What is marriage (really)?

Marriage is a unique opportunity. We have the chance to share every aspect of our life with another human being. We have promised to stick together through the highs and lows, and, out of the security of our mutual promise, we dare to reveal everything about ourselves.

We relate to each other in our common humanity, feeling each other’s pain and covering each other’s weaknesses. We rejoice in each other’s strengths and delight in each other’s successes. We are given a counsellor, a companion, a best friend – in short, a partner through life. And if we are patient enough, kind enough and unselfish enough, we shall discover that each of us is inexhaustibly rich.

Marriage has brought untold joy to millions, and throughout history has been celebrated around the world in ceremony, poetry, prose and song.

That is why a man leaves his father and mother and is united to his wife, and they become one flesh. (Genesis 2:24)

Marriage is about two people being joined together to become one, and is therefore the closest, most intimate relationship of which human beings are capable. Some might object and say that the parent–child relationship is closest, given that the child’s life begins within the mother. However, a healthy parent–child relationship is to be one of increasing separation and growing independence, with each child leaving the parental nest to make a home of their own. The marriage relationship is altogether the other way round. Two people, at one time strangers to each other, meet and subsequently get married. They enter into a relationship marked, at its best, by an increasing interdependence.

John Bayley writes about his fifty years of marriage to his late wife in Iris: A Memoir of Iris Murdoch. Towards the end she suffered from Alzheimer’s disease, through which he nursed her himself:  

“Looking back, I separate us with difficulty. We seem always to have been together . . . But where Iris is concerned my own memory, like a snug-fitting garment, seems to have zipped itself up to the present second. As I work in bed early in the morning, typing on my old portable with Iris quietly asleep beside me, her presence as she now is seems as it always was, and as it always should be. I know she must once have been different, but I have no true memory of a different person.”¹

This process of growing together is not automatic. Most couples come into marriage with big expectations. As they leave their wedding through a shower of confetti and meander off into the sunset, they cannot imagine ever not wanting to be together. The long-term reality is different and, potentially, far better.  

Both husband and wife must be ready to build their marriage. Each stage of the process brings its own challenges and opportunities. In the early days we may be shocked by the things that we discover about each other that had not been apparent during the heady days of courtship and engagement.

For ourselves, even though we had known each other for four years prior to getting married, we both had to make adjustments in the light of what married life revealed: irritating habits, unexpected behaviours, values that differed from our own.

The first lesson of marriage is to accept our husband or wife as they are, rather than trying to make them into the person we had hoped they would be. This mutual acceptance must continue, as the passing years will inevitably bring change. As Shakespeare mused:

“Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove.
. . . Love’s not time’s fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
Within his bending sickle’s compass come;
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks.”²

Despite our best efforts, we cannot stay the same. Not only will our appearance change, but also our thinking will mature, our character will develop and our circumstances will alter. Perhaps the greatest change comes with the arrival of children, although equally challenging are the distressing and traumatic circumstances of infertility. Difficulties in conceiving can put great stress on a marriage and will call for much patience, loving support and a refusal to blame.

The birth of a baby brings supreme joy but is often accompanied by physical exhaustion. Later on, the teenage years can be immense fun and can provide opportunities for growing friendship with our children, but are usually an emotionally exhausting roller coaster ride. When eventually our children move out, we may find ourselves grieving their absence (the expression used by one mother whose children were gradually leaving home in their early twenties).

Through these years of bringing up children, when there is so much to think about at home and at work, it is all too easy to neglect our marriage. Undoubtedly children need to be nurtured, but so too do marriages. When a couple have continued to invest in their relationship and have supported each other through the varying pressures of family life, the later years can be the most rewarding.

A friend of ours was questioning her parents recently about their marriage. Her father turned to her mother and said, “I think we’ve had a great marriage, but there have been difficult bits and wonderful bits.” Both agreed that the hardest phase had been in their thirties when they had young children, not much money and tough demands at work. But as the children became increasingly independent (although still very much part of their lives), the pressures eased and they had the time and opportunity to rediscover each other in new ways.

British comedian Frank Muir described in his autobiography what this later stage of his long marriage to Polly meant to him:

When brother Chas and I were teenagers our granny decided to give us signet rings. I hated the idea of wearing jewellery and so she gave me something else.

It was coming up to our forty-seventh wedding anniversary and Polly asked me if there was something I would like to have as a keepsake, and suddenly I knew exactly what I wanted. I said, “Please may I have a wedding ring?”

Polly was very surprised. She said, “Tell me why you suddenly want a wedding ring after all these years and you shall have one.”

“Well, I wanted to be sure first,” I said, the sort of slick half-joke inappropriate for a rather emotional moment, but it gave me time to think . . .

I find it quite impossible to visualise what life without Polly would have been like. Finding Polly was like a fifth rib replacement . . .

I asked for a wedding ring so that I could wear it as a symbol of the happiness my marriage to Pol has brought. Now that I work at home it is so good just to know that Pol is somewhere around, even though invisible, perhaps bending down picking white currants in the fruit cage and swearing gently, or upstairs shortening a skirt for a granddaughter.

The happy thing is to know that Pol is near.³

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