About a year into her marriage, Darla made a startling realization: she didn’t really know what marriage is, or maybe what marriage is supposed to be. Darla knew alright what her marriage was, which was a surprisingly chaotic jumble of hopes, needs, joys, tensions, and challenges. But one day she finally realized that she hadn’t really ever grasped a deep sense of what a good marriage, proper marriage, or best possible marriage could or should be. And Darla suspected that until she discerned the answers, her marriage might remain a chaotic jumble, assuming that her marriage even remained. Darla took a deep breath, committing to study the meaning and purpose of marriage, while hoping that her husband would do so, too.
Definition
Some real thought about what marriage is may indeed reveal some helpful things to you. Gleaning a better understanding of marriage may improve or enrich your marriage, save your marriage, or, if you’re not yet married, maybe hint whether you should or shouldn’t marry. Don’t expect to nail down the perfect definition of marriage. Marriage, like the creation it represents, holds mysteries unimaginable. And no marriage is, in any case, perfect. You’ll have marriage regrets. Any frank assessment will remind you of some things you could do better if you did them over again, along with at least a few other things not to do again at all. But that’s the point of getting a sound basic sense of what a marriage is, to provide a foundation on which to build your marriage knowledge, skill, perseverance, and appreciation. Know what you’re doing in, for, and through a marriage, and you’ll at least have a good start. So, start with marriage’s definition.
Decision
The question of what is marriage looms over every such union. Marriage begins with a commitment to marry. Spouses don’t stumble into marriages, like tripping over a curb, although at times it may seem like it. Instead, a marriage takes a decision, and presumably a wholly voluntary decision at that. Any marriage grounded on duress or coercion has a weak foundation if any foundation at all. Marriage is thus first and foremost a voluntary commitment grounded in a reasonably well-informed decision. And in that respect of involving a voluntary decision, marriage reflects its symbolic and sacred aspects. Creation fosters and sustains human life as an act of voluntary ritualistic participation. We have no choice but to proceed along paths that we choose because we participate in the rationality, or logos, that constitutes the world. Marriage is among the most fundamental of those choices or decisions. Think of your decision to marry, whether upcoming or in the recent or distant past, in that profound manner, and you’ll likely be treating your marriage well.
Consent
That marriage involves a voluntary decision made without duress or coercion is one part of the institution’s definition that requires a little more fleshing out. For a decision to be voluntary requires that the decision maker have the substantial part of the information relevant to a reasoned decision. A decision induced by fraud, for instance, isn’t truly a voluntary decision. If, for example, someone who was already married induced an innocent if naive individual into a bigamous marriage, unaware of the other spouse, then one could hardly call the decision voluntary. Some individuals do nefariously lead two lives involving separate households, each with a doting spouse and dependent children. Those innocent spouses, though, are hardly consenting to the deception or to the betrayal that will soon surely unfold. That’s an extreme example. But marriages built on smaller lies, whether as to prior marriages, dalliances, debts, diseases, or addictions, have a poisonous taint of coercion or deception that will, sooner or later, affect the marriage. If that’s your marriage, then try to get to the bottom of it, through sensitive confession and merciful forgiveness, to clear out the taint, not that doing so will be easy or certain. Get a pastor or marriage counselor’s help if you must, but root it out to reestablish a proper foundation.
Objects
After the voluntary decision to marry, marriage must have some object. Indeed, that’s the recital under oath of at least one party to a marriage that the law in most states requires for a judge to approve the marriage’s dissolution by divorce, which is that the marriage has broken down leaving the parties no prospect to enjoy the objects of matrimony. Evidently, insofar as the law concerns itself, marriages have objects, meaning something like goals, designs, or purposes, at least in the ideal and likely to some degree in the practical. For a marriage to exist, it must permit or adhere to those objects. When a marriage breaks down to the point that attaining its ideals becomes so unlikely that the parties cannot imagine that happening, the marriage is effectively over, whether a court confirms so in a formal divorce or not. The law demands only minimums rather than ideals, yet even in those minimums, marriages have objects. To ensure that you’ve done your marriage the service it deserves, be able to articulate those points and purposes, some of which this chapter suggests below.
Consummation
Still considering the law’s minimum requirements for a marriage, although from the peculiar but apt perspective of annulment, consummation can be another defining characteristic. Consummation in the traditional sense refers to sexual union. The word has an interesting root in the verb to consume, meaning to ingest. In a sense that bears some physical but much greater symbolic or spiritual freight, spouses consume or ingest one another, as if to become that single divine entity. But getting back to the legal minimums, some states, not to mention some religious authorities, recognize the absence of consummation as a ground for annulling a marriage. An annulment means that the marriage is void from the start, as if it had never happened, which might feel very much the case if your spouse abandoned you at the altar, right after answering the officiant’s question with I do. One needn’t confuse consummation as a requirement. Many couples, disabled or not, are plenty happy and agreeable without the marriage’s physical consummation. Physical intimacy isn’t necessary for marriage. Yet consummation in its sacred rather than profane form would reflect a profoundly deep degree of devotion. Can you lose yourself in your marriage, consumed by and consuming the other until a single entity? It’s certainly a high, but also a highly motivating and mysterious, ideal.
Devotion
Devotion is a more practical or grounded way of describing perhaps the essential attribute of marriage, referring to distinct and enthusiastic love and loyalty. As stated just above, marriage in the law’s minimum conception has the object of holding two together in a purposeful union. That marriage involves the peculiar devotion of spouses to one another finds further proof in the fact that a devotion to others outside the marriage, especially in the area of physical intimacy, may mark the demise of a marriage. Sexual devotion to others while married, commonly known as adultery, is a traditional ground for divorce both legally and biblically, of course leaving questions to explore over the adultery’s circumstances and extent, and the faithful spouse’s potential for mercy, grace, and forgiveness. Marriages intend devotion, reflected most deeply and symbolically in exclusive physical intimacy. One defines all things as much by exclusion as inclusion. Marriage is no different. Mark and celebrate your marriage by exclusive intimate devotion.
Commitment
The devotion of spouses extends beyond exclusive intimacy to include continued, indeed lifelong, committed care. How marriages reflect that committed care may vary greatly. In some marriages, the care goes primarily in one direction, whether because of the greater strength, skill, energy, or other resources of one spouse and the lesser abilities or frank disabilities of the other spouse, or because of varying degrees of commitment. And in some marriages, circumstances like illness, injury, military service, or business travel may interrupt the mutual care, for shorter or longer periods or even indefinitely. But marriages still require the commitment to care for the other, whether or not adequately or generously carried out. Proving it, abandonment is a traditional ground for divorce and biblical ground when by an unbelieving spouse. It’s true: if your spouse disappears with the clear intention of not returning, an essential object of marriage has ended, whether or not either spouse follows through with a divorce. Strangely enough, I’ve helped spouses who had exactly that offense happen to them, their spouse simply disappearing with the clear intention never to return.
Protection
Safety, extending to protection, is another prime purpose of marriage. Spouses should first of all be safe from one another. Proving it, law has traditionally recognized abuse within the marriage as a ground for divorce, not that abusive spouses always end up divorced. Far from it. Yet safety within the marriage is certainly a condition or object. Abuse may not be an express biblical ground for divorce but a ground that one might readily imply from the express grounds of adultery and abandonment. Beatings can look and feel like betrayal and abandonment. Yet spouses should also expect one another’s reasonable protection from harm by others. The spouse who trafficks the other spouse or whose drug deals in the home expose the other spouse to sexual assault certainly hasn’t shown due devotion. Marital devotion and commitment strongly imply physical security and safety. No getting around it. Indeed, routinely expect safety, always vigorously provide it, and uniformly and firmly require it from your spouse.
Formalities
Decision, consummation, devotion, commitment, and care are all marriage attributes. You can hardly claim or maintain a marriage without them. The law adds a few other formalities, each of which can make a critical difference in certain cases. The spouses must be of legal age to marry, which is typically eighteen years old. Some states permit a younger legal age with parental consent. The spouses must also be unmarried. No bigamy involving multiple spouses at one time. The spouses must also have the mental capacity to understand what they’re doing. It isn’t a marriage unless the spouses entering into it know it. The spouses must also freely consent, as already discussed. Marriage at the end of a shotgun or plank ain’t marriage. The spouses must also appear before a county clerk or other designated government official to obtain a marriage license, showing legal age and identification. Some states add a state or county residency requirement of from a few days up to several weeks or months. Finally, the spouses must hold a solemnizing religious or civil ceremony before an authorized officiant such as a minister, judge, or boat captain.
Solemnizing
The law’s solemnizing requirement shows that marriage involves more than legalities. Solemnizing confirms marriage’s social, cultural, and spiritual aspects, each referenced in the ceremony. The social and cultural attributes of marriage are hugely important. Marriages exist with the generous support of society, as society depends on the institution of marriage. Hence, we typically marry before family and friends, all called to speak up if they have any objections, when none dare do so. Marriages also depend on the interpretation and customs of culture, just as marriages convey and influence culture. We thus have rich cultural traditions surrounding marriage. Solemnizing also typically incorporates and even makes prominent marriage’s spiritual element, captured succinctly in the biblical injunction to let no one divide what God has joined together, for the two have become one. Marriage is perhaps the deepest union we can experience within our own realm, reminded by the ceremony’s traditional call that only on death, not with riches or poverty, should spouses part.
Common
It may seem peculiar, then, that some states recognize common-law marriage. Common-law marriages are actually not that common, given the few states, about eight, that any longer sanction them. Yet common-law marriages do have something common about them, in a slightly different sense of that word, meaning not numerous but instead ordinary or practical. In a common-law marriage, the spouses have not met the above statutory requirements. They held no ceremony before a recognized officiant and didn’t even seek a marriage license. Yet if, in one of the few states still sanctioning common-law marriage, they met the state’s requirements for a common-law marriage, then they’re married. The typical requirements are that the couple (1) cohabit with consummating intimacy, (2) hold publicly that they are married, and (3) simultaneously intend and assume their marriage. Checking into a hotel in a common-law-marriage state for a little intimacy, while signing the registry as husband and wife, and intending marriage, satisfies the traditional requirements. All three requirements must come together simultaneously. And the acts and intention must occur in one of the few states recognizing common-law marriage. If you’re unsure whether you are legally married or not after the common-law fashion, either get the license and go through the ceremony, or consult a lawyer. I’ve litigated exactly such a dispute, the woman claiming common-law marriage after the man kicked her out of the house. Don’t kick your spouse out, and don’t leave any question about your marriage.
Reflection
What would you say a marriage is? Who, as in parents, friends, mentors, speakers, pastors, philosophers, artists, or authors, most influenced your beliefs about marriage? What, as in family events, life events, customs, traditions, culture, or scripture, most influenced you in those beliefs? Did your marriage involve your fully informed and voluntary consent? Should you have disclosed things to your fiancé that you did not disclose that may have deceived your fiancé to enter into the marriage? Did your fiancé fail to disclose something to you? If so, how has that issue affected your marriage, and what might you do to address and correct those effects, in the path of confession, apology, and forgiveness? Is your marriage based on an intimate, lifelong commitment to one another’s care, safety, and security? Did your marriage ceremony adequately reflect and celebrate that commitment? Does your marriage need or could it benefit from your recommitting in some fashion, whether formally or informally?
Key Points
Having a good marriage can take understanding what a marriage is.
A sound marriage depends on a voluntary decision to enter it.
A sound marriage depends on informed consent without deception.
Marriage has objects or purposes the parties should expect to attain.
Marriage assumes consummation, referring to intimacy.
Marriage includes devotion, referring to exclusive intimacy.
Marriage requires a commitment to lifelong and mutual care.
Marriage assumes safety with one another and against others.
Legal marriage requires legal age, license, ceremony, and monogamy.
The ceremony solemnizes social, cultural, and spiritual aspects.
Common-law marriage in a few states dispenses with formalities.