Shared vision helps couple through crisis

By Blake Sittler

SASKATOON — An energetic and humorous presentation by theologian Richard Gaillardetz was the final address of a national marriage conference held in Saskatoon March 19 - 20.

Gaillardetz said that the language of theology is not familiar to most Christian couples: “If you’re married for 20 years, and you finally get the kids to bed . . . you don’t say to your (spouse), ‘Would you like to go upstairs and become living icons of Christ’s love for the church?’ It’s not the way we talk.”

Any couple who has been married long enough “looks into the abyss,” he said. “We have to make a connection between the lofty teaching, theology and the abyss.”

Gaillardetz addressed the cultural context of marriage and how we view it.
“We live in a culture in which media, especially movies, encourage romance,” he said.

“My students know these movies aren’t realistic but when I ask them what they are looking for in a spouse, this is their narrative arc of romance and marriage: that love conquers everything, and it creates some very unrealistic expectations.”

Gaillardetz also explored the influence of a consumer culture on modern marriage theology. From cellphones and computers to cameras and clothes, consumerism creates an escalation of needs. The marketing industry says that “once you buy the thing you desire, you are no longer happy with it. Your desire needs to be nomadic.”

Consumerism leads people to compare and value human beings in the same way that we compare and value objects and services. We have become “habituated to comparison shopping” and “upgrading what we have.”

Wedding vows, in contrast, are a radical decision to devote oneself to an unknown future. “We are committing ourselves to the mystery of who our partner will be, recognizing that we can’t predict that.”

When faced with the “abyss,” it will be a common vision, not common interests, that pulls a couple through.

Gaillardetz explored the idea of marriage as an ascetic vocation, since it is about freely embracing limits and discipline. This asceticism also includes loneliness.

“There is a loneliness that at some level is inevitable in a marriage at one point or another,” he said. “We can never be fully sated in any human relationship.”

The concept of a “soulmate” is relatively new and romantic. At every moment of our lives, Gaillardetz asserted, God puts out an invitation to love in the midst of many choices. “Now, some may be bad choices, but I don’t think it follows that there is only one choice.”

If we accept the idea that there is only one right person for each of us, and then that person changes, the temptation will be to conclude that he or she has been the wrong person all along. “At some point it will appear as if we’ve married the wrong person,” Gaillerdetz said, but the most unhelpful question couples can ask is, “Was this the right person?” The only important question couples need to ask themselves is, “Are we sharing a vision in which we are able to love one another and put our love to the service of the world?’”

Gaillardetz recommended the word “companion” as a description of the marriage relationship.

“What does it mean for married couples to be companions?” he asked. “It means that we learn to receive the gifts that our spouse has to give.”

Ultimately, marriage is an ongoing vehicle of conversion.

“Marriage is a crucible of grace in which God is the hammer,” he said. Blow by blow, throughout our marriage, God is forging each of us into “something new, something noble, something of God.”