"I Do",

Alida M. DeCoster

March 9, 1997

Cedar Lane Unitarian Universalist Church

Bethesda, Maryland

Faith to relationship. Our cultural and religious understanding of commitment has evolved from the Judeo-Christian tradition of covenant found in the Bible. The righteous were the ones who kept faith with God and community, who persisted in loyal relationship. A covenant is more than a contract between two parties. It is a contract in which a higher power is also a party. Some larger universal context is acknowledged when a covenant is entered into. A vow, traditionally said before God, is declared with the humble knowledge that we come “out of the stars,” we engage in the mystery of life with awe and humility. In this context we give our vow to be righteous, to be faithful to our relationships and to our highest values. We take an oath of office, testify before a jury, marry. We enter into covenant, saying, I am, I will, I do. Yes, I will strive to be righteous.

Many of you know that I am engaged to be married in May to Perry Beider. Today, we are welcoming new members into Cedar Lane, clearly not as binding an act as marriage, but also serious. Commitment Sunday is coming up in two weeks, which is a time for all of us to consider our financial offering to this church. So the topic of our vows and commitments seemed to be a good one for this morning.

I wish to take this opportunity to reflect aloud with you about marriage and what it means. It is scary and exciting, and marrying for the first time at the age of forty-five, it is something that has been a long time coming for me. As a child of divorced parents, I have been fearful. I have had to grow and become whole before I was ready. And I had to have the mysterious good fortune of meeting a compatible, entrancing partner.

Most of you have had experience of marriage...your own, your parents, your friends. I wish to say at the outset that I include the long-term committed partnerships of gays and lesbians in my discussion of marriage. This is not a subject for the heterosexual world only. I am talking about the category of relationships that involves a public declaration, the building of a home and the intention of permanence. This is a noble human challenge and calling, flowing out of the nature of our being and made honorable by the faithful keeping of men and women of all time. And it is not to be entered into lightly or unadvisedly.

Last weekend in Denver, my brother was married for the second time. He married a divorced woman with four children. They seem very happy. I do not know what they would say about why this looks better to each of them than the first attempt. I ask couples this question when they have been married before. I usually get fairly vague answers. I think that is because people are in love. They are not in the mood to think about past mistakes.

What does it mean to be in love? I remember a book I read years ago called Love and Limerance. Limerance was the crazy, in love, romantic feeling which usually fades with time. Love, as we know, is about deep caring, work, overcoming the selfish ego, appreciating the other, a kind of discipline. Love is a big subject.

Perry and I read and learned from Harville Hendricks’ book, Getting the Love You Want. This book explains the phenomenon of falling in love. I think the most important thing to understand about falling in love is that it happens when we find someone who somehow reminds us unconsciously of our early childhood caretakers. It is the familiarity that attracts us. The primal relationship and all its passions and comforts is called to the surface. The beloved usually carries both positive and negative traits of our early childhood care givers. So we will experience the passionate joys and the wounds of infancy and childhood in this new relationship, and we will be healed if it is a workable relationship. Hendricks says, the deep purpose of our love relationships is to heal our childhood wounds and to grow beyond them. This is a profound insight.

My stepmother is fond of saying that marriage is “a crap shoot.” Will it work or won’t it? Why does this marriage succeed and that one fail? There are many factors. What people often do not realize, I think, is that a good marriage will require you to grow emotionally. If you are incapable of that, at some level it will not work. Marriage challenges our capacity for emotional growth. I am not sure it really is entirely a crap shoot. Success is not merely random. The more conscious and mature we are going into marriage, the better are our chances. And of course, compatibility matters.

Simone de Beauvoir once observed that it made good sense to have a partner of youth and a different partner for the second half of life. I have often joked that in marrying so late, I am simply skipping my first marriage. In truth, if I had married the significant other of my twenties, it would not have lasted. Sometimes I wonder if we have become so marriage and divorce ridden because we simply live so much longer. Before this century, and even now in parts of the world, life was short and brutal. You married to survive, procreate, maintain kinship systems, gain wealth.

In today’s world, we live so much longer, and have so much more freedom and choice it is not surprising that many people change partners at some point. There may be nothing wrong with this inmany cases, but has divorce become too rampant, too easy an option? Have we really taken stock of its consequences?

In preparation for this sermon, I enjoyed reading Barbara Dafoe Whitehead’s new book, The Divorce Culture. Her work reflects the new civil society movement, and is critical of the high rate of so-called “expressive” divorce. As our culture has evolved in recent decades, it is the psychological well-being of adults which is given the most importance. “Marriage (she writes on page 143) continues to exist but only as an intimate relationship. It loses its status as the institution governing child bearing and child rearing and is demoted to the status of another love connection...” Whitehead contends that children have lost their status as stakeholders in marriage.

Free choice of marriage partners was a liberal breakthrough in the last two hundred years, praised by the likes of Thomas Paine for allowing more successful, long-term marriages. Oh well, Tom. It turns out the rate of success doesn’t really have much to do with our ability to choose freely. Free choice allows us to keep choosing and choosing and choosing until we eventually get it right. Maybe. Over half of marriages end in divorce.

Between consenting adults, the changing of partners is one thing. But I think this is an example of individualism run amok when it comes to building and maintaining a healthy society for the raising of children. When divorces started to skyrocket in the sixties and seventies, the old adage of staying together for the sake of the children became passe. Honesty was considered better for children. If parents were unhappy, they should part, never mind the example of broken covenants. Newer research shows that children have been far more hurt by divorce than was previously believed, emotionally and economically , and in higher juvenile crime statistics, increased childhood depression and numerous other measurements. Whitehead reminds us of our “civic and religious traditions [which] offer a vision of the obligated self, voluntarily bound to a set of roles, duties and responsibilities, and of a nation where sacrifice for the next generation guides adult ambitions and purposes and wherewholeness of self is found in service and commitment to others.” (p.195)

Whitehead thinks there’s much more divorce going on than there should be, and that there are cases where it is necessary. It is daring and hopeful to marry in the first place, and marriage is full of struggles and disappointments. Life is long. As people who try to live well, we must do our best to learn and to grow and to try to stay together. This does not mean it will always work but we need to remember that a marriage vow is a sacred one, that we marry for better or worse, and that marriage challenges us very deeply. Marriage is not just for being happy, for having well being. It is for salvation, in the sense of realizing our deepest potential as human beings. I think it is not unusual for people to give up too easily. We tend to blame others for the marriage not working. In fact, in Hendricks’ model, people often are stuck in repeating their childhood wounds. There has not been deep forgiveness, or willingness to change. Finding a new partner will not necessarily bring more happiness. Some marriages can be saved and others cannot. There must be willingness to try on both sides.

Over Christmas, my divorced, now both remarried, parents gave an engagement party for me and my brother and our fiances. My father gave a toast, saying there was something he had noticed and admired about these new relationships of his children. He noticed that we consult each other. We say to each other, “Honey, what do you think?” Perry’s cousins thought this was very funny and later told us that they spent the next couple days saying to each other, “Honey, what do you think?”

What Dad is noticing is open, respectful negotiation about decisions. Let’s just get it all out on the table and think it over together. I can usually do this, but not always. Perry and I certainly have our sticking points. There are a few minefields in most happy homes. That is part of life.

I have heard it said that couples who start out fighting fairly do best. Things are not swept under the rug. Natural struggle is admitted and dealt with. When there is a conspiracy of silence about differences, the marriage can explode one day with no possibility of healing. This happened to a couple I know. They were always the one couple who were happy, who got along, who seemed to have a solid marriage. But somewhere along the line, they stopped listening. They stopped asking, “Honey, what do you think?” They suppressed their confused feelings, their angers, their resentments and one day it all blew up.

Beware of falling in love! True long-lasting love is not based on hormones. We all know that, right? I meet a lot of single women who are looking for Mr. Right. They remind me of myself a few years back. Many people are not too practical in their expectations. We want to be swept off our feet. That is nice for awhile, but it isn’t what works. You can’t walk if you’re swept off your feet. Perry and I took gradual steps toward each other; both of us had doubts. We took our time. And we have been delighted to see how love has grown. If you are single and looking, number one, work on your own wholeness and happiness, number two, recognize your tendency to be attracted to characteristics of your childhood caretakers and what that means for you emotionally. Know your issues! Three, be accepting of someone who may be Prince Charming in a different package than you expected. You didn’t know I was Ann Landers, right? And, also, try the personals. Sometimes, they work.

What makes a good marriage? I cannot tell you from experience yet. I am planning to have one, and here’s hoping this is not one of those cases where “Life is what happens while you are making other plans.” But I will summarize for you eight tasks that couples have to tackle together with some degree of success. These come from the research of Judith Wallerstein and Sandra Blakeslee in their book, The Good Marriage. These two studied happy marriages, a novel idea! These are not in chronological order, or in order ofimportance. They are just eight tasks that need to be worked with over time.

1. First is emotional separation from parents. This can be especially an issue in young marriages. A shift of loyalty and orientation must take place from the family of origin and this is often complicated.

2. Second is coming to a comfortable balance of autonomy and togetherness. John Gray in his Mars and Venus book has a lot to say about distancing and negotiation of togetherness. This can be a source of real conflict, until we have a mature sense of boundaries and self.

3. The third great task is the transition to parenthood if that is part of the relationship plan. This can be fraught with difficulties and competitions as well as the greatest source of joy and love.

4. The fourth task is coping with crisis. How do we support each other when the chips are down? What happens when a parent is ill or dies? Can we move through these experiences as a team?

5. Fifth is making a safe place for conflict. Yes, conflict. Here we say, we are complicated, feeling human beings. Conflict is inevitable. You are safe here to show the deepest parts of yourself. No one is leaving. This can be a tough challenge for relationships.

6. Exploring sexual intimacy is sixth. The authors note that a loving, intimate sexual life is very important for the conjugal bond, and renews and re-energizes the relationship on an ongoing basis.

7. Seventh is sharing laughter and keeping interests alive. I was not surprised to learn about the authors’ observation oflight ongoing humorous banter in many of the happy marriages they studied. Gentle teasing and goofing around keep a relationship alive, as does the sharing of mutual interests.

8. The eighth listed task is that of emotional nurturance. People in lasting relationships support each other in their growth and in their times of need. In marriage we are saying, your growth is as important as mine. Our love enhances us both.

Tough assignment! No wonder so many people don’t make it. And wonderful that so many do! We need to learn about relationships. We are not born knowing how. All families have dysfunctional elements. We are each on a journey toward wholeness that requires courage. Relationship does not rescue us from our obligation to grow. On the contrary, marriage requires us to grow. We need to be ready for that challenge. It’s a good thing marriage is fun too. What makes it possible to accomplish these tasks? Here’s my list.

1. Luck. Compatibility is lucky.

2. It is also a willingness to do hard work and keep talking. Perry is an avid science fiction fan and his favorite author, Spider Robinson has written that the hard work required by a good marrige is one of its advantages, because the diefinition of “riches” is “abundant meaningful work”.

3. Admitting our own shortcomings and an ability to forgive ourselves and each other.

4. Obviously, love is important for marital success. Not just love as a feeling, but love as a habit, a spiritual discipline. There is a flow of love coming through us. We need to stay conscious of it, and tap into it. We need to continually return to love. It is a choice.

5. Finally, a shared sense of meaning and purpose, serving a greater mission together. These are some things that help us to accomplish the tasks of marriage.

Wendell Berry is a poet who wrote a short essay about marriage as a form, as a discipline to contain our lives. ..Like a poem...

Marriage... is an attempt to rhyme, to bring two different lives — within the one life of their troth and household — periodically into agreement or consent. The two lives stray apart necessarily, and by desire come together again: to “feel together,” to “be of the same mind.” Difficult virtues are again necessary. And failure, permanent failure is possible. But it is this possibility of failure, together with the formal bounds that turns us back from fantasy, wishful thinking, and self-pity into the real terms and occasions of our lives.

It may be, then, that form serves us best when it works as an obstruction to baffle us and deflect our intended course. It maybe that when we no longer know what to do, we have come to our real work, and that when we no longer know which way to go, we have begun our real journey. The mind that is not baffled is not employed. The impeded stream is the one that sings.

(Quoted in Challenge of the Heart, John Welwood, ed.)

Bafflement, impediments, singing and rhyme, all part of the journey. Let us strive to be righteous, to have faith to relationships, knowing that bafflement, impediment, struggle all come with the territory.

Remember, we come out of the stars, to see and to know, out of your heart cry wonder, sing that we live.

Sources:

Hendricks, Harville, Getting the Love You Want, 1988

Wallerstein, Judith, and Sandra Blakeslee, The Good Marriage, 1995

Welwood, John, ed., Challenge of the Heart, 1985

Whitehead, Barbara Dafoe, The Divorce Culture, 1997

Cedar Lane Unitarian Universalist Church
9601 Cedar Lane, Bethesda, Maryland 20814-4099
Tel: 301-493-8300    Fax: 301-897-5713
e-mail: office@CedarLane.org
Sunday Services at 10 a.m.
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