Why Get Married?

A somewhat shocking statistic I ran across this week is that currently in the U.S., only 51% of adults are married. And that number is dropping and soon married people will be a minority in this country. (not a minority in a discrimination sense - just a less of us than them sense). Does this matter?

Yes.

It matters because a lessening number of people being married means that our cultural perspective on marriage is changing - it’s no longer necessary in many young people’s minds to actually get married. They can just be together, live together, sleep together, etc. and if that works for a lifetime fine, and if it doesn’t, they separate and don’t have any paperwork to do. Or maybe there are people out there who don’t even want what you would consider a “serious” relationship - let’s just keep this light and take it one day at a time. Very practical. But maybe there’s more to it than that. Maybe there’s better reasons to get married than to not. Maybe some people just don’t know them.

In my own marriage (7 years so far), some pretty amazing things have happened. When we first got married, I was incredibly selfish. I still tend that direction, truth be told, but I have become way less selfish. Being married to someone does that for you. My money is her money and vice versa. She eats my fries, I have to watch movies I don’t want to watch sometimes, I have to go places I don’t want to go, I have had to wait on her and a baby hand and foot for two weeks after my son was born. But I’ve learned how to be unselfish not only from the good example of my wife, but from being in the situation we’re in. You can’t have a successful marriage continuing on in your selfish ways. And likewise, the longer you are married, the more unselfish you can become. You gain this benefit because you are married. Some people would argue they can get the same thing from living together, but I don’t entirely agree. Living together and not being married still keeps a degree of separation. Her stuff is still her stuff, it’s just in the same place as yours. His money is still his money - often in a separate bank account. They’re continuing to be selfish, just in closer confines. And when there are kids, you have to learn an even higher level of unselfishness, with your sleep, with all the things your wife was never interested in but your kids can’t keep their hands off of, and even more so with your time. You have to sacrifice your wants and your fun times for time spent being a father/mother to your kids, and assisting your spouse when they need you (and even when they don’t).

And that degree of separation that people living together keep (not uniting ALL the way) can be a seed for distrust, and it keeps you from realizing God’s full plan for people. It says in Genesis 2:24 “For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and they will become one flesh.” That’s something that people who don’t get married miss out on - they fail to become ONE with each other. They might be a really close two, but they never unite as one flesh. Because uniting as one flesh isn’t about sex - it’s about two souls becoming one. It’s something amazing and transforming that you just don’t get outside of marriage.

Now at this point, (I’m my own critic in my head) I can hear someone saying, but people can essentially DO all the things you’re talking about, but just not have the ceremony - so what’s the point of the formality of “getting married?” What’s so magical about that? Aren’t you just trying to get people to have a ceremony? Good question. 

I am not. And the main reason I am not is because I have seen some amazing wedding ceremonies, done in churches, and I KNEW at the time that the people probably weren’t going to enjoy marriage the way it was meant to be. The biggest thing about marriage is the all-in commitment. And I believe you can have an all-in commitment without having the ceremony (my logical side would allow for that to be a possibility) - but I would bet that it rarely happens in real life. Because people who won’t even go through a public ceremony proclaiming their life-long love likely aren’t all-in for the rest of it.

So you just become less selfish if you get married? No - way more than that. You begin to better understand relationships, which enables you to better help other people with theirs. My marriage has also rounded a lot of very sharp edges off of me - not because my wife demanded anything of me, but because I wanted to be a better person for her. Outside of marriage, your main focus is being who YOU want to be. In a marriage, you want to be better for someone other than yourself. And when you add kids, even more so the case.

When I was first married, I was an alcoholic, and I was lying about it to my family and to some extent even my wife. I had a very hot temper, often about stupid things like VCRs. But I was a very angry person and I couldn’t control my temper, and I had a way of hurting other people’s feelings often. I was selfish. I used quite a bit of colorful language.

Now, after 7 years, I have been completely sober for 5 years. (for the record, I have no problem with other people drinking - I just couldn’t control it myself, so I wanted to gain control again and that meant stopping completely) I still struggle with anger, but we have had many helpful conversations about it and it’s gotten a lot better. I haven’t had to talk to my boss about my temper in several years. And I make my wife cry a lot less. I am still learning more about controlling my anger through my interactions with my son. I am still a little bit selfish, but I let go of it a lot easier now. And in general I’m way less selfish. I love sharing my fries, and I look for things to do for my wife more often. My language isn’t perfect, but it’s less colorful and more under control. I think I do more building than tearing down with my words these days.

I think one of the biggest fallacies people think about marriage is that it’s rough at first and then it gets all ironed out and you are fine for the next 50 years. I don’t know about that. Definitely things that needed to be dealt with were ironed out early on for us. But we continue to have things come up - and they’re harder things to deal with than in the beginning. And they involve kids often times. I think marriage continues to be challenging your entire life, but the positive counterpart to this is that it refines you as a person your entire life.

Imagine a kid who wants to be a basketball player. In his younger years, he’s awkward and can’t hardly hit the rim with the ball. But as he grows, and develops coordination and strength - he keeps at it, and he gets better and better. He plays in high school and eventually college. College is more challenging than high school, but he has a better coach and he learns even more, now really getting into the big picture ideas, and running elaborate plays. He’s fully grown now, but new challenges await and there’s always more to learn. He is drafted and goes pro. Again, new and bigger challenges, tougher opposition, trades, lots of money to manage, players unions, etc. Again he learns new plays, even more strategy, and more about the game, becoming a better and better player. He eventually gets older, approaching 40. He plays the game with such finesse and relative ease now, you can tell he’s been doing this since forever. He’s so smooth and knows just where to be at all times. But the body is beginning to wear. 40 years of basketball has taken its toll, and he can’t run as hard as he used to, or jump as high. He retires, and begins assistant coaching. Now, on the other side of the game, he sees with new eyes and learns about managing personalities and shot clock management strategies. He learns how to teach the game he’s played his whole life. Eventually he becomes a head coach and has great success. He learns what it takes to train champions. He tries cutting edge defensive and offensive strategies, striving to innovate new ideas. Eventually the strain of head coaching becomes too much and he retires at the age of 70. But he’s not done yet. He’s learned SO much now, he can’t leave the game that’s been his whole life. He becomes sort of a personal coach to several up and coming star players, meeting with them once a week and helping them get extra inches on their verticals, and hit a higher percentage of three pointers. His expertise is rare now, and it’s valuable. There’s a lot less stress, but still challenges - trying to find ways to contribute without overdoing it, and trying to leave his legacy in the game by impressing values and philosophy on these young players he’s working with. Only death brings his life of challenges and learning and growth to an end.

This is how I see marriage. A long life of overcoming challenges, learning, struggling well, and growing. And helping others along the way as you learn. This is one of the biggest things that someone who never gets married misses out on. They probably won’t have that life-long opportunity to learn more and more, to love more and more, to give more and more, to become more and more.

Oswald Chambers once said, “If what we call love doesn’t take us beyond ourselves, it is not really love.”

Marriage is worth it. It’s worth the risk, it’s worth the fight, it’s worth the sacrifice, and our country (any country) would benefit from more people being willing to commit to marriage because society gains something in married folks that we don’t gain in people who remain single.

And my immediate reaction to reading that last statement is to be shocked that I would insinuate in any way that single people are somehow less valuable than married people. I was NOT trying to insinuate that, and I don’t believe it. Single people are incredibly valuable to society just as they are. Marriage isn’t for everyone, and that’s okay. Paul was an amazing single guy and proud of it. There’s room in this kingdom for all of us. And there are plenty of married people who never grow, never learn, and are worse bums than most single people. All I was trying to say is that in a marriage relationship, when you go all-in with another person, there is the opportunity for great things to happen, and those great things benefit the entire society. And I hope we will soon see an increase in people getting married once again. Because it was part of God’s plan, and God knows what He’s doing.