These past 2-3 months, my good friend of 34 years has been living through the rapid - in fact, accelerating - implosion of his marriage of 40 years and 4 children.
Saddest of all, it seems to be moving fast in the direction of a fairly punitive divorce. A divorce he's done nothing to contest. A complicating factor is that they're both evangelical Christians, who have been attending the same church for decades, and who share roughly the same views on theology and politics. To paraphrase Bernard Shaw, here are two very different people divided by a common religion. Neither does it help, in getting a grasp of the broader situation, that she is a pillar of the church: esteemed, respected, admired, listened to, confided in, sided with, by almost everybody. Plus she's also my friend.
So I tried to explore with her, in a recent conversation, how he might over the years have been unduly critical, or what might have been his more unreasonable demands and expectations. And I think she made it pretty clear that there were none. At all events, he wasn't channeling, or siphoning, or stifling their marriage in a way that made it harder and harder for her to be herself. No, again and again she made clear that the real sticking-point was not any demands he made on her. Rather it was his non-compliance - or more often, imperfectly willing, or imperfectly affectionate compliance - with what, surely, any serious Christian would have considered minor and reasonable requests for favors. And these, yes, in addition to any shared household chores he likely had already completed; but again, utterly reasonable in nature. And yet for some reason he persisted in feeling, and reacting, as though he was being nagged and hounded, whenever these issues came up. And kept telling her: "Stop treating me like a child." Her reply: "But you are a child."
When I asked her what he seemed most to expect from her, or from their relationship, apart from those moments, passages and periods of real warmth and affection where they genuinely seemed to understand each other (and when all his duly appointed tasks had been completed), her answer was: "To be left alone."
Lately it seems to me that, at least here in America, a lot of married people expect from their spouses a strange and distinct kind of perfection. A standard that, however limited it may be in its particular sphere and range of expectations - say, household chores, emotional attentiveness, responsiveness, mind-reading, mood-gauging, etc - is nonetheless very exact, and exacting. The assumption seems be that one's spouse, while not exactly a god (except maybe of his/her own personal and immediate perimeter), is nonetheless a radically free agent with regard to two key areas:
1) all moral endeavor they undertake - or are asked to undertake - and
2) all moral outcome.
In other words, within this limited sphere of defined expectation ("Gosh, ALL I was asking was . . ."), spouses are fully capable of being every bit as good - as appropriate, sensitive, responsive, reinforcing, completing, etc - as they want to be. With no margin for failure. Because, after all, they have absolute control over themselves. And therefore can safely be considered the gods of themselves. Such that in the event they fall short, it can only be because they've been either not trying, or trying not nearly hard enough. Thankfully WE, being (at least by comparison) the perfect husband or wife, are always on hand to help. Better yet, our help is essential to their grasp of their duties, for a huge variety of reasons. But especially given that we've already been applying ourselves so rigorously, and thoroughly, not just to framing the standard of excellence we've set for them, but to living it, weighing and measuring and judging ourselves by it. To the point where by now it practically breathes through every pore. Why on earth, then, should anyone - and least of all our spouses - be so ungrateful, so mean-spirited, so distrusting of US (of all good people) as to refuse our help?
After all, we're only doing the best we can.
Yet surely the proverbial fact remains: the race isn't ALWAYS to the most swift. Nor even to the most morally certain and sure. Worse yet, sometimes the result obtained isn't even directly proportionate to the effort expended. Or to the exertion and strain and heroism of that effort. Or, worst of all, even to your own self-consciousness, as it were, of how much you're really trying to do your best, to be the idealest imaginable husband or wife. Sometimes the BEST result - the best anyone could ever have wished for or imagined - is proportioned most directly, not to the fury of your fretting and striving, but to the patience and quietude, the attentiveness and heedfulness with which you consider the limited creature in front of you. In short, sometimes you achieve your best results by understanding first the nature, the needs, maybe even the yearnings?, of the one you're trying to change. Rather than by treating him or her as someone almost incidental, or experimental, to what may be the real project at hand: i.e, your use of your spouse as a gauge, as it were, by which to measure the moral worth or progress, or moral perfection of the story's real hero - namely, You the Changer. Almost as if You, and your Moral Integrity, were the fount from which all other good flowed; so that any good coming even from God must pass through you. Or indeed, as if striving to "be perfect" yourself were always the best way of helping someone else attain perfection. Whereas there may, in fact, be times when even husbands and wives don't need a strenuous moral exemplar, much less preceptor. Sometimes all they may need is someone to listen, and observe, or even simply pray. And in any case, always trustfully and expectantly, resting in the knowledge of that One who alone can perfect any of us with fulness of wisdom and love, and not just abundance of urgency, or zeal, or expertise.
It's a rule, I'm told, that has been known to apply even to marriages of 30, 40 or 50 years. Because after all, what is it you're really trying to achieve, with your husband or your wife? And how will you know when success has been reached? If ever?p Most importantly, is it chiefly your own moral integrity that you've been called by God to secure, demonstrate, vindicate? Or rather, is it the real spiritual growth, maturity and happiness of your spouse? I.e., that same one whom (presumably) you've been doing your very best to love and be patient with, and pray for?