that I stalked out of the room.

“Well, I’m sorry!” he yelled at my back.  That one does not count, I noted to myself.

That was the last we spoke of it. I knew I wasn’t getting an apology for it. He didn’t think he had done anything wrong.

I decided to forgive him. Staying mad wasn’t doing me any good.

Later that night I climbed into bed with him, fully clothed, and snuggled up close to him. I kissed him on the cheek eight times consecutively, really fast, and then sat up to change.

“How come you’re happy now?” he asked.

“I’m not happy,” I replied. It was true. I still wanted to die a little bit. But I like kissing his cheek, so I did it.

“But you’re not mad anymore?” he asked. I sighed.

“Yes, I’m still mad at you. But that doesn’t mean I don’t want to be around you,” I said.

That wasn’t completely true, though: I actually wasn’t made at him anymore. I had forgotten to be mad.

I changed into my PJs, wrote in my journal, and snuggled into bed. He never apologized. Oh well.

Sometimes I think you just have to let your loved ones get away with being insensitive jerks. It’s the only way you’ll be able to live together for the rest of your life. I know that I’m an insensitive jerk a lot of the time, too, so it’s only fair. So sometimes I just let the unforgivable stuff go, and hope that he’ll do the same for me sometimes, too.

Have you ever had to forgive your spouse – or someone else you love – even though they completely didn’t deserve it and didn’t even ask for forgiveness? How did you deal with it? Was it worth it?

Image courtesy of alicepopkorn.

I got a job a few weeks ago working for a small publishing press not far from my town. The editor got my name and contact info from a former employer of mine and he emailed me, asking if I wanted a job as an office assistant. I wasn’t really in need of a job, but I figured, What the heck? I don’t want my degree to have been a complete waste of time, right? So I took it.

The job has been going OK. It mostly consists of me packaging mail for him and putting together spreadsheets on the computer. Decent stuff. It’s a little awkward, though, because I’m his only employee, so we I have to work alone together all day and we’re both rather dweeby. It’s almost comical, if I stop and think about it: two introverts forced to spend entire days in a room together. We both sit there, on opposite ends of the room, plugging away silently at our keyboards and begrudging the other for having physical presence — for having bodies that make sounds and need to be fed. I know that he resents my being there, even though he invited me to work for him: I can hear it in his sighs when I ask him for the third time whether the “No Signature Required” stickers go on parcels being sent to P. O. Boxes: Oh-god-why-do-you-have-to-be-a-living-organism?

All that’s fine, though, except for one tiny thing: my boss hasn’t told me once, in the five weeks that I’ve been working there, that I’m doing a good job.

He hasn’t outright told me I suck, either, but I get the distinct vibe that he regrets having hired me. I’m pretty sure he thinks my brains are made out of mashed potatoes. To be honest, sometimes I’m pretty sure my brains are made out of mashed potatoes, but I’m allowed to be hard on myself because I can always counter my self-criticisms with “Well, at least you have really fabulous legs that look great in tights and can recite the entire Lord’s prayer in Latin. Th–that’s pretty rad.”

I’ve been feeling incredibly disheartened by the lack of encouragement, though. I’m starting to wonder if I would have done the world a favour by refusing to be born. I’ve thought about telling my boss that if he fires me I won’t cry or anything.

But my boss left for overseas last week, leaving me and one of his business partners in charge while he’s away. I’ve had lots of time to myself, which is awesome, and other times I work with his 64-year-old friend Dennis. Dennis is really nice. He answers all my questions patiently, and chuckles and tells me that my mistakes are no big deal. It’s a huge relief to be around someone who doesn’t resent my need for oxygen and toilets.

The other day, when Dennis was sorting the mail that I’d packaged in order to send it off, I told him to let me know if I’d done anything wrong and I’d fix it pronto.

“Don’t worry,” he said with a reassuring smile. “You’re doing a good job.”

I smiled. Then I had to turn away and get some more bubble wrap for the package I was working on so he couldn’t see that I was almost crying. I was doing a good job? Really? I felt relief billow up inside my chest. I wasn’t a complete disappointment. I was doing something right.

Nothing has meant more to me in the last few weeks than those five words.

* * * *

I’ve learned in the last few weeks how dependent I am on other people’s affirmation. I yearn for words of encouragement. I ache to hear that I’m valuable, worthwhile, helpful. Otherwise I start getting stupid.

I should probably learn to be less dependent on these things, but it still would be nice to get affirmation every once in a while.

And if I need these things, chances are so do the people around me.

I’ve decided I need to make an effort to tell my friends and family that they’re doing a good job at whatever they’re doing. Because they are. They’re good parents, good friends, good siblings.

And I need to tell Ben that he’s doing a great job as a husband, too. He is. Even when he’s not doing a spectacular job, he’s doing well. He’s enough. I can’t ever let him doubt that.

Maybe I need to tell my boss he’s doing a good job, too. Who knows?

Maybe you might want to tell your spouse (and your parents and your kids and your friends) that they’re doing a good job, too. Maybe they’re like me and they need some affirmation, because they worry that they’re so incompetent and nuts that the world would have been better off if they’d never been born. And that’s no good.

So tell ’em, man. Tell ’em now. I don’t care how you do it, just let them know that their efforts don’t go unnoticed. You might change everything for them.

Photo courtesy of BookMama.

When I was a teenager I came across a book in a Christian bookstore entitled Stop Dating the Church. It was written by the same guy who wrote I Kissed Dating Goodbye, a runaway bestseller in the Christian nonfiction industry, and I book that I had eagerly gobbled up. But this one didn’t really strike my fancy. Huh, I thought. Figures. The guy who writes about Christian sexuality likens our relationship with church to a romantic one. Smart marketing move. I didn’t bother picking it up. I wasn’t really interested in church stuff at the time.

This may sound like the beginning of a post about church, but I assure you, it’s mostly a post about marriage. Just hang in with me.

* * *
I haven’t thought too much about that book or its implications in the years since, to be honest. That is, I haven’t thought about it until recently.

See, I’ve been on the cusp of divorce with the church for a while now, but recently it’s gotten pretty serious.

I only noticed that I was engaging in neurotic marital behaviour when I quit my fourth church job this last weekend. I have an atrocious track record with church jobs. In the last couple of years I’ve been a Sunday-morning-service emcee, a journalist for the monthly newsletter, a youth small group leader, and a women’s ministry secretary. But I haven’t been able to hold any of these jobs for longer than a couple of months. I always drop it within months like a fat cabbage in which I’ve just discovered a worm. I call it quits. I pack up my bags and spend the night at my Mom’s, leaving my ring on the church’s pillow. Metaphorically speaking.

I formally married my church six years ago when I got baptized. I even said some vows, I think, abut how I would stay with the church and treat it well. But our relationship hasn’t been doing so good lately.

The problem is, I have a hard time staying committed to anything church-related because I can’t quite see the point in any of it. Why do we need an emcee? Why do we need a newsletter? Why do we need a women’s ministry? Why do we even need the church?

I don’t question the value of gathering and worshiping with fellow believers. I don’t even have anything against so-called “organized religion.” It’s the sprawling, intensely self-absorbed and patriarchal bureaucracy known as the North American church that I have a problem with. All the programs and agendas and administrative formalities. I just can’t get my head around why we need all that crap. So my commitment-level to the whole shebang remains tenuous.

It’s hard for me to stay committed to an institution that fosters an environment in which I have the urge, every so often, to stand up in the middle of a service, drop-kick a hymnal across the sanctuary and yell, “Is there a point to all this?”

* * *
I don’t mean for this to be a post about church. That’s another tiresome topic that’s not really relevant to this blog. What I really want to discuss here is how my personal relationship with church has helped me to understand other people’s struggle with marriage.

Like me with church, I know that there are many folks out there who struggle to understand the point of marriage. Why bother with marriage? they want to know. Is there a purpose to any of this?

When you see so many miserable marriages, and so many couples breaking up, and so much heartache, you have to ask yourself: can anything good come from this ancient, broken practice?

A while back I tried to answer this question. I wrote a series of posts entitled “What is the Point of Marriage?” I gave answers like “to teach us about God” and “to teach us what it means to be human.” I’m still pretty happy with the series, but I also understand now that my reasons probably won’t be very convincing to anyone who just isn’t seeing the real-live benefits of marriage. I can throw abstract reasons at them for choosing marriage, but they’re not likely to be convinced until they see the benefits with their own eyes.

I’m starting to get these people now. Just as someone could list off the theoretical benefits of church, it would take a lot more to convince me to give it my all. I’m going to continue to feel skepticism as long as I fail to see anything productive come out of it. I gotta see something good in real life before I’m fully convinced, before I feel like I can fully commit to it.

So even though faith in marriage has come easily to me, I am starting to better understand those people who have their doubts about it. I see now that it’s hard to place your faith in an institution that looks so broken. It’s hard to commit yourself to an establishment with such a poor track record. I hear ya. I just hope and pray that you come across some beautiful example that helps you to sense the meaning and grandeur of marriage, just as I hope that someday get a glimpse of the church serving its beautiful purpose. Until then, I’m probably going to continue wagging my ring finger in the face of the church, threatening to pack my bags and spend the night at a hotel until it smartens up. I’ll never leave it completely, probably, but I’ll never be a very good wife as long as I doubt my reasons for staying.

A few months ago, Alisa from Project Happily Ever After (a blog that I just adore) asked her readers how they would define marriage. I was struck by how tricky I found her question.

As Alisa explains, there’s the legal definition of marriage — the contracted cohabitation of two people within the same household for life (or at least until the couple decides to dissolve the contract).  And then there’s the vague dictionary definition about being “united,” and the vague understanding that two people have sex and raise children together. But, as Alisa points out, all of these definitions fall a little flat. Most people would agree that marriage is more than a legal contract — there are emotional, spiritual, and traditional elements to it as well. But to make things even more complicated, not all couples who live together or consider themselves “united” are legally married; and not all people who are legally married feel united or even live together or have sex or raise children together.

As a response to these failed definitions, Alisa offered her own tentative definition:

Marriage is a promise. It’s a promise between two consenting adults to:

• Prop one another up when one of them is about to fall down
• Try their best to know and understand each other
• Face and solve problems together
• Support one another as they both grow into better people

I definitely felt Alisa was getting somewhere with this elegant definition. But I still felt like something was missing.

I’ve been mulling over the question casually for the last couple of months. And I’ve come up with a couple of additional thoughts.

Essentially, I feel that there’s something missing because cohabiting couples can make this promise, but that doesn’t make them married. Even family members or close friends who decide to live together could enter into this kind of promise and totally not be married. So there seems to be more to it.

Yes, marriage is a promise. But that promise has to have something added to it. I’ve decided that true marriage needs the added element of formality.

In other words, this promise which Alisa has so well described needs to take place within a context that makes it binding somehow – either through a legal contract or some kind of ceremonial covenant. In short, it needs to involve other people.

See, a promise merely made between two people doesn’t have much power. Without witnesses, who’s going to make sure both participants keep up their end of the deal? Without a formalized set of regulations, how are the participants going to be sure the deal still stands?

Ultimately, a simple promise between two people is difficult to maintain and easy to break. That’s probably why so many cohabitating couples break up. The rules are fuzzy and there’s no one there to support them and hold them accountable to their promises.

That’s where the formality comes in.

When you involved other people – a judge, a congregation, a collection of witnesses –your promise becomes a little harder to break. All of a sudden, you have a whole group of people to contend with if you want to break your promise. You can’t turn your back on your co-promiser without dealing with all the folks you’ve decided to involve.

You don’t have to sign a legal contract to be married. And you don’t have to have a wedding ceremony to be married. But in the end I’m pretty sure you need to do either one or the other (or at least something of the sort) to be truly married.

In either instance, you’ve voluntarily placed yourself in a position where it’s harder to break your promise. You’ve brought people in to hold you accountable, to make sure you do what you say you’re going to do. And you’ve laid it for all to see. And you do this thing because you love the person you’re marrying, and you want to show how seriously you take your commitment to him or her.

Marriage is indeed a promise, but it’s also a paradox: it’s a voluntary obligation. A freely-chosen constraint. And that makes marriage unique.

What do you think? How would you define marriage? What else is missing from my definition? Also, do you think sex needs to be mentioned in there somewhere? I kinda think it might.

Photo courtesy of Thomas Hawk.

When you think about marriage, you probably automatically envision it being lived out in a house — one that you own together as a couple. A yard. Maybe a porch. A  kitchen of your own and perhaps a second bathroom. You imagine painting the interior in all your favourite colours, saying things like “We want to knock down this wall and add a breakfast bar here to create more of an Open Concept.” (Open Concept is intentionally capitalized because you say it with such authority and conviction, as if you have invented the term). And you can do that stuff because it’s your own house, and you can do whatever you want in your own friggin’ house.

Marriage is thus often connected to the other m-word: mortgage. We expect that when we’re married we will also have a mortgage. They come in a package deal, we imagine.

In my community of friends (and I suspect in many others), failure to buy a house is almost tantamount to failing at married life. No one actually says that, of course, but that seems to be the unconscious assumption. We feel incomplete until we have that mortgage, and feel sorry for the couples who can’t afford a down payment even after being married a couple of years.

Amongst my friends, buying a house is considered an indisputably wise financial decision. “Why throw away your money in rent, never to be seen again, when it could go towards a mortgage which will pay you back someday?” we ask.

* * * *

Ben and I bought our own place two years after getting married. Before that, we rented an apartment with a giant melamine kitchen, a chronically moldy shower and a severe ant problem. It was actually a pretty decent place overall, but Ben is a handyman and it drove him crazy to not be able to fix things up for himself. It wasn’t our place. We couldn’t do what we wanted. And I had no yard in which to plant a garden, so I was unceasingly bitter.

We love owning a house. I have lime green walls in the living room and a mango-coloured entrance room.  Ben has renovated seven of the eleven rooms and built a shed on the yard. I have added three flower beds and a vegetable garden. It’s the bomb.

But sometimes I have doubts. We have entangled ourselves within decades of debt which we will probably still be paying off when we’re my parents’ age.  Sometimes I wonder if we haven’t trapped ourselves in a lifestyle that we never consciously agreed to be a part of.

* * * *

I’ve been reading a lot lately about New Monasticism and other forms of Christ-centered life – topics that traditionally have nothing to do with marriage. I’ve been reading about peacekeeping, about living in community with marginalized people, and social justice. And I’ve been wondering where marriage fits into all of this.

Recently, Chris Waluk left this troubling comment on my post about waiting to get married:

A friend told me a story about when he was talking to his friend, who was married, about some of his ambitions. His friend turned to his wife and said, “Don’t you remember when we always used to talk about changing the world? What happened?” She responded, “We got married and bought this house.”

This story scares me because of how realistic it is. For many, marriage + mortgage = the end of adventure. When you have that much debt and personal responsibility, it makes it hard to change the world. And that’s frightening.

I don’t think marriage should be or has to be the end of adventure. You can do lots of amazing stuff as a couple. But mortgages tend to be adventure-killers.  Who’s got time, money, or energy to change the world when you’re trying to pay for your house?

The thing is, marriage and mortgages don’t have to come together.

This stuff makes me wonder if we should be so quick to buy homes when we get married. Especially those of us who marry young, who are still figuring out their lives. Would we be better off renting a cheap apartment until we better know what we want in life?

I’m not financially savvy enough to know whether or not buying a house is always the smartest financial decision. But finances aside, I wonder whether buying a house is overall a wise decision for newly married couples. What if I discover I can’t ever have babies and decide I want to do my PhD in England? What if we feel called to move into a leper colony in India and learn from the people there? What if an opportunity arises to join a monastic community in a big city? What do we do about the mortgage?

I know mortgages are not irreversible, but it is hard to let go of a home that we have lovingly called our own and into which we have invested so much money and energy. I would have a really hard time with that at this point. Sometimes I regret having gotten so “attached” to this home, on more levels than the emotional.

I’m not saying we want to get out of it. I’m just saying I have doubts.

What are your thoughts? Should couples wait to buy homes, or is it really the smartest decision to buy right away? Did you buy a house, or are you planning to buy a house when you get married? How do you feel about it? What are some of the advantages/disadvantages of buying a home? Leave a comment.

Photo courtesy of Linda Yvonne.

It is a truth universally acknowledged that marriage is not easy.

To say at a social gathering that marriage isn’t hard would be like saying eating chicken feet isn’t disgusting. Of course it is. There is generally no debate about it. It’s just an accepted truth. In fact, Jon Acuff jokes about the popularity of this message at wedding ceremonies, which he calls the “Scared Straight Marriage Talk.”

But sometimes, don’t you find yourself wondering, Is marriage really all that much harder than other relationships?

OK, I sometimes find myself wondering this.

I recently asked myself, “Is marriage, say, harder than friendship? Is it harder than being a sibling? Is it harder than being a part of a church community of a sorority club or a hockey team?”

Why don’t people go around saying “family is not easy” or “being a daughter is hard work”?

In my experience so far, I haven’t found being married to Ben any harder – or easier – than it was living with my mom, dad, and four younger siblings.

That was pretty hard sometimes.  It was hard negotiating between my parents’ vastly different levels and manifestations of religiosity. It was hard dealing with my little brother’s bull-headedness and my little sister’s unreasonable picky eating habits.  It was hard sharing a room with a sister who had different notions of tidiness and different opinions on how loud the alarm clock should be in the morning. It took a lot of hard work to keep the peace between seven people who all needed to share a single computer, TV and shower.

And that’s not it. Amongst my church friends, it’s often hard to get along when we all have differing incomes, spending habits, convictions and political views. It’s not always easy agreeing on a place to spend our Sunday afternoons or how to celebrate Christmas together. Sometimes it’s tempting to just give in and quit hanging out altogether. It’s hard when personalities clash and we forget to respect each other and when we find out that someone has been saying impolite things about us when we’re not around.

I personally don’t think marriage is especially hard.

Sure, marriage has its special difficulties – you have to agree on a lot more, like whether or not to have joint accounts and how religiously to raise your kids. But marriage also has special perks that also make it easier than other relationships, like romance and sexual intimacy. (Hint: sex is good for making you forget why you are mad at each other sometimes. That only works with a spouse).

Rather, I think living with people is hard. We’re all so insecure and competitive and opinionated and irritable. We’re a pain to live with, in all honesty.

It’s hard to share space and resources with others, especially when they want to use them in ways that you disagree with.

It doesn’t matter if it’s your spouse, your pastor, your neighbor, your boss, your mom, your brother, or the person who’s tailgating you right now with the blinding laserbeam headlights who could easily just pass you on the left. Humans are just hard to live with. It takes a lot of hard work to get along with people, especially if you share a home with them.

So I say enough of saying that marriage is hard. It doesn’t take any more work or effort than do any other relationships that require you to see and share space with the same person every single day. Let’s face it: being a social animal is hard work. But relationships give life meaning, so we do it anyways.

What do you think? Do you think marriage is harder than other relationships? Or is it easier? Why do you think so?

Photo courtesy of Vinje.

“Will somebody please ask me out on a coffee date for tonight? I’ve been alone 4 days straight and I’m about to kill myself for loneliness.”

I wish I could say I read that Facebook status on my news feed. Then I could use it as an illustration for why we need human contact in our everyday lives. I would use it to demonstrate why it’s important for you to remain caught up in the tangled web of human relationships because it keeps you sane.

But I didn’t read that Facebook status on my news feed.

I wrote it.

Fortunately, though, I thought twice before publishing it, and deleted it at the last second. Then I got up and started pacing and flapping my hands like I do when I can’t make up my mind about something. What was I going to do? I was desperate. I needed human contact. Any human contact. But I didn’t know how to get it.

See, here’s something you may or may not already know about me: I’m a serious introvert. I like to be alone. I am very happy to spend eight hours of my day in complete solitude, just writing and thinking and cooking and cleaning. I do all my grocery shopping at the crack of dawn so I don’t have to risk running into people I know and then having to chit-chat with them. I also hate making new friends, so I avoid all social gatherings that involve mixing with people I don’t already know.

The thing is, I don’t love being entangled in the messiness of other people’s lives. I dislike small talk. I loathe awkwardness. I dread others baring their feelings to my face because I fear that I will not be able to respond to their emotions adequately. I don’t hug, I suck at sympathizing, I feel weird about expressing interest or affection, and I fear taking responsibility for other people’s emotions. So I try to keep to myself as much as possible.

I have been like this for so long now that I have sort of lost the ability to plan get-togethers like a normal person. I just kind of forget to do it. I never plan dates or social events. I never pick up the phone just to say hi or drop by a friend’s house. I have kind of forgotten how.

Normally, I have no trouble spending lots of time alone. I have a rather cozy, self-centered life. I keep very busy all by my lonesome. But this last week, Ben was unusually busy. He was out every evening, attending classes or meeting with friends or practicing with his band. And I stayed home. I already spend every morning and afternoon completely alone, but now I was spending the evenings alone, too. For almost 100 hours straight I was completely by myself, except for a few short interactions with Ben in between his busyness.

And finally, on Thursday, I snapped. I was so desperate for human contact but so unused to making dates or plans with friends that I actually typed out a message on Facebook begging anyone in driving distance to come hang out with me.

It turns out that even monstrously self-absorbed, introverted people like me need relationships. We need to be entangled in other people’s messy experiences and emotions. We need to feel awkwardness and make small talk and bare our emotions and let the whole world see how bad we are at comforting others. Otherwise we go gaga. We’ll start saying crazy things over the interwebs, just aching for someone to hear us. That’s not a healthy position to be in.

So learn from me. Go out and get entangled. Be socially awkward. Run into acquaintances and stammer like  goofball. Otherwise you’ll turn out like me.

[Fortunately, I texted a friend instead of sending that embarrassing message to the world and ended up having a delightful coffee date with four awesome girl friends. When I told Ben what I’d almost done he said, “Whoa! Good thing you never published that Facebook status. Who knows who might have responded!” And then he said, in his best female stalker voice, “Dear Kathy: I’ve waited my whole life to be your best friend. Let’s start tonight. I want to share everything.” *Shudder* Yes indeed, I am grateful I didn’t actually publish that status.]

Have you ever had a moment where you realized you needed relationships?

Photo courtesy of eatingsnowflakes