Ch. 10: Marriage Material

The Roles We Play, a Serial Memoir

The late marriage and sexuality expert, Dr. David Schnarch, once wrote: “Nobody’s ready for marriage—marriage makes you ready for marriage.”

Of course now, I totally get what Schnarch meant. There’s a vast difference between preparing for marriage and being ready for what your marriage will teach you. But by now you know the lengths I went, the miles I traveled in college, to prove a statement like his wrong. I was going to make myself positively ready for marriage—and I’d already solicited the writings of twenty men, and one woman, to help me do it.

But because I wasn’t yet married, because I couldn’t apply what I was reading to the happenings of my own home, it turned out that all I’d done was prepare myself for someone else’s marriage. I’d entered my household unconsciously expecting my husband to share the same untoward view of me that some authors seemed to have of their wives. I’d subconsciously expected that having a Christian marriage meant playing my part, in some ways, that my husband wanted me to play.

Getting married while studying marriage in seminary, then, is perhaps one of the most providential things that ever happened to me.

During my first fall semester, the same fall Evan and I got engaged, I took Family Systems Therapy, the bedrock of marriage and family counseling. I learned about Murray Bowen’s differentiation of self, which is, in small part, the ability to maintain your own thoughts, feelings, and identity while in close relationship with someone else. I discovered my own mediocre levels of differentiation from important others in my life. I worked to set boundaries and grow stronger in my sense of self in the context of planning our wedding.

The following spring semester, a few months before our wedding, I took another set of my favorite classes, first among them, Couples Counseling. The objectives of Couples Counseling were twofold: first, to understand the basics of two evidence-based couples therapies and second, to integrate Christian theological concepts into our understanding of healthy marriage relationships and subsequently, the competent counsel of other couples.

Studying these subjects for real proved enlightening, exciting, challenging, and humbling—setting the scene for all I would continue to learn, academically and experientially, in those next few years.

Based on my bookstore reading and traditional gender studies class at Focus on the Family, one might assume I’d chosen to study marriage at a seminary whose very first goal was to show me how male headship was derived from the Pauline passages and Trinitarian theology. Instead, I chose Asbury Theological Seminary, a conservative institution that, like my Church of God (Anderson) roots, was egalitarian in its theology of marriage and ministry; it held a faithful interpretation of Scripture and a rich tradition and practice of permitting men and women to lead, teach, preach, and pastor.

Even still, I was not super familiar with terms like complementarian and egalitarian. Most books I’d read up to that point (save for Recovering Biblical Manhood and Womanhood) may have had certain doctrinal leanings, but had largely eliminated doctrinal language to reach a wider Christian market audience. While unifying and edifying in theory (and profitable in practice) this softening of doctrinal language made the interpretational frameworks behind what was being taught about marriage unconscious to the reader.

So when my professor of Couples Counseling assigned the book, A Model for Marriage, by Drs. Jack and Judith Balswick, I was delighted, informed, enlightened, challenged, and uncomfortable with some of what I read.

The Balswicks argued for a social theology of marriage drawn from the relational nature of the Trinity. Between the three persons of the Trinity, they described mutuality, reciprocity, co-creativity, and perfect unity-without-absorption. They then proposed this kind of relating as a model for Christian marriage—if in fact, men and women are equitably created in the eternal image of God (instead of the temporary, temporal hierarchy of Father and Son when God became incarnate)—because as the authors wrote, “we believe there’s nothing as practical as good theology.”

A biblical, covenantal marriage, the authors proposed, is one where husbands and wives are mutual partners; roles are mutually agreed upon and mutually beneficial; communication is clear; and choices are made with love, freedom, self-sacrifice, and mutual submission. A biblical marriage dynamic is one that’s loving, serving, intimate, empowering, and full of the fruit of the Spirit. It’s one that exhibits the utmost respect for each person’s will, mind, body, and soul.

Where I’d previously been so set on not wearing the pants, like my Mom did, and so fixated on not competing for power with my husband, like the Christian feminists did, such a radical view of mutuality in marriage was mind-bending to me.

I can be married and retain my own will—and that doesn’t mean I’m selfish? Or less of a woman or Christian wife? I can be one with my husband without absorption—and that’s healthier than the glamorous, romantic one flesh reality I’ve been envisioning? I can continue listening to the Spirit inside me and find my identity in Christ—and that would actually be better for my marriage than depending on my husband for emotional and spiritual security?

And if all of these things are true, what does this mean for my expectations of Evan and of myself? What does this mean for my understanding of our roles and life goals in marriage?

The Trinitarian theology outlined in this book was so profound to my conceptualization of marriage that I underlined a good portion of the book and took notes all over the margins. I recorded my real-time thoughts and questions…

What social factors have increased our expectations [of marriage] so much?
Is that such a bad thing? What can it reveal?
What about the hierarchies of Father/Son, Christ/Church, Husband/Wife?
Why does Paul seem to prescribe the fall when he lays out hierarchy or headship?So what about Paul’s teaching then?
If Jesus, who had a unique will, submitted his will to the Father, what are the implications of this for marriage?
This is where refinement and sanctification come in.
Unity should not subdue the other.
I always thought the opposite of matriarchal power, patriarchal power, was ideal, but now I realize it’s equally destructive. What’s ideal then?

…my obsessive, pre-marriage reflections…

My goal in marriage.
Part of my vows.
How well do Evan and I understand this?
What we strive for.
I feel like we have this down.
We need to do this.
What does this look like for us?
I feel this sometimes with Evan.
Our goal.
Understand and identify my shame reaction to Evan.
I really need to incorporate this into my mental schema.
This is me to some extent.
This is so me.
Work through this.
Beware of.
Watch for.
Important distinction.
For the future.
This is what I long for.
I desire this.
This hasn’t hit me yet.
I want this—but I fear it too.
[Soft patriarchy is] probably more what I lean toward, but I don’t think Evan does.
Where does my emotional reactivity come from?
What is my motivation for yielding?
[I can see] my unwillingness to accept validation in Christ, in lieu of traditional models.

and perhaps most emblematic of all…

I don’t fully grasp this yet, but I want to.

A book to bridge the egalitarian/complementarian divide.

*There are two more sections in this chapter. If you want to start from the book’s beginning, chapter one is linked here or chapters 1-9 are listed here.

[Content below this line is reader-supported. For just $5/mo. or $2.50/mo. paid annually, you can upgrade to access full memoir chapters, comment on posts, and help support this project. Thanks for your readership and support!]