by Tyler Ward
Infatuation doesn’t lack virtue or purpose. It is a beautiful and powerful dynamic in a relationship. However, it’s our modern tendency to confuse this chemical reaction with being in love that can be damaging to our marriages.
Why? To begin, science has proven that the intensity of this neurochemical reaction doesn’t typically last longer than twenty-four months at a time.4 This “in-love” sensation ebbs and flows throughout a relationship. In the early stages, it fills a deep emotional need to be cared for and appreciated by another. But in time, the intensity of this chemical “high” inevitably fades.
The damage ensues when we closely associate this important but short-lived season of infatuation with true love—only to find ourselves two weeks, one year, or three anniversaries into marriage without the same butterflies we once felt. The trap is when we’re left to assume, as many have, that somewhere along the way we’ve fallen out of love, and perhaps are left questioning if our love was ever real in the first place.
By mistaking infatuation for real love, we’ve equated the defining reality of marriage as little more than an emotion we can take a hit of to get a twelve to eighteen month high. And somehow we still act shocked when 50 percent of people leave their relationships as the feelings fade in search of the next fix.5
We’ll take a closer look at this shortly, but let’s be clear. Our common understanding of being “in love” is often not the kind of “love” marriage was designed for.
The good news? The brand of love marriage was designed for is far better than being drunk on dopamine.
LOVE IS A JOURNEY—NOT A FREE FALL.
As products of an instantly gratified society, we are increasingly drawn to microwaving everything in life. We prefer our hamburger drive-thrus and our personalized Netflix queues. As we discussed in the last chapter, many of us come into marriage with a sense of entitlement, wanting what we want from this relationship for free. But there’s another common misconception many of us come strapped with to the altar. We tend to expect the benefits of marriage instantly as well.
But expecting everything at the click of a button hasn’t set us up well for true love.
I’ll be the first to admit that I brought this microwave mentality into marriage. It wasn’t that my motivations were wrong. I wanted a real companionship—fully loaded with emotional support—a safe and trusted friendship, and breathtaking sex. And as social research has shown us, all of these things are very real benefits of marriage.6 Where I went wrong is that I subconsciously expected all these benefits on day one.
Anyone who has experienced marriage knows that true companionship comes from years of conversation. A real emotional connection requires trust-building circumstances over time. And breathtaking sex? Well, it can take time to learn each other physically too.
Analee’s Point of View. I definitely had a few of these misconceptions coming into marriage. However, most of them were things that I assumed without realizing it. I assumed that easy capizzi would be the way of life for us. I assumed that Ty and I would have meaningful connected conversations all the time—the kind of oneness where the other person felt so safe and alive because we could practically read each other’s minds. Ha! Wrong-o!
Unfortunately, a microwave mentality seems to be a dime-a- dozen in modern marriages and is only perpetuated by the previously mentioned illusion of falling “in love” with our spouse. Our marital responsibilities then subtly become about little more than maintaining this state of love—and we’ve all seen where this rabbit hole can lead.
Inevitably the challenges of marriage come knocking, and because we think we’ve already “arrived” in love, any level of conflict can have a way of putting this love on trial.
Fortunately, this instant brand of love that you simply fall into is not what God had in mind when creating man and woman.
Gary Thomas spoke brilliantly about this when I interviewed him. “A good marriage isn’t something you find and fall into,” he said. “It’s something you make and remake many times over. See, in the Hollywood view of ‘falling in love,’ it’s all about finding the right person and then it’s supposed to be easy. Unfortunately, this idea ignores the fact that we become different people. It ignores the fact that we usually want different things out of life. It ignores the fact that really, about 80 percent of us are going to marry almost our exact opposite. It assumes that we’re static individuals and we’re not. Life changes. People get sick. Their parents die—that changes us. They get cancer—that changes us. They get fired—that changes us. They might succeed in their business far more than they imagined—that changes us. If we don’t pursue intimacy, we lose intimacy. I have to keep pursuing my wife or I’ll become a stranger to my wife.”7
So knowing all this, I asked, how can a person choose a spouse wisely or marry well? I loved Gary’s answer: “Marriage is not about finding ‘the One’ and falling in love. It’s about choosing one and, over time, becoming the ‘right couple’.”
Perhaps we can internalize this idea a bit better if we change our language—starting with this idea of oneness.
BECOMING ONE.
The Bible never seems to mention the idea of “falling in love.” It does talk, however, about the process of “becoming one.” It says (emphasis mine), “A man [leaves] his father and his mother, and shall cleave unto his wife: and they shall be one flesh.”8 As practical as this seems, many scholars believe that this process of becoming one is far more than a wedding, moving in together, and merging bank accounts. The reference actually speaks to a spiritual, emotional, and material journey of two people learning how to love each other and integrate their lives together. As we look closer, we’ll find that this simple verse happens to capture a beautiful picture of a marriage worth fighting for.
Throughout history, many have studied this journey of two becoming one. My favorite take on this comes from Mary Anne McPherson Oliver in her book Conjugal Spirituality. She explains, “The joint life of a couple [is built] throughout three stages that aren’t strictly chronological, but are ongoing and alternating aspects of [two becoming one].”9 Let’s take a look at the different stages.
1. The Leaving Stage: Creating a New Reality
British novelist and fellow Inklings member Charles Williams calls this early stage of marriage “a mutual invasion, where both selves are broken down so they can be transformed by the love they both receive.”10 Emile Durkheim, the father of modern sociology, suggests similarly that this stage is “a dramatic act, in which two strangers come together and match differing definitions of reality.”11
Most people associate this stage of “leaving” with the departure from one’s family of origin in order to begin a new family. This is certainly part of the leaving stage, but only the beginning.
The initial stage of marriage—that can last up to fourteen years—is entirely about learning how to merge two separate realities to create a new one, both internally and externally.12 And this means more than changing last names and zip codes. Throughout these years, every aspect of each individual’s reality will be reevaluated.
There’s no question that this is the most unnatural and challenging stage of becoming one. The forming of a new reality means letting go of our former one—whether we want to or not. This process requires both parties developing the maturity over time to negotiate a reality that both are excited to live in.
Even on a basic biological level, it takes the brain ten to fifteen years to change its previously developed neurological tracks or patterns of thinking.13 This process, called neuroplasticity, helps explain why the first few years of becoming one can feel incredibly unnatural. Sadly, many of those who choose to divorce in this stage don’t actually give themselves a chance to experience the real payoff in marriage.
This season of leaving requires that we learn—through trial and error—how to communicate with one another and channel the long-forgotten virtue of patience.14 However, such patience is not without payoff. In the midst of this w
restling into a new reality, we are given a beautiful hope: if we stay loyal to the everyday choices to love our spouse, we can create a culture, a new reality, in our marriages where the wild benefits of true love do exist.
2. The Cleaving Stage: Life as Partnership
Life is scientifically defined as the ability to produce new cells, but it is just as important to structure those cells inside a functional system.15 This second season of marriage is all about focusing this new reality and the discoveries of the leaving season to optimize a couple’s partnership in life together.
“Renunciation and creation are supplemented by the courage to continue widening the self, the curious probing to understand the spark of Divinity in the other, and patient prioritizing to maintain the equilibrium which has been achieved,”16 Oliver says. In other words, this season is all about using life to grow closer and using your closeness to succeed in life.
This involves learning how to keep a connection with one another while incorporating and harmonizing the daily rhythms of each other’s career, family, and life responsibilities. Because of this season’s demand for perseverance and diligence, couples can find themselves disconnected during these years if they don’t remain intentional.
A conversation I recently had with Ray Ortlund, a brilliant pastor and a husband married for over forty years, seems to capture the virtue of this stage of marriage well.
“My wife was given to me to enrich me,” he said, “to make me wiser, a better man, a better professional, and a better father … Once I stopped being so stubborn and learned to use our relationship and her voice as the asset that it is, everything changed.”17
According to Ray, as well as many sociological studies, the payoffs in this season are spiritual, relational, sociological, and economic.
3. The Oneness Stage: A Celebration
The road to oneness is long and not always easy, but the outcome is something to be celebrated. Oliver explains, “As two mature individuals turn obstacles into trampolines and continue in mutual conquest and surrender, an easy and real creative union of mind, body and heart will take place.”18
“As love grows older,” says Chinese-American “Artist of Life” Bruce Lee, “our hearts mature and our love becomes as coals, deep-burning and unquenchable.” In this season, couples enjoy “comfortable companionship and mutual affirmation,” as Oliver describes it.19
The Bible also offers another portrait of oneness worth celebrating. In the context of the Trinity—the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit—oneness simply means living in perpetual celebration of one another. This is the goal of marriage as well. Imagine a lifestyle of deep celebration of each other—despite both of your dysfunction, wounds, and blind spots.
It is within this celebration of one another that our greatest human potential emerges. In the presence of this kind of love, we’re given the chance to become the best versions of ourselves for the world.
MICROWAVES ARE FOR DINNERS.
This journey into oneness speaks to a simple idea that dramatically confronts our modern instant brand of love. The beautiful truth is that Analee and I weren’t celebrating our arrival into love on our wedding day. We were simply—and profoundly—committing to a lifelong journey to become one by choosing to love each other.
Being “in love” isn’t an instant destination we find while dating. Love isn’t something we happen to stumble into—it’s far more active and powerful than that. Being “in love” is a new reality of oneness in our marriages formed through a pilgrimage of everyday choices to put each other first. Such a dramatic new reality takes time, diligence, and plenty of patience to create.
But then again, that’s a relational reality worth fighting for.
My friend Jared Black recently told me a story that captures the problem with a microwave marriage.20
He and his wife, Stephanie, were visiting with a group of new friends. In their introductions, Jared casually mentioned that he and Stephanie had been married for five years. Without missing a beat, one woman shot back in her Southern drawl, “Five years of marriage? It’s like y’all are in kindergarten!”
It was an awkward comment, but the truth behind it deeply impacted Jared’s perspective. In retelling the story to me, he reflected, “Until that moment, I had never considered marriage—our marriage—through the lens of a developmental cycle. I guess I had somehow just assumed that marriage was an event that happened on a specific date, in a specific year. As far as I was concerned, I was married … end of story. However, the thought of a kindergartener—full of potential, full of questions, and a developing future, not to mention all the tantrums, immaturity, and poor communication—seemed to be a better description of what my wife and I had been experiencing from day to day.”
According to Jared, this simple offhand comment put his first four years of marriage into clearer focus. Of course he and Stephanie struggled to communicate and make decisions together—they were just beginners at this crazy thing called marriage!
Jared continued, “Being able to view our marriage during those times as if we were, say, a three-year-old child helped ease the pressure of supposedly knowing how to be married. A three-year-old can’t be expected to act and communicate like an adult. So why would we, a newly married, three-year-old couple know any better?”
His story was liberating to Analee and me as well, allowing us some extra grace for the “leaving” stage of our marriage that we are currently navigating. Yes, the hope for a kindergartener is to grow out of the immaturity of vying for attention, temper tantrums, and selfishness, to become a fully functioning, mature, capable adult. But that doesn’t mean we expect them to act like an adult today, either.
I love how Jared described this tension: “Marriage isn’t something we accomplished the day we said ‘I do.’ It is an ongoing action discovered with our spouses—a development cycle. The day of marriage simply creates a brand-new infant couple, pledging to learn the art of marrying their individual lives into one combined, maturing life together.”
As Jared suggests, let’s abandon our microwave mentalities. Let’s give our marriages (and spouses) a break—since we know we’re all still three-year-olds throwing tantrums and barely able to dress ourselves. Instead of demanding all the promised perks of marriage today, let’s consider that oneness is a beautiful, but long journey together.
Now for the practical. Here are a few suggestions I’ve found helpful in curbing my tendency to microwave my marriage.
LEARN THE ART OF CONVERSATION
“A happy marriage is a long conversation that always seems too short.”—Andre Maurois
Ray and Jani Ortlund have been married for forty-two years. As I sat across a burger and a sweet tea from Ray, I asked what his favorite thing about their marriage was now, as opposed to the first thirty years. His answer was beautiful: “Our relationship is one constant and flowing conversation where no walls or inhibitions exist.”
In a society where an “inability to communicate” is commonly cited as a reason of divorce, conversation with your spouse is a lost art.
Yet, according to most experts, the early stages of marriage are built on a couple’s ability to communicate and relate to one another—verbally and nonverbally.21 “And even when talk may seem like the most natural thing in the world,” Mary Anne McPherson Oliver says, “using it to create long-lasting intimacy is not natural or simple … The couple must develop skills.”22
Analee and I are right in the middle of learning this art of conversation together. And though the art of conversation has not come easy for us, there have been a few invaluable best practices we’ve come across—each one having proved well worth experimenting with.
1. Drive-thru conversations
“Being listened to,” as Mennonite pastor David Augsburger says, “is so close to being loved that most people cannot tell the difference.”23 Yet more often than not, listening is more an act of waiting for our chance to be heard. This can keep us running in circles while talkin
g “at” our spouse and not landing anywhere by talking “with” them.
In his book Making Love Last Forever, Gary Smalley introduces an exercise called drive-thru conversations that has helped Analee and me significantly.24 It goes like this.
Spouse #1 shares his or her mind. Once the appropriate time comes for Spouse #2 to respond, Spouse #2 paraphrases what Spouse #1 has just said, gives Spouse #1 the chance to confirm or correct, then finally, Spouse #2 responds.
This simple tool has several layers. It demands that both parties actively listen, which keeps them from being too quick to speak. It also leaves little room for applying your own assumptions to your spouse’s words and so triggering a misunderstanding. But perhaps most valuable is the way it slows a conversation to a pace where you’re more likely to actually hear what your spouse is saying and less likely to butt in with something you’re guaranteed to regret.
2. Write a new language
Often couples enter marriage with two radically different vocabularies. A word or gesture that means one thing to one of you might carry an entirely different connotation for the other.
Analee and I decided that one of the better uses of our funds early in marriage would be to consistently go to marriage counseling throughout our first few years together. Counseling gave us a lot of priceless tools for our relationship, none more valuable than a common language to avoid many of the emotional mishaps that so often get lost in translation.
Analee’s Point of View. If I could say one thing to newlyweds or people who are interested in improving their marriage, it would be to invest in counseling or inner healing as a couple. We have so many hurts from childhood and past relationships that we don’t even realize alter our actions and reactions—and hinder our vulnerability and the giving and receiving of love. Our commitment to going to counseling every two weeks in the first year of marriage was the best thing we spent our time and money on. The other thing that radically changed our relationship when things were hard was an inner-healing week called Restoring the Foundations. We spent a week discovering wounds in our hearts that were holding us back, learning to forgive each other and ourselves, and recommitting our promise to love each other well and maintain a healthy heart. We still, to this day, revisit the lessons we learned and materials we got there. Priceless!
