Ben had met the perfect girl. Well, woman. They were both in their twenties, pretty much the same age. As he got to know her, the clear sense grew on Ben that he’d never meet another woman more suited for him to marry. Indeed, the idea loomed that if he didn’t soon propose to her, she’d wander off to marry another man, and he’d have lost his one perfect soulmate for life. Ben kept silently going down the checklist of everything he could ever hope for in a wife, and she met every one of his points, while adding a few more of her own to the list. And yet, something held Ben back, and he soon realized what it was: he had no real idea why he should marry, not just this girl, but anyone.
Deciding
You can see from the prior chapter that deciding to marry is a necessary precondition to marriage itself. Marriage, after all, involves a voluntary decision to join another in holy matrimony. The ancient tradition in many cultures of the parents arranging the marriage of their children, with or without their consent, and with or without a third-party matchmaker, is rare in modern America, although still widespread elsewhere. Here, you get to decide, which means you don’t have to marry. You might get to marry, although you might not, depending on peculiar factors like the availability of a willing candidate and one’s own health, age, and mortality. We married two dating law students at my law school when one of them developed a fatal brain tumor. He died a month after the wedding, as they both expected. But marriage was that important to them. As long as you have breath and a willing candidate, you may get to decide to marry. Congratulations to you, if so.
Timing
The time to decide whether to marry is an issue in itself. Some of us make the decision to marry well before finding the candidate. You’ve probably known someone like that, perhaps looking forward to marrying even when still a child. Making an early decision to marry relieves the doubt and suspense, although both doubt and suspense may be an important part of the process. The time to decide whether to marry may not be until you’ve found the person whom you believe to be the right candidate. Until then, it’s only guesswork. The decision to marry and the decision of whom to marry may go best hand in hand. Deciding to marry without having a candidate available can be hard. Imagine going around for years having firmly decided to marry but not finding anyone suitable to whom to propose or likely to accept the proposal. But suddenly finding the perfect candidate to marry without having given any thought to marriage, or suddenly receiving an unexpected marriage proposal without any such prior thought on the subject, can leave one badly unprepared and confused. To at least know good reasons to marry or not to marry can help with navigating proposals or proposal opportunities.
Dating
Indeed, a good part of the whole dating phenomenon often has to do with the process of deciding whether to marry. Of course, folks can date for a lot of reasons, including when they have no intention whatsoever of marrying anyone, not even prince or princess charming. But dating generally implies availability for marriage, even if not necessarily interest in marriage. And to some, dating is only a testing ground for potential marriage, holding no other purpose or attraction. Some date only because they feel that they must in order to find a suitable marriage candidate. In that view, dating can have two roles, both in helping one or the other party decide how they feel about marriage in general and how they feel about this candidate in particular. Don’t lead anyone on. But dating in general can certainly give you some hints about whether you’re ready to marry, and whether to marry the person you’re dating or just to marry at all, if the person you’re dating isn’t interested in marriage or you’re not interested in marrying the person you’re dating. For better or worse, and generally for better, dating can be a proving ground for whether to marry.
Criteria
But back up for a minute to think again about the criteria one might use to decide whether to marry. Consider again the meaning, purpose, goals, and functions of marriage. Do you wish to care for another person more deeply, continuously, and sacrificially than you’ve ever cared for anyone in your life, even yourself? Do you wish to have and raise children to likewise love them in the creator’s spirit? Would your life be more safe, secure, full, and generous in a household of two rather than one? Do you have the outward-looking, other-centered character and genial personality that building and sustaining a long-term, devoted relationship takes? Or are you instead self-centered, selfish, hedonistic, and narcissistic, if someone with those unfortunate characteristics could even recognize and admit it? Do you have the physical and mental capability of caring for another, or the humility to accept and nurture another’s gracious care? Are you ready, willing, and able to provide materially and emotionally for another? And are you ready to see that the trajectory and particular course on which your marriage would take you, inevitably different than your own alone, would be better for you, your spouse, and the world than your pursuit of your own aims? These questions highlight a few of the main criteria you might consider for whether you should marry.
Sacrifice
You can see how several of the above questions focus on the personal sacrifices your decision to marry would necessarily require. That is not at all to say that you would do less well marrying than remaining single, overall. But marriage inevitably requires doing some things, and indeed many things, that you wouldn’t do alone. Again, not less valuable or worthy things, but certainly different things than those you might alone prefer. A marriage doesn’t require you to give up all your own things, say, for instance hobbies or recreations you enjoy, music you like to hear, books you prefer to read, or films and shows you prefer to watch. Your marriage wouldn’t be healthy if you had to give up every personal preference. But you’ll need to at least modify a few preferences. If you’re dead set against doing so, then you’re not likely ready to marry. And you may at critical times and junctures, such as the serious illness or injury of your spouse, need to give up many personal habits, practices, or preferences, and make major modifications to your life choices and preferred course. Again, not that doing so would be bad for you. Major changes and realignments could be necessary, fruitful, fulfilling, and beneficial, even enormously gratifying. Just be as sure as you can that you’re up to it. Would you give your life for your spouse? It’s a good question to ask because in some respect, all who marry figuratively do, and some who marry literally do.
Gain
Of course, a good marriage brings more gain than loss, if one insists on counting sacrifice at least to some degree as a loss. The potential gains from a marriage are frankly huge. Count among them assured familiar intimacy, continuous committed companionship, mutual consistent care, complementary talents, pooled earnings, and shared costs. Include the gain of a new set of parents and siblings in law, and the prospect for children and grandchildren. Count the benefit of having someone care and provide for you when you’re sick or injured, celebrate with you over successes, and console you in your losses. And count the sanity-restoring benefit of seeing the world through your spouse’s eyes, when you’re not seeing the world right. You might well also count the equivalent sacrifices that you make for your spouse as gains, given that giving is better than receiving. Many of us just wish to have another person for whom to care, more so than to have another person to care for us.
Loss
Yet pause for a moment to take off the rose-colored glasses. The apostle Paul wasn’t kidding when he said it is good to remain unmarried if you can quell the passions, although he surely meant good in the sense of attending more fully to the Lord. The possibility exists that a spouse would distract one from even higher things, even though a marriage is a very high thing. Religious vows of chastity reflect exactly that insight. And every marriage has its days when a spouse is not doing particularly well, even not behaving rationally in their own self-interest. Spouses can do some awful things, both inside and outside the marriage. Is it good to have married a spouse who ends up in prison for one of those things? The question of a despicable spouse may involve more whom you choose to marry, not whether you marry. But again, we all have our bad days. And plenty of us can have bad times that stretch into bad seasons and even bad decades. Behaving poorly affects one’s spouse. So-called bad marriages definitely exist. No one marries for unhappiness, but if you decide to marry, acknowledge that one of those poorer marriages could potentially be in the offing. Count your blessings if that doesn’t happen to you, and choose your spouse carefully with the possibility in mind.
History
Your family history and other experiences are likely influencing your view of marriage and decision whether to marry. If your parents had wedded bliss, you may have a very positive view of marriage and its potential. If, on the other hand, your parents had a difficult or disastrous marriage, you may have a negative view. The point is not to let one marriage, whether good or bad, and whether close to you or far from you, too greatly influence your view of marriage. Don’t, for instance, let bitterness over your parents’ divorce have you assume that your own marriage would likewise be an unsuccessful one. And vice versa: don’t let your parents’ blissful marriage paint too rosy of a picture of marriage for you. Understand what marriage can entail and does entail. Deciding to marry can be an absolutely wonderful thing. Deciding naively to marry, though, can be a disabling or even dangerous thing. Naivete in seeking and entering a marriage can lead to a poorly timed or poorly made decision and even, at worst, deception, manipulation, and loss.
Analysis
The above discussion first considered criteria for whether to marry, then considered the potential sacrifice followed by the potential gains and losses. If that sounds like making two lists, one of disadvantages and the other of advantages, then so be it. Analyzing whether marriage is right for you is fair game. You can learn a lot about yourself and about the question of marriage by giving it brute thought. Your pros and cons may differ from anyone else’s own peculiar circumstances. You may have something about your character or circumstances, permanently or just for the current moment or season, that makes marriage a poor bet and worse promise. Timing can mean a lot. If you analyze things based on the above criteria or other factors you discern, and now seems not the time to marry, then don’t plan to do so.
Intuition
On the other hand, plans are one thing, while opportunities, fortuities, providence, and intuition are other things. Your health, character, education, job, money, or other big factors may be telling you no, don’t do it! But plenty of happily married couples started their marriage at a highly inopportune time, such as when one or the other was departing for military service, entering graduate school, beginning cancer treatment, or filing for bankruptcy. Analyze as you can. Give marriage good thought. But don’t place analysis above calling or intuition. You don’t have to decide whether to marry based on analysis of the pros and cons. We may in any case use our reason more to justify our intuition than the other way around. Intuition can be a more perceptive sense than reason. You may not want to overthink whether or not to marry. You may instead want to let your whole mind and person sense things that you cannot put into words to manipulate. You may want and need to feel your way toward or away from marriage more than to reason your way into or out of it.
Counterpart
So, what’s your guidestar for this complex mix of rationales, reasons, and motivations toward or away from marriage? The book of Genesis offers a particularly resonant and informative construct for marriage. Of course Genesis would do so because the spirit authoring that account of the world gives the world its pattern, structure, and resonance. In the Genesis creation account, the creator finds it not good that man is alone. Rather than bring another man to life for company, though, the creator instead brings to life a strangely complementary or counterpart being, a woman. The directly related descriptors man and woman, in the original Hebrew the same word in masculine and feminine forms, reflect that same image or corporeality but in its gendered duality. Peculiarly, the passage describes the relationship of the two, man and woman, as one of their being either with or against one another, or both. This institution of marriage, or the relationship of husband to wife in marriage, suggests all at once useful companions and useful counterparts, or even useful opposition or contention. Marriages thus don’t necessarily work best in perfect compatibility but instead in a strangely perfect incompatibility, meaning just enough difference to make each spouse complete within the marriage. If that’s what you see in the person you’re dating, then maybe they’re the one for you. If so, help them see the same gift in you.
Reflection
If you’re already married, how did you go about deciding whether to marry? Did dating help you decide? If you’re not yet married, what have you decided and how did you approach that decision? What were your biggest reasons to marry or not to marry? Or are you waiting for the candidate to appear? Are you dating to find out how you feel about marriage? Is marriage a question of gain outweighing loss, or of benefit outweighing risk? Or is marriage to you more a rite of passage to embrace or a blessed sacrament to pursue? How has your family history or personal experience influenced your view of marriage? How do you view a spouse, as a companion, counterpart, convenience, competitor, or something else? What is the right view of your spouse, the highest view that elevates your spouse, you, and your marriage? What is your intuition about marriage, and what do you feel is influencing it?
Key Points
Marriage requires making a decision on some intuition or rationale.
The decision to marry can come with the candidate or well before.
Dating can help one decide whether one is ready for marriage.
Criteria whether to marry can include character and circumstances.
Marriage involves healthy sacrifice or prioritizing of personal interest.
Marriage can involve both personal gain and loss.
Family history or other experiences influence the decision to marry.
You can analyze whether to marry or instead follow your intuition.
A spouse can be a companion, complement, and counterpart.