Marriage license revoked?

Belinda Luscombe wrote a great article for Time magazine on marriage, and taking away people's license to marry for multiple infractions:

In no other area of life can grown people flame out so often and so badly and still get official permission to go ahead and do the same thing again. If your driving is hazardous to those around you, your license is suspended. Fail too many courses at college, and you'll get kicked out. You can lose your medical or law license for a single infraction. Stock analyst Henry Blodgett was prohibited from trading securities forever for publicly saying things he knew weren't true. So why do people who are committed vows abusers keep getting handed marriage licenses at city hall? If batters and violent offenders get only three strikes, why should bad spouses get more?

Of course, a lot of people will say this is nobody's business but the bride and groom's. Plus, it's natural. Evolution favors the alpha-male serial monogamist who bonds with a mate until she gets old and is replaced by a more fertile one. Other primates change partners all the time. But other primates also practice infanticide and poop throwing, and we're not about to sanction either of those. So why are we complicit in allowing people to make big public promises they have demonstrated a chronic inability to keep?

The whole article is here.

God takes back seat at weddings

Yesterday the SMH had a short report about the changing landscape of marriage and the number of children born out of wedlock. Some silly assertions were made amongst the observations:

These changes are easy to take for granted and yet they represent a significant re-ordering of moral priorities, according to demographer Bernard Salt.

"If you had said years ago that we would see many more people living together before marriage and double the number of kids being born out of wedlock, moralists would have seen it as proof of the decline of civilisation and the collapse of our moral fibre. But the reality is that the taboos we once thought immovable are completely flexible."

Salt believes such shifts show our maturity. "People are less preoccupied with sexuality and more concerned about discrimination, with sexism and racism and even with sustainability. Who cares if you're gay? Who cares if you live together without getting married?"

Two good letters from friends followed in today's SMH:

Bernard Salt's grasp on statistics is better than his grasp on logic and ethics ("God takes back seat at weddings", September 8). That the sexual taboos of the 1960s have proved "completely flexible" is an empirical assertion, not an ethical one. Whether it represents a "collapse of our moral fibre" or a growth in our collective "maturity", as Salt claims, cannot be established by statistics. To leap from what is to what ought to be is a cardinal sin in ethics, even if standard practice in demographics.

Jon Guyer, Croydon

Bernard Salt suggests the diminishing significance of marriage is a mark of Australia's maturity. Really? I think it is a mark of tragedy. Relationships have become dispensable and divorce is easy, but it is socially and economically costly, especially for the children.

Australians need to grow up and relearn what love, faithfulness and commitment mean. Perhaps a bit more substance in the celebrant services would not go astray.

Reverend Nigel Fortescue, Naremburn

Well said Jon and Nige.

Rudd opposes gay marriage

There'll be a disproportionate amount of noise about this, but the Ruddmeister is right when he says:

As well as his private instructions, Mr Rudd issued a stern public message yesterday before the factional meetings.

He emphasised that Labor’s policy opposed gay marriage. The party considered marriage a union between man and a woman.

That's right, and not something that would be changed by reconsideration.

Marriage enrichment weekend

Fifi and I are going away on a marriage enrichment weekend. We're running it!

Our dear friends Keith and Sarah Condie gave us their notes from similar weekends that they've run, together with a lot of reading material.

I'm excited about this; one of the greatest traumas and sadnesses in our society is marriages that don't work. What we are trying to stress on the weekend are two things:

1. God favours marriage
2. Marriages that are also friendships work well.

I am so thankful to God for Fiona's friendship over more than 23 years, and I would like to help other people who are married work on their friendships with their spouses.

De facto marriages

How dreadful! The government is considering imposing responsibilities upon de facto couples that they should have taken on voluntarily in the first place. See here.

From the article:

"Marriage is being imposed on everyone whether they like it or not," says Patrick Parkinson, professor of law at the University of Sydney. "It will come as a shock to some people."

But in the days when it was a much bigger issue for couples just to move in together without declaring their intention to marry—not all that long ago really—the big justification used for thinking it was OK was that love would hold the couple together forever. Marriage was just a piece of paper that formalized things, and you didn't really need it.

I guess time, and the current situation whereby the government needs to impose marriage-like responsibilities on marriage-like relationships, has shown how empty that argument always was.

Peter Jensen in the Oz.

He writes about marriage.

All my worldly

In the latest Briefing #356 (so hot off the press that that link is still to #355!), Phillip Jensen writes about marriage prenuptial agreements:

...Surveys show that although [after divorce] the wife most commonly gets the house as well as her 'share' of the assets, within a few years she is worse off than the husband. It is much less lucrative for her to restart her career than for him to continue his. She generally has to sell the house and start eating into the capital.

So what would you agree to—a 50/50 or a 60/40 split? The old Book of Common Prayer was much simpler. The bridegroom promised "With this ring I thee wed, with my body I thee worship, and with all my worldly goods I thee endow". And the bride did not give him a ring and endow him with any worldly goods. There was no mention of a wedding ring for men.

Later prayer books have tried to express the mutuality of marriage in terms of both bride and groom giving wedding rings and making the promise "with all that I am and all that I have I honour you". It is a wonderfully vague and meaningless declaration of mutual love that avoids the reality of money altogether.

The modern marriage is a 'fifty-fifty' relationship. But marriage is built not on two halves becoming one, but on two wholes becoming one: "Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh" (Gen 2:24). Once you have endowed your beloved with all your worldly goods, there is no room to split your assets. You do not have any. You have already endowed her with them all.

Ah, gone are the days when gentlemen promised total commitment! Little wonder we have to ask the question of what percentage of the assets each gets. Little wonder we are facing the question of splitting up at all.

The 1662 Book of Common Prayer embodied a far more muscular conception of Christianity than is normally on display today. And in the area of marriage, this showed itself in a right understanding of the gracious and total commitment that the man was expected to make as he initiated the relationship with his wife.

More on cohabitation

A friend sent me a note about cohabitation that I thought was worth reproducing here, with friend's identifying details removed (this person didn't want to offend some recently married people who had been in a long-term de-facto relationship; fair enough!)

I've heard 2 views explaining why the cohabitation before marriage usually fails:

1. the couple usually assume that their pre-married life is the norm and will continue. ie they are making a decision to marry on the basis that "we've enjoyed it thus far, so let's make it permanent" ie they are making a decision for the future assuming the past will continue. As opposed to making promises to commit "for better or WORSE". One view looks back, the other view is open to the future. (as Deryck Howell once anlaysed - most marriage vows these days can be reduced to the following "to date you've pleased me, and so today I'm formalising to let you continue to please me").

2. (from Zac Veron) - often girls assume that things "will be different when we are married, ie he'll stop drinking at the pub with mates etc" - whereas the husband often sees no change in the affairs....this leads to tension etc. Ie differing views on what they are committing to.

Each de facto couple thinks "but we're different" - and in God's grace, often they do have good marriages...which is what we should pray for each couple who do want to formalise their relationship.

Cohabitation has an 85% failure rate

That statistic comes from this interview with Michael McManus on the subject of cohabitation before marriage. If the statistics are accurate, then it's no exaggeration at all to suggest that cohabitation before marriage is setting you up for relationship breakdown.

Here's a section of the interview:

LOPEZ: I’m stuck on the practical, forgive me. But you recommend that cohabitating couples move out before they get married. Is that ever realistic? Or do couples just laugh at the suggestion?

MCMANUS: Given the fact that cohabitating couples are 50 percent more likely to divorce than those who remained apart, there is no more important step that could increase the couple’s odds of a lifelong marriage than separating before the wedding. Is it practical? You bet! Is it likely? No. Not without a supportive couple mentoring the premarital couple who make arguments based on data and psychology that is persuasive. We have persuaded some couples to separate, and others to at least move into separate bedrooms and stop having sex until the wedding. That discipline increases each person’s self-respect and respect for their partner.

This really surprised me, though there is no good reason why it should have as it fits completely consistently with what you might expect if the Bible's advice is true.

In the past if I've married cohabiting couples (generally speaking, non-christians who had decided that they wanted to get married in a church building) I've mentioned that God's ideal is marriage and not cohabitation, but not made much more of it than that except to point to the statistics that indicate that marriages without cohabitation have a better chance of survival. It has generally been in the context of encouraging them that their decision to get married is a good one because it actually makes explicit what they are promising to do and removes any ambiguity from their situation.

Whether for good reasons or not I've wimped out on making any suggestions about actively moving out and ceasing cohabitation before marriage, on the flawed reasoning that it's not advice that non-Christians would be interested in hearing and it would make no difference anyway.

But this article has made me think again.

(Thanks to Craig for putting me on to this, and also Tim Challies).

Marry him

From The Atlantic Monthly March 2008, p. 83:

But then my married friends say things like, "Oh, you're so lucky, you don't have to negotiate with your husband about the cost of piano lessons" or "You're so lucky, you don't have anyone putting the kid in front of the TV and you can raise your son the way you want." I'll even hear things like, "You're so lucky, you don't have to have sex with someone you don't want to."

The lists go on, and each time, I say, "OK, if you're so unhappy, and if I'm so lucky, leave your husband! In fact, send him over here!"

Not one person has taken me up on this offer.

-Lori Gottlieb, "Marry Him".

Marriage togetherness

A friend sent me a rather lovely comment on my post about marriage break-ups, which he said I could reproduce here if I removed identifying features:

We have been married for [many] years. For much of that time my wife has been more or less depressed, and we have just come out of the end of a ten year period of it. This has been the longest unrelenting period of it.

Perseverance pays off, because at the moment we are like newlyweds, though rather experienced newlyweds.

Life has certainly had its joys and sorrows, but we are now both more committed to one another than ever.

Thank God for his kindness in the lives he gives us 'for better, for worse'.

Marriage break-ups

I didn't used to have many good friends who were separated or divorced, but now I know several and am aware of others of about the same age who are going through the same thing.

It seems to me that a number of marriages that have struggled on for quite some time will finally reach breaking point at about the time the youngest child leaves school. It is almost as if one partner or the other has said 'That's enough. I've put up with this for long enough, my work with the children is done, and now I'm done too.'

The other thing about it is that in retrospect, the issues leading to separation or divorce seem to have been there almost from day one, a bit like a tree that starts life as a sapling with a divided trunk.

I'm a believer in the idea that marriage is for life, and that the commitment to love rather than the feeling of love is what causes marriages to grow and thrive. That is going to mean a lot of joy and a huge amount of work. What I would wish (and what I encourage couples who are getting married to do) is that people would put that work in from the very beginning, with help from others around them. The patterns of communication and miscommunication are set up very early, and seem to continue unless addressed.

Of course they can be addressed any time, even by couples who have been in difficulty for 20 years. But by that time, often one partner or the other has reached their limit, and there are 20 years of bad relating to undo, rather than just six months.

I have to keep thinking about this as I'm leading a marriage weekend later this year, and in the meantime I happen to be married.

Shame

I helped out with a Marriage Ministry course led by (Anglican) Ministry Training and Development here in Sydney.

Keith Condie reminded me of this marriage enriching verse:

If one gives an answer before he hears, it is his folly and shame. (Proverbs 18:13)