Marriage Limits Us

Maggie and I were married fifteen years ago today. After the ceremony in the beautiful stone chapel on our college campus, we receded down the aisle and into the muggy night air. The Blue Ridge Mountains – so beautiful  in that western corner of North Carolina – guided our pick up truck and twenty-one year old bodies away from the friends and family who’d gathered to bear witness. We drove into the dark night, toward something new.

All these years later it’s hard to remember what we thought we were moving toward, but I’m sure we imagined more. Somewhere wrapped within our expectations and desires was the sense that marriage opened doors and expanded horizons. And in so many ways it has. On Monday evening I tossed fresh asparagus in  olive oil and reminded Maggie that she’s responsible for my much expanded palate. Too trivial? Well then, you must not understand the sacramental goodness of springtime vegetables- but I’ll indulge your skepticism nonetheless. How about this? I care more about people than I did before marriage. My wife delights in people. If you take photos on your vacation, she will be genuinely interested in seeing the pictures and hearing your stories. You get the idea. And over these fifteen years her interest in friends and neighbors has begun to capture my own, more introverted affections.

But what we couldn’t have expected, not with any imaginative clarity at least, was how we’d each be limited by marriage. Such a grating word to our American ears, limited. But there it is, and there it’s been- a real part of our marriage. Simply, there are things she and I have not done and do not do because we are married to the other. This is partly practical. Take Maggie’s social nature for example. Though I’ve come a long way in enjoying the act of  hospitality, I’m still tired by it. And so we host less than Maggie would on her own. She knows fewer of our neighbors than she would had she remained single or married an extrovert.

But the limitations of marriage are more than practical. For us, and I suspect many others, marriage is a place of weakness. I imagine it must be similar to those who accept a monastic vocation in which they are bound in covenant to others. Such covenant relationship is sure to expose my weaknesses because I cannot walk away. I cannot leave. How much of what we perceive to be strength is just avoiding the people who bring out our worst? This isn’t possible for two people committed to moving into the deeper waters of trust and faithfulness. We remain with each other in our weakness and so we cannot deny that such weaknesses are a part of us. As the years pile up the vows we made in the chapel in front of the congregation begin to make more sense: an anchor is needed if we are to remain present and vulnerable despite the wounding potential of our weaknesses.

In all of this has been a gift that I wouldn’t trade for any American dream of a life without limits. Because, in the end, that dream is a delusion. To be human is to be limited, weak even. There’s no need to pile up examples of this- we bump into these parts of our humanity as often as we’re actually paying attention. But more than simply accepting reality, the limiting nature of marriage has shown me the flourishing that limits can nurture. Living within limits opens up possibilities of faithfulness and longevity. Remaining cognizant of my weaknesses gives the Christian practices of repentance and forgiveness an immediacy that slowly redeems.

Is such flourishing only available to the married? It’s a question that deserves a thoughtful answer but briefly, no. Like the married person, the single person will benefit from relationships that aren’t subject to transience. But unlike the married person – and I’m thinking here of Christians – the single person is free to pursue a vocation with a single-mindedness that will bring about its own encounters with limitations and weakness.

I’ve reached the concluding portion of this short essay where I should say sweet things about these fifteen years of marriage, but if you were paying attention earlier you’ll remember that I’m an introvert and so am not given to saying personal things publicly. But they have been and will again be said to the woman who stays with me and loves me in my weaknesses and despite my limits.