by Tyler Ward
As I grew older, I eventually traded my cowboy boots in for military ones and dreamt of one day serving in the Marine Corps. This eventually faded into hopes of becoming a rock star, then a church pastor, then a social entrepreneur. Yet my reason behind these vocational whims never changed: I wanted to do something meaningful. I wanted to live an extraordinary life.
No one dreams about being mediocre as a kid. We want to be firemen or astronauts or wealthy philanthropists. We all dream about doing something important.
Yet when we think about living an extraordinary life, we don’t often think of becoming a great husband or wife. As kids, I’m not sure that the idea of faithfully loving a spouse was nearly as captivating as flying jet planes or saving people from raging fires. Even when we’re asked to introduce ourselves today, it’s far more natural to define our lives in terms of our career. So we talk about our professional title, our work, our projects, and goals. And sure, if we have kids, we’ll likely proudly call ourselves parents. But in all this, our role as a husband or wife often takes the backseat.
But I think it’s time we reconsider.
Because according to almost every possible measure, being a good spouse is one of the most meaningful and extraordinary and impacting and valuable things we can do in life.1
Hard to believe? Let’s take a closer look.
YOUR MARRIAGE CHANGES YOUR SPOUSE.
As hard as some of us try, it’s challenging to stay the same person after marriage. After all, new responsibilities and radical proximity will always offer more opportunity to grow up. A spouse is like a mirror affording us the chance to frequently see and deal with our stuff. However, in the same way, when the closest person in our lives chooses to love us—despite knowing us—marriage can also show us a powerful image of who we can become.
I like to think of this as a mutual becoming—the phenomenon that happens when committed love removes a spouse’s limitations and helps them reach their highest potential.
But the alternate truth to this mutual becoming is that if your spouse is not loved well, he or she may not live out their potential for good in the world. This goes back to the self-developing and empowering realities of true love, as discussed previously, that the apostle Paul alludes to when he tells husbands to love their wives so that her soul might be reformed and so that she might be presented in all her glory.2
Psychologist Caryl E. Rusbult echoes a similar pattern in his study of the changing power of love. He says, “Close partners sculpt one another’s ideal selves, shaping [each other’s] skills and traits and promoting versus inhibiting one another’s goal pursuits. As a result of the manner in which partners perceive and behave toward one another, each person enjoys greater or lesser success at attaining his or her ideal self.”3
In short, as we learn to love and therefore give to our spouse, we not only become the best version of ourselves—we offer our spouse the chance to become the best version of him or herself as well.
Love, then, is giving for the sake of our spouse’s becoming.
Yet the impact of marriage doesn’t stop there. We’re about to see that as we cultivate this kind of love, our kids, our community, and the world enjoy the benefits.
YOUR MARRIAGE CHANGES YOUR KIDS.
John Medina, a molecular biologist and author of Brain Rules for Babies, teaches how to raise kids based on the lifetime of research on the development of a child’s brain.4 As you can imagine, he is often approached by adults looking for the silver bullet of parenting. It seems they all want to know one thing: “What’s the most important thing I can do as a parent?”
His answer is not what you might expect and it alludes to something I recently stumbled upon.
Remember my home experiment to discover the effect that intentionally loving my wife had on every layer of my life? One particular morning of the experiment, loving my wife had taken a backseat to making sure she got a very real and raw piece of my mind. You know this kind of day. You both wake up seemingly looking for someone to blame.
As we each emphatically “reasoned” with each other as to how the issue was the other’s fault, Cruz—our sixteen-month-old son—ran in the room. By all indicators, he looked to be in high spirits on that particular day. Yet by his third step toward us he had picked up on his parents’ ensuing chaos. He stopped dead in his tracks. His whole demeanor changed. Then I watched as this seconds-ago happy child proceeded to scream at the top of his lungs and fall to the floor in an all-out meltdown.
Analee’s Point of View. This experience was something that made us reevaluate how we handled conflict in front of our little “sponge” children. Even in my womb, we would tell Cruz, “Mommy and Daddy are just disagreeing, but we are okay and we love you.” But as tensions increased with career changes, house moves, and having another baby, our intentions lessened. We found ourselves just coping—and forgetting our little human was soaking in everything.
After Cruz’s bizarre meltdown, I began wondering about the relationship between our adult tantrums and his own tantrums. So I added an additional observation to my ongoing experiment.
Each day, I rated the health of my marriage on a scale from one to ten. A perfect ten indicated lack of conflict or quick resolution in conflict, several moments of connection throughout the day, and powerful communication.
Then I noted my child’s behavior. A ten meant zero tantrums, general pleasantness, and swift obedience. A one, on the other hand, indicated multiple tantrums, mood swings, and strong disobedience.
After thirty-one days, the results confirmed my suspicions. An overwhelming 84 percent of the time, the less connection my wife and I had, the more our child negatively acted out.
As it turns out, my experiment wasn’t a fluke. In fact, many have discovered this strong correlation between the parents’ marriage and a child’s behavior.
But before we take a closer look at this correlation, let me state the obvious and say that single parents or divorced couples are not disqualified from raising great kids. We’ve all seen parents who don’t stay together but continue to raise their kids incredibly well.
On a broad sociological level, however, studies consistently demonstrate that a stable family built on a healthy marriage can make quite an impact on a child’s development at every stage of life.
As an infant, stress is far more costly to their tiny bodies than later in life. The constant release of cortisol, adrenaline, and other hormones in response to instability in a home can effectively “wear out” other parts of the brain involved in higher-level thinking. If the stress is prolonged, this can affect the long-term development of a child’s attention abilities, impulse control, and fine motor skills.5
As a student, kids from a stable home environment are statistically more likely to stay in school, have fewer behavioral and attendance problems, and earn four-year college degrees.6
Emotionally, kids with married parents are less vulnerable to emotional illness, depression, and suicide. According to recent research, “In the last half century, the teen and young adult suicide rate has tripled. The single most explanatory variable is the increased number of teens living in a home with divorced parents. The effect is large, explaining as much as two-thirds of the increase in youth suicides over time.”7
Relationally, kids raised in stable families are more likely to bond more consistently with others, have positive attitudes toward marriage, and have a greater chance of success in forming long-term relationships.8
Economically, they are less likely to be poor or to experience persistent financial instability.9
All this points to one thing: your marriage has incredible benefits for your children.
But the opposite effect is just as dangerous. According to studies, decreasing marital stability since 1980 is believed to be responsible for:10
An increase of nearly 500,000 children suspended from school
About 200,000 more children engaging in delinquency or violence
250,000 more c
hildren receiving therapy
80,000 additional children thinking about suicide
To be sure, a single parent can be a successful parent. And I’m well aware that some of the world’s best parents have children who face challenges emotionally, relationally, or economically. These statistics aren’t to say that every problem a child faces is inherently a parenting issue. They are simply meant to give us pause. When even kids from healthy homes can experience significant challenges, we should be all the more concerned with uprooting our unhealthy patterns in marriage.
Science, on a neurological, behavioral and social level, suggests that every one of us are in some way products of the home environment we grew up in. And the benefits of a healthy marriage to the home environment speak for themselves.
Gary Ezzo and Robert Bucknam, the psychologists behind successful child rearing techniques, speak insightfully to this: “A healthy marriage creates an infused stability within the family and a haven of security for a child in their development process.”11 In fact, they even go further by summing up their years of family research as follows: “In the end, great marriages produce great parents.”12
They’re not the only ones to arrive at this conclusion, either.
Reenter John Medina, the molecular biologist, who I had the opportunity of interviewing.13 I asked him—joining with thousands of other parents who have posed the same question many times before—“What’s the most important thing I can do as a parent for my child?”
His answer, after years of biological research and writing several books on parenting, was instant and simple: “Go home and love your spouse.”
And that, as we will soon find, is the most powerful home-brewed recipe for world change.
YOUR MARRIAGE CHANGES THE WORLD.
I used to hate weddings. Though I appreciated the excuse to get down on the dance floor and overload my body with sweets, I generally found them to be a big waste of time and money for the couple. It never made any sense to spend what could be the down payment of your new house just to invite a bunch of friends and acquaintances to witness you say a few vows, exhibit a little PDA, and shove cake in each other’s mouths.
My wife said my perspective was unromantic and cave-like. I said it was practical and intelligent. (And, with that, I think I entirely proved her point.)
I found little value in throwing an expensive party to simply show off a highly personal pursuit of two people that really isn’t anyone else’s business anyway. Yet this idea is a modern and misinformed one.
And as it turns out, I was simply uneducated about this celebration we call a wedding.
John Witte Jr., a renowned legal scholar, blames the era of Enlightenment for this misconception that marriage isn’t anyone else’s business. Previous to the rise of marriage as a means of personal fulfillment, society largely understood marriage as a means of good for the greater community. As such, it was important to share the wedding ceremony with those it would affect and benefit. Everyone at the time understood what Witte and others continue to argue today: “Marriage is more than a private emotional relationship. It is a social good.”14
Regardless of our modern overlooking of this social good of marriage, what happens in your home does not stay in your home. What happens in your home has significant implications on your community, your society, and the world.
Your marriage affects society. When the purpose of marriage publicly came under questioning in the early 2000s, Barbara Defoe Whitehead—director of the National Marriage Project at the time—was asked to testify in front of the US Senate. She wrote and then delivered several thousand words explaining the vital importance of marriage to a society. She then called for the public and private sector to explore ways to reduce the barriers to healthy marriage and to make it possible for more parents to form strong and lasting marital unions.
“Being married changes people’s lifestyles and habits in ways that are personally and socially beneficial,” wrote Whitehead.15 “Marriage is a ‘seedbed’ of pro-social behavior.”16
Whether for better or for worse, your marriage changes the way you behave toward one another, toward your children, and toward your future. And the implications of this changing power ripple far beyond your relationship. “Marriage generates social capital,” Whitehead says. “The social bonds created through marriage yield benefits not only for the family but for others as well, including the larger society.”17
Your marriage affects the economy. Call it unromantic if you must, but the truth is that marriage is a benefit to society in supremely practical ways—including the providing of an economic boost.
“The size of families, and their stability and quality [have] important implications for the health of the global economy,” stated the National Marriage Project’s director Brad Wilcox in his article for the New York Times.18
Married couples, for example, build more wealth on average than singles or cohabiting couples. Married men in particular earn more money than do single men with similar education and job histories.19 In a less tangible way, marriage also changes one’s personal goals and behavior in ways that are profoundly and powerfully life-enhancing. As Linda Waite and Maggie Gallagher write in The Case for Marriage, “Marriage creates not just a new unit of consumption but a new unit of production: Getting and staying married produces goods for the partners, for their children, and for the rest of society.”20
Your marriage affects the future of the world. Here is where a marriage’s effect on the children comes full circle. Because if the health of your marriage has direct implications for your children’s cognitive, emotional, social, and economic health, then you have the incredible ability to shape healthy contributors to a future society.
Modern research demonstrates this, but we can also observe this timeless truth in action at the beginning of history.
The original request God makes of Adam and Eve is to be fruitful and multiply to fill the earth and subdue it.21 This commission puts marriage right at the center of God’s plan not only to influence society, but to create it.
“Marriage is more than your love for each other,” says Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the twentieth century German theologian. “It has a higher dignity and power, through which God wills to perpetuate the human race till the end of time. In your love you see only the heaven of your own happiness, but in marriage you are placed at a post of responsibility towards the world and mankind.”22
So do the world a favor.
Yes, marriage is designed to inspire two people into wholeness.
Yes, marriage can quite possibly become the greatest asset to you and your spouse’s life.
And yes, marriage has brilliant intentions in mind—offering you and your spouse all kinds of very real perks in life.
But marriage doesn’t stop with just the two of you.
Marriage is an unapologetic and selfless giver. It is innately designed to lead the two of you into an upward, increasing wholeness, and then to offer that dynamic relationship as a gift to the world around it.
Our modern world doesn’t need any more Dowboys. It doesn’t need more millionaires or leaders or pastors or soldiers or philanthropists—not primarily, anyway.
What the world needs are better lovers—husbands and wives committed to learning the unnatural art of loving another person. What we need are more marriages worth fighting for.
So men, women, the next time you find yourself dreaming about career success, or an epic life adventure, or becoming better parents, or any other way you might dream of living a life of meaning, do the world a favor.
Go home and love your wife. Go home and love your husband.
Because though this art of loving another may be unnatural, it just might change the world.
BONUS CHAPTER
CAVE TALK
Success, Porn, and Other Things Men Must Overcome to Win at Marriage
“It was like he was a caveman grunting,‘You woman. Me man. Let’s make babies together.’”
; —Missy Lyons
When we got married, my wife was quick to point out all the ways that modern men are bizarrely similar to ancient cave dwellers. Most of us can’t do two things at once. We still hunt and gather—only today we call it acquiring clients or scoring a 401k. When it comes to emotions, many of us still can’t seem to navigate without a club. The list goes on.
Men, let’s face it. We tend to be the less relationally intelligent party of the marital equation. And as much as I hate to spotlight our gender, several of the modern mentalities that have a way of killing marriages are predominantly subscribed to by men.
Let me also say to the women reading that if I could string together even a sentence of intelligible advice just for a woman, I’d write a chapter for you too. However, the longer I’m married to one of your kind, the less I actually understand your kind.
I do hope, however, that you will find the following thoughts helpful in understanding your husband and the natural challenges he faces because of his male DNA and society’s expectations of him.
However, let’s also be mindful that the following couple thousand words can be dangerous in the hands of an irresponsible spouse. We are going to discuss things for men that may make the discrepancy between where your husband currently is in his journey and where you would love him to be quite clear. So before we read on, let’s all, husband and wife, agree on a few things.
One. Healthy marriage happens when both parties begin taking 100 percent responsibility for the relationship. I’d suggest applying everything discussed in this chapter to your own life first.
Two. We are all on a journey. Though husbands may tend to be the slower sex when it comes to relational processes, this shouldn’t discredit where they are today. Men need a woman’s grace for the journey, just as much as you need ours.
