Differences in Marriage, Part III: Areas of difference.

As I pointed out previously, some disagreements can have clear right/wrong answers; if one spouse wants to quit his or her job to be a full time videogame-playing couch potato or to expand their sexual repertoire to include the neighbors, then the other spouse can quite rightly claim a moral high ground.  But when a couple is trying to live righteously and considerately of each other, the greatest disagreements can come from matters in the following or other categories in which one preference is as “right” as the other.  Knowing that there can be equally defensible  alternatives, especially before a couple has any specific disagreement in those areas, can help defuse tension and lead to a solution.  Here are some common subject areas in which both A and B can be right:

Finances.  Even within the bounds of responsible financial management, there can be different opinions.  Who should balance the checkbook and make sure the bills are paid, or should you both do it?  Should you have separate or combined bank accounts?  Is there a threshold above which one spouse should not spend unilaterally, without counseling together beforehand?  Should each spouse have an “allowance” of spending money, or should every penny be accounted for?  If either or both partners are still pursuing education, should they pursue their degree at full speed and live very frugally for a number of years, or take some time off school to work full time and gain a cushion?  Church leaders have constantly cautioned for the past century against frivolous or needless debt, counseling Church members only to go into necessary debt — but each person brings his own definition of “necessary.”

Entertainment.  A married couple should enjoy spending time  together, but what if their ideas of “fun” are divergent?  What if one spouse habitually spends far more hours in recreation than the other (either active, such as exercise or sports, or passive, such as broadcast sports, television or videogames) and the non-indulging spouse feels resentful?  What if one spouse simply enjoys something that the other does not?  How much time apart in their individual entertainment pursuits can their marriage withstand without showing stress because of time not spent together?  (Entertainment can also blend into finance, if the activities one spouse prefers cost money that the other feels should be allocated elsewhere.)

Togetherness.  This category is the twin of entertainment: how much time do husband and wife expect to spend together?  Typically (though obviously not necessarily), men prefer to spend more time in solo, non-social pursuits than women; is there a happy medium at which the man won’t think his wife is being to “clingy” and the woman won’t think her husband is being “cold?”  How about outside friendships, especially those which pre-exist the marriage: does the husband or wife spend time with “the gang” of same-sex friends that the spouse resents? (It should go without saying that neither husband nor wife should have opposite-gender friendships from which his or her spouse is excluded.)

Childrearing.  This is such a common source of tension and outright conflict that dealing with it in a single paragraph seems almost to trivialize it.  Do the husband and wife — the father and mother — have the same ideas regarding boundaries of behavior, freedom vs. safety, rules and punishment, family responsibilities and privileges, exposure to media, etc.? Will the lenient parent and the strict parent present a unified front to their children so that the children can expect consistency and order in their family rules?  Will both parents participate fully in being parents, even if employment responsibilities differ?  For that matter, have they decided before children are born what how they will structure employment during the children’s formative years?

Sex. You can almost transplant my paragraph from the post on sources of difference right here.  In addition: Thanks both to a Puritanical strain in American religion (to which Mormon culture is not immune) which equates all pleasure with sin, and to some of the kneejerk reactions against the coarsening of popular culture and the widespread weakening of sexual boundaries and standards in society at large, Mormons along with other Christians absorb contradictory messages about sex, both consciously and inadvertently taught to them.  Sex is characterized as (a) a holy act, (b) something to be embarrassed about, (c) a woman’s duty in order to bear children, (d) a forbidden subject you need to spend the years from puberty to marriage not thinking about, (e) something that’ll just “come naturally” so no one needs to teach you about it, (f) only “righteous” and “pure” within certainly vaguely indicated bounds.  And that’s just within the Church!  Add in the self-contradictory philosophies of the world which encompass both “casual sex” and “the right to sexual fulfillment” and the imagery of sex-for-entertainment that are virtually unavoidable in modern society, and it’s no wonder that husband and wife often come to their marriage bed each with a mess of unexamined and mutually exclusive ideas about what their sexual relationship is supposed to be.  (Or as one wit has put it, young men and women can come out of the Church’s youth programs with the idea that “sex is shameful and wicked and should only be engaged in with your eternal companion.”)

Given that the prophets have stated that the joy and intimacy of husband and wife is at least as important as procreation as one of the God-ordained purposes of marital sex, I don’t think that one needs to worry overmuch about the “appropriateness” of various sexual practices, so long as they don’t involve fantasies of adultery or abuse.  But it can take a while for a newlywed, just introduced to the whole idea of intimacy, to feel comfortable with even bread-and-butter sex, much less anything more “exotic.” There is an idea known as “sinning against conscience,” which is simply that it can be damaging to one’s spiritual health to engage in practices which, deep down, one feels are sinful, even if they are not technically sins. (As an example, an LDS convert from Judaism may know intellectually that the Lord does not require him to keep kosher, but may still feel uncomfortable eating pork, having associated that stricture with faithfulness for years.  If eating bacon makes him feel less worthy of God’s love and approval, he shouldn’t feel obligated to eat it.  Plus, more for me!)  The bottom line in these circumstances is that spouses should be sensitive to each other’s feelings and deep-seated reactions, and never turn sex into something about which one or the other feels uncomfortable.

Next: Resolving difference

Differences in Marriage, Part II: Sources of difference.

Part of dealing with differences is recognizing their legitimate sources.  This is especially true when examining one another’s assumptions on occasions when not only do you each think you’re right, but never really considered that there was another option than the one your automatically backed.  Most of these, again, are not “right/wrong” differences.

Religion.  This blog is aimed at active Mormon couples, but not everyone LDS has always been LDS.  Given the difference in emphasis and perspective which LDS doctrine puts on marriage and families, it’s obvious that someone raised in an active Mormon family will have different assumptions than someone who converted after their childhood. Please note that this does NOT mean that the opinion of the Mormon from birth is automatically more legitimate than that of the convert; unconscious or assumptions, even when based on truth, can lead to erroneous conclusions, especially when simply assumed without examination.

Culture. Religion and culture are closely intertwined, but not synonymous.  As an example, my wife and I were both raised from birth in active LDS families. However, she was raised in a Utah farming community with an overwhelming Mormon demographic and a meetinghouse half a mile away.  I was raised on the East Coast, where my sisters and I were the only Mormons in our grade, junior high, and high schools.  A lot of the cultural traditions which were simply the way that my wife assumed Mormons always observed were completely alien to me; I was surprised by the amount of culture shock I experienced when I married her and stayed in Utah.  If that level of cultural disparity can be present between these two people raised in active LDS families, can you imagine the differences between people each raised in a different state with a Mormon minority, especially with differing levels of family activity?

Education. It’s important to note that education equals neither intelligence nor wisdom.  Education can sometimes result in a breadth of knowledge which is disparate to one’s spouse; at other times it can result in an academic or objective/purpose-driven mindset which is applied whether or not it is appropriate to the situation or not.  If one spouse has received significantly more education than the other, the less-educated spouse might have feelings of inadequacy or inferiority, and express it either as unhealthy acquiescence or insecure defensiveness.

Gender. I’m not interested in the whole nature/nurture debate here; obviously some tendencies are endemic to one’s physical gender, and just as obviously some behaviors are entirely the result of cultural roles.  In both cases, there are differences between the typical male and female mindsets, roles, and worldviews.

Sex. Again, the typical male and female in Western society have widely differing urges and expectations of sexual relationships through a combination of nature and nurture.  It’s extremely important for each spouse to realize that this does not make their husband or wife wrong, sinful, or frigid if their desires for frequency, novelty or other variables in sex are significantly more or less than their own.  It’s just as hard for typical men to understand their wives’ relatively muted sexual wants as it is for typical women to understand their husband’s relative sexual aggression.

(I’m in a rare position to see both sides of this issue.  I’ve always been, shall we say, a red-blooded male; however, as part of a serious medical condition a couple of years ago, I was on a medication which had as one of its announced side effects a significant decrease in libido.  Within a week I was walking around the house singing, “Man, I Feel Like a Woman.”  The experience taught me two significant things: 1) Men need to realize that a lack of sexual aggression on their wives’ part does not equal lukewarm love or affection; the emotion and commitment is their, even though there is not the urge to express it in the same way. 2) Women need to realize that their husbands are  not oversexed, sex fiends, or prospective porn addicts — their bodies are  chemically predisposed both to express love and to experience love in a physical manner.)

Health. Differences in health between spouses, and the stresses which health conditions bring, can contribute mightily to differences in marriage.  Dietary needs, fatigue, pain or discomfort, and related lifestyle factors can come between husband and wife.

Other experience.  Good or bad, any experience which was not shared by the spouse can obviously be a source of difference in worldview, emotional reactions, life goals, and faith.  If one spouse has served a mission, or broken a limb, or tended relative’s children frequently, or endured abuse, or was responsible for livestock on a farm, or struggled with an addiction, or watched a lot of PBS, or played high school football, or experienced homelessness or abuse, or served in the military… any experience not shared can be a source of difference.  Sometimes, actually, it’s the smaller differences which can cause more conflict because they don’t show up as early on the radar.  In a marriage between a fourth-generation Mormon from Southern Utah and a convert from sub-Saharan Africa, both participants obviously would (or should) expect multiple differences from the beginning of the relationship.  On the other hand, a pair of high school sweethearts who grew up a block apart may be blindsided by unforeseen differences that result simply from them being different people despite all of the outward similarities.

Next: Areas of difference

Differences in Marriage, Part I: A feature, not a bug.

There are three broad categories to stress-creators in marriage:

1. Things that happen to you from outside that you can’t control (illness, job loss, etc.)
2. Things that you agree on, but are doing wrong anyway (finances is a big one)
3. Things that the two of you disagree on

I’ll leave the first two for another time and tackle the third one.

The first thing to realize is that, even though marriage is a union in which the two are expected — even commanded — to “become one,” that does not mean that you are supposed to be the same.  You found many of your spouses differences attractive before you got married (of one of the chief differences being, you know, gender), because many of your differences are complementary, not necessarily conflicting.

Paul used the metaphor of parts of a body to describe the different functions of the members in the church, but it works just as well in describing a marriage:

 For the body is not one member, but many.

If the foot shall say, Because I am not the hand, I am not of the body; is it therefore not of the body?

And if the ear shall say, Because I am not the eye, I am not of the body; is it therefore not of the body?

If the whole body were an eye, where were the hearing? If the whole were hearing, where were the smelling?

But now hath God set the members every one of them in the body, as it hath pleased him.

And if they were all one member, where were the body?

But now are they many members, yet but one body.

21 And the eye cannot say unto the hand, I have no need of thee: nor again the head to the feet, I have no need of you.

That is the starting point for any discussion of differences between you: remember that it’s okay to think, act, and assume differently. It’s supposed to be that way.  It’s a feature, not a bug.  A difference is not necessarily a conflict or a fault. Even if your spouse turns out to be wrong and you to be right, the fact that your spouse had a difference of opinion is not wrong (and you will want him/her to be just as charitable on all those occasions when it’s your opinion that turns out to be wrong).

Obviously, there are disagreements when one spouse is wrong.  If your wife wants to spend the rent money on a $2000 leather couch, if your husband wants to stay up all night looking at porn, if either of you thinks that a career of bank-robbing is fine and dandy… But for a great many differences in marriage, not only is there not a clearcut right answer, there isn’t a more right answer. They may be of more import to your life together than “mayo vs. Miracle Whip,” but that doesn’t mean that one choice is clearly superior to the other. They’re just different.

It’s when differences lead to conflict that there’s a problem.

Next: Sources of difference

The eternal perspective.

Following up on my last post: Marriage is hard. It it worthwhile and intensely rewarding, but it is hard. Too many people enter marriage not only unaware (or disbelieving) that a good marriage is hard — they think that difficulty is incontrovertible evidence that their marriage choice is a bad one. The unfortunate second part of the problem is that marriage in modern Western society is relatively easy to dissolve, both legally and socially; there isn’t as much pressure/support put toward the two participants in the marriage to work past the problems instead of simply roundfiling the marriage.

(This is where I unfortunately need to insert disclaimers, lest critics reinterpret my words hyperbolically and infer that what I’m really saying is that all divorce is evil and unjustified and I just want to go back to a time when unhappy people are forever trapped in unhappy marriages. That’s not what I’m saying, and here’s how you can tell I’m not saying that: I didn’t say that. What I am saying is that there used to be more social support for couples going through rough times, analogous to the kind of support we still sometimes see with college students debating dropping out after a bad quarter.)

The Mormon community is still one of the most marriage-supportive, and this is tied to a particularly Mormon doctrines:

An LDS temple marriage is meant to last forever. As in, forever. There is no “til death do us part” clause, much less the “til something better comes along” subtext which governs too much of secular marriage. Mormons go into marriage expecting that they will make it last forever; there is a much stronger instinct to make it happen. The idea that marriage is the holiest covenant we take upon ourselves in this life lends solemnity to the occasion; it is not something to be discarded lightly. If your marriage falls apart, eventually you will have to stand before your maker and justify it to Him. You can do that a lot easier if your justification for divorce is “My spouse was abusive and adulterous” than “it was just too hard, y’know?”

Myself, I’ve always tried to remember this perspective:

We are all sons and daughters of God — which means that my wife is just as much a child of God as I am. God is thus more than my Father in Heaven — He’s my Father-in-Law in Heaven. Eventually, I’ll have a sit-down chat with Him on His turf (imagine this in His study, if you will), and the first thing He’s going to say to me is, “Tell me about how you treated my daughter.”

Happily ever after, to begin with.

The class began last night! The two who came were the newlywed couple (fifteen days, as of last night) who inspired me to get the class started in the first place.  Our discussion ranged all over the place, so I’ll likely get two or three discrete post out of the hour.

The first point — top of my notes — was a myth that sets back more marriages than any other, and we can’t even blame it on Godless capitalist Hollywoodized free-lovin’ America, because it’s been saturating western society for centuries: the myth of “happily ever after.”

Imagine, if you will, a movie about a high school student’s struggle to get into Harvard.  At the very end, she gets a letter with a Massachusetts return address.  She opens it, trembling, and reads, “You are accepted.”

“And she lived happily ever after.” Roll credits.

Most people would feel cheated, because the movie ends just when the real effort begins.  Yes, going to Harvard would a a fulfilling experience that the protagonist would never regret (I assume — I got my degree from Southern Utah University), but it would also be a trying and stretching time, full of effort and setbacks and probably some tears.  It would not be a time in which she could rest on her laurels, waiting for effortless happiness as her due reward.

We would automatically call shenanigans on the Harvard story, but what ends the stereotypical fairytale, a pattern which is repeated ad infinitum in chick flicks and other pop-cultural expressions of the same centuries-old meme?

The couple marries, kisses, and “live happily ever after.”

Shenanigans.

Why is this myth more than a harmless fantasy — why is it actually destructive? Because people head into marriage thinking that it’ll be easy, and it’s not.  Those first five years, especially, are a lot of work, as two people who are not at present “right for each other” spend time and effort grinding off rough corners until they finally fit together, like those ancient Peruvian stone walls with the blocks perfectly formed to each other. They weren’t found that way, you know.

If people go into marriage thinking that it’s the end of their efforts instead of the beginning, then the natural upshot is disappointment and unhappiness, and a belief that they married the wrong person, and ought to divorce and start over.  The truth is, yes, their spouse is not the right person — yet.  And neither are they.  And they won’t ever be without the growing and striving and shaping and forming together that a new marriage necessitates.

Tags: happily ever after, marriage, mr. right, myth, newlywed

Underwhelmed.

I guess announcing for the first time on Sunday that the class would start on Tuesday was not enough time for even the most enthusiastic of potential class members to clear their schedules; no one came.  I guess I can save my notes and such for next week.

My credentials, such as they are.

About a year ago, as the First Counselor in our ward, I gave a talk in sacrament meeting which was all marriage advice for men (several of the tips were of course applicable to women, but I didn’t want to be seen as whining at my wife from the pulpit).  Several people asked me for a copy of the talk afterward.

Months later, the Relief Society asked me to be a guest speaker at their monthly evening meeting — about differences in marriage.  I don’t know if I’ve ever had a harder speaking engagement: telling women (including my wife) what they could do to improve their marriages.  I supplemented my own thoughts with a slew gleaned from the marriage blogs showing on the sidebar, which are largely Protestant/evangelical Christian blogs.  As I told the sisters, I had yet to come across a comparable marriage blog specifically from and for a Mormon viewpoint.

“You should start one!” one of the sisters said.

I laughed that off; after all, most of what I was telling them was recycled from other people’s blogs, and there are enough regurga-blogs out there.

Two weeks ago, from the stand before sacrament meeting, I caught sight of a young married sister.  When I say “young,” I mean young: she’s nineteen, so’s her husband (who had to work that Sunday), and they’ve been married a month.  They’re living in her parents’ basement; he’s a recent convert to the Church and has little family support (in truth, he has little family to support him), and they would be starting post-secondary education soon while working.

I thought, “They really need something.”

I proposed to the bishop that I teach a marriage class specifically for newly-weds, which I defined as those married five years or less; I’d teach it at the church on a weekday evening.  (The standard optional Marriage & Family course at church is usually taught during Sunday School, and it often encompasses all ages: newly-weds, parents with five children, and old folks, with a grandparentish couple teaching.)  I warned the bishop: “I’m going to stray from the manual so far that I probably won’t even look at it.  I don’t want this to be a recitation from a text, as worthy as that text may be; I think this should be a from-the-heart sharing and discussion of things I’ve learned from eighteen hard years of marriage, helping them skip some of the stupid mistakes.”

He said as long as I don’t preach anything too weird, I’m okay.

My second main motive is to get these young couples together. With work and school hashing their schedules, most of them have never had a chance to meet each other except in the halls at church.  They need an opportunity to connect with each other, to realize that there are other people in roughly the same situation they’re in.

All of which is preamble.  We invited eight couples, but I don’t know how many will be able to come (owing to that same aforementioned work/school thing).  I’ve also mentioned to another ward that meets in our building that we’re beginning this class, and they’re welcome to send over their own young couples.

And finally, the question you’ve all been waiting for: So why the blog?

For one thing, I don’t want to prepare handouts before the class, because a lot of the value to be found is in the discussions we have and the conclusions we reach.  I’ll be blogging after each class as a recap, not before each class as a syllabus.  This can be of value both to those present who want to review and those who miss a class.

For another thing, if it’s of value to the newlyweds in our ward, wouldn’t it be useful to newlyweds in other wards?

For a third thing, I’m a content-producing junkie. It’s true. Any project I undertake makes me wonder, “Can I turn this into blogging or something?”

So there it is. Tonight is the first class. Further bulletins as events warrant.

Tags: mormon marriage newlywed couple