Marriage sucks!

Dear all, this letter is about the dark side of marriage. I have dealt with many married couples over the years. Most of the experiences have been largely positive and encouraging. But marriage is no piece of wedding cake. It is a trial of many trials, to put it a bit dramatically.

Let me be clear. This trial is not the predictable external circumstances that a typical couple face like a surprised tragedy in the family or a series of financial crisis. No, the trials we talked about are more personal. Those trials are closer to our hearts. They have to do with our attitude towards our marriage. So please pardon me if this letter appears a tad too negative. If at any point you find that what is written grates at your good sense, please bear with me.

Let me open the "pandora's box" with this statement: Your greatest life's trial may be your marriage. I mean, if there is a fiery furnace of character building, to test your true form to the extreme, all your basic relationships will not be spared, especially, your marriage, where the biblical two practically becomes one life. And believe you me, the marital merger is not going to be a pleasant one.

Imagine the years of emotional baggage, physical scars and mental prejudices all meld under one roof, and agitated, manifested and aggravated on a daily basis. Surely, this union of two, under the auspices of an institution called marriage, will cause more than just personal inconveniences and emotional friction.

 I think the irony of marriage is sardonically captured in this definition penned by a famous author, John Eldredge, who describes it as such:-  "Two guarded people managing their disappointments, negotiating for better terms through a demilitarized zone they call marriage".

So, let's not have any delusions about the marriage vows. It is very much a declaration of love as it is a declaration of a mutually-agreed "bondage" for life; where dizzily love-struck couples never bother to read or fully understand the fine red print. But why "bondage"? Because, for those christians who treat the marital vows seriously and solemnly, the admonishment of the Lord to prophet Malachi is scary enough. God once told Malachi pithily and without any qualification, "I hate divorce." Biblically and ideally (maybe idyllically), marriage brooks no escape clause: once married, forever married. So, a crudely attention-grabbing word for it is "bondage".

What makes this lifelong union so difficult is the fact that you are required to fall in love with the same person, over and over again. Bluntly speaking, can you imagine having the same "porridge" for every meal for the next forty years or more? Or, let me stretch it with this scenario. Surely you don't expect your husband, after 5 years of marriage, to be rushing home from a hard day's work, and tearing off his fine cotton long sleeves like a wild beast (including throwing away your spatular and undoing your oily apron), in a relentless act to make hot passionate love with you - while being completely oblivious to the presence of your stunned children! Obviously, this requirement of falling in love with the same person calls for near-supernatural commitment and possibly divine intervention.

On this point, Samuel Richardson wrote fittingly, "the companion of an evening, and the companion for life, require very different qualification." The difference I guess is that it is often a picnic to spread your love and patience thickly over a short one-night date as compared to the same spread being generally threadbare, even non-existent, over a tedious lifetime.

Research shows that romantic attachment generally dies off after 18 months. This usually accounts for why many Hollywood marriages have very short life span. Imagine loving the same person for a lifetime. It is thus not just about growing old graciously alone but also growing old passionately together. Surely, even by the fleetest of time spans, a lifetime union is many times of 18 months. Minimally, one can expect a lifetime to be at least 30 years. That's the fine red print most sedated newly wed seem to overlook.

Well, i guess those affectionately-drugged couples had conveniently forgotten to factor the lifetime consideration into their dreamy love equation. Even the honeymoon is merely a fraction of that expected  long marital sentence. That's why, with wry humor, it is said that the most poisonous food in this world is none other than the wedding cake. Somehow, its property (cake) has managed to hoodwink couples into believing that their union would be different from the rest, that is, more resilient, more enduring, more loving as the years roll by. The truth is, it is just the same difference, that's all.

Many say that over-familiarity kills creativity and passion. When the ways and the appearance of your partner become too familiar over the enduring years, when nothing is fresh and exciting anymore, the passion also plateau. While marriage in its abstract form seems exciting, the reality is very different.

 I mean, who can fault the gathering of loved ones to celebrate love in its most pure, idealistic form. The wedding ceremony is where all fairy-tales come true, where well-wishing bubbles over like the never-ending flow of pot champagne, and where marital bliss conspires to anesthetize the couple from the "untold sufferings" that await them after the surreal honeymoon. For the helplessly unprepared, who rushed to the altar where even angels fear to tread, the "wedding afterlife" is usually seemed as a fraud of reality. That's why this observation rings so familiarly true, "Marriage is one thing where the anticipation of it is more fun than the actual event."

Beloved, make no mistake about it, marriage is fabulously hard. At times, it seems almost impossible. Take the life of one of the greatest preachers of all time for example, John Wesley. He is the Founder of Methodism.

Born in 1703, he was an amazing preacher, a prolific writer, and a compiler of 23 hymns.  He was an extraordinaire doctrinaire, whose extensive writings and expositions form the foundation of many church doctrines and theology. If there is a proverbial fisherman of christ who has inspired and captured many hearts through the casting of a wide theological net, John Wesley would fit the honorific title to a tee. But the same cannot said about his marriage, which pales in comparison.

At 48, he married Mary Vazeille, a widow with four children. Unlike his public ministry and writings, which can be said to be "made in heaven", his marriage is stitched together in a haphazard way by a woman whom many commentators believed to be of unsound mind!

History has adjudged the Wesley union as a failure with these words, "Mrs Wesley darkened thirty years of Wesley's life by her intolerable jealousy, her malicious and violent temper." Further, John Wesley, forever the optimist, repeatedly told Henry Moore that he "believed God overruled this prolonged sorrow for his own good; and that if Mrs Wesley had been a better wife, and had continued to act in that way in which she knew well how to act, he might have been unfaithful to his great work, and might have sought too much to please her according to her own desires."

As far as John Wesley is concerned, one could say that his wife was the "thorn in his flesh". And no matter how much faith a veritable man of God has, he was powerless to extricate himself from this God-given thorny affliction. I hope your marriage is not a mere fraction as bad as his.

Beloved, it is tempting to ask how much lashings from me can the good repute of marriage take? So far, the institution of marriage has taken a stark beating from my writings, which are skewed towards presenting it in its rawest, visceral and unvarnished form. Marriage costs a lot. It can cost everything. It is in fact a great leveler; the rich and the poor suffer the same fate under it's indiscriminate hand. In fact, your greatest misery or fortune depends on your marriage. That is why the saying goes like this: "the more a man loves, the more he suffers." And woman, vice versa.

What makes a marriage so darn difficult is that it is an institution vulnerable to widespread brokenness. First, there are the broken expectations. As mentioned earlier, when marriage disappoints, it really disappoints. All of us come into our marriages with different expectations. Especially due to our impressionable age, we are bursting at the seams with expectations. And these expectations are, without exception, mired with unrealistic demands.

In general, the self-biased optimism in us will naturally expect our spouse to  measure up to a long list of self-imagined virtues. It is not difficult to "measure up" at the start. At the wedding night and the honeymoon vacation, we are generally at our best performances, deserving of a few glitzy Oscars, including a few notables such as "Best Supporting" spouse, "Best Script" in communication, and the coveted "Best Actor" in a real-life drama. But as days turn to months, as novelty degenerates to familiarity, as temptation seizes us in all directions, our good performances start to crack to reveal our ugly sides. This is also where our expectations mutate to nightmares.

Then, there is broken communication. This is the clearest sign of a down-the-hill marriage. The causes for this is too multivariate for enumeration (simply put, too many causes for meaningful discussion). I cheekily call this brokenness "stranger danger". When two people drift apart, the relationship downgrades from being lovers to friends and then to strangers. If mutual contempt slithers in, the marriage crumbles to become that of mutual enemies. It is said that "love grows every time it is expressed". So, the opposite is ever so true that it bears reminding, "love waxes cold every time it is suppressed."

The next and last brokenness is broken trust and commitment. This sounds the death knell of a marriage. If your marriage reached this "ICU" stage, you may as well just pawn the wedding ring to recoup whatever that is worth salvaging (in jest, of course).

At this juncture, let me make this confession as a person who is quite familiar with divorces.  You are definitely free to differ in your personal view.

In brief, I believe more in a "happy divorce" than an "unhappy marriage". Before the "covenant keepers" cast the first stone at me, let me offer this in my defense. While I admire those who have stuck to their death with an unhappy marriage, John Wesley being such an exemplary character, I have personally witnessed a number of marriages that existed as a "razor-mutilating" mockery to true love and perseverance. To call such union a marriage is like calling david koresh or jeff warren a modern day messiah.

The failed unions I am referring to are hopelessly lop-sided with one partner acting like a tyrant while the other submits with paralyzing fear. A crude image that comes to mind is a mouse caught in a stranglehold of a python's grip. For the blissfully unaware, being constantly in the caressing arms of one's faithful lover, such twisted union does exist, even amongst Christian marriages.

Imagine marrying to a narcissistic self-lover, or a pathological liar. Or even a serial adulterer. Then, there are the less culpable but equally dastardly like the perpetually drunk and violent. Anyone of these perverted characters can drive the innocent spouse to his or her early grave or at least, to an abject misery most undeserved. It is therefore safe to conclude, except for a road-to-Damascus transformation, that most of them will never repent, change or make amends in their lifetime.

Am I being too judgmental? Well, may be. But between the folly of being too judgmental and the folly of being too idealistic, I guess I am more tilted to the former (judgmental) with this caveat in view of marriage:- unless it is for a higher purpose (the certainty of which will never be fully known), the victim of a seemingly hopeless marriage deserves better. I for one do not see a divorce as a christian taboo, especially if you are married to a "monster" of a partner. There is definitely life after divorce; even if the guilt lingers for a while.

So, the trick to a happy divorce is to come to a point of bold realization that the only thing that is worse than it is an unhappy marriage. Keeping that mental perspective in the balance, the next step is just a prayer away. The choice is for such a victim and such a victim alone to make and should be deeply respected regardless of what it is.

So, I have reached my tethered end of marital bashing. I will retire my hissing pen now and reflect a little about my own marriage; in particular, how Anna and I arrived at where we are, the scars of experiences we have accumulated, and the many more expected along this trying journey.

There are three broad lessons I have learned about not just keeping but protecting my marriage vows over the years. Firstly, I have given up trying to be Anna's Mr Perfect. Clearly, I am not and will never be. And I am sure Anna doesn't want to marry a Mr Perfect. John Eldredge once wrote that, "perfectionism is something you want in your tax adviser or your oncologist, but it is a horrible thing to be married to one."

However, this does not excuse me to be the best that I can be for her and she for me. If iron sharpens iron, with all the frictions and sparks flying amok, then we should not bow away from circumstances that are disguised as opportunity for individual and mutual  growth in a marriage. Instead of mr perfect, we should all strive to be "perfect-able". This would surely take the pressure off trying to be perfect.

 It is said that "in every marriage more than a week old, there are grounds for divorce. The trick is to find, and continue to find,  grounds for marriage." This is the first step in the long road of being "Mr Perfect-able". I have learned that choices make the crucial difference in a marriage. If I choose rightly, committing to make the marriage work, instead of finding ways to doom it, my marriage can grow in lockstep with this positive outlook. Of course, right choices are  easily made, even effortlessly, when your moods and spirits are up. How about the bad days?

Well, my second broad lesson is that pride is my greatest enemy. All bad days are still manageable or controllable if not for the intermeddling of my personal pride. Pride has many manifestations. The most insidious one is the refusal to admit one's mistake. I believe most marriages fail because couples refuse to take responsibility for it's failure. The blame is always on the other person.

Proverbs 28:13 hits the nail on it's stubborn head by stating, "a man who refuses to admit his mistake can never be successful." In this respect, there are in fact two kinds of people in this world: the clueless and the repentant. Sadly, I have many clients who were still clueless when their wives left them towing the children away. Surely there are some things that ignorance is a bliss; and a broken marriage is definitely not one of them.

What works for me is to constantly check my thoughts and actions, consciously measuring them against biblical standards and subjecting my personal pride in it's proper place. I know it's difficult at times but it is a worthy discipline that will bear fruits over the long run.

In my marriage, I always keep an open mind to be a student and a teachers as well. I understand my spouse can be my teacher and I can be her student. At other times, the role is reverse. The different academic  hats that Anna and I wear help us to humble ourselves before each other and to maintain a healthy level of mutual respect. I think the gift of marriage is the gift of friendship. And as Anna and I learn from each other, we become not just a couple, we become close friends.

The last lesson is quite personal and it is desiring to do our children proud. Every birthday, I ask myself, what should I give my kids that is meaningful, endearing and enduring. At this time, the usual children gifts immediately springs to mind. But I think, at the tail end of a long marital journey, the greatest gift is ourselves, our marriage, our resilient love against all forces that threaten to split us apart.

A gift like this is a legacy worth passing down because it is hard-fought, priceless and enduringly inspiring. This timely and touching tribute by the two sons of John and Stasi Eldredge says it all about the empowering value of such a gift and this is also a perfect way to close this letter to you guys: "Dad, Mom, we are gathered here to celebrate your twenty-fifth wedding anniversary, not because we have to or because we should, but because your marriage is worth celebrating. It has only been as we have got older that the impact your marriage has had on us really became clear. Standing here now we want to thank you both for being who you are, and for loving each other in a world where most parents don't. You gave us the opportunity to grow up in a loving home, with loving parents. This is amazing. St Augustine said, "Love is the beauty of the soul." You really are two beautiful people in love, and it is and has been such a gift to grow up knowing that is a possibility. So, not only do we congratulate you, we thank you."

For Anna and I, our marriage will indeed be our greatest gift to our children, and it is especially for them and with them in mind, that we will take the remaining years of our lives as a married couple to perfect this priceless gift we call marriage.