LOVE AND MARRIAGE: Lauren Winner

...It is, of course, a salutary thing to suggest, as Stark does, that our frantic jobs are less important than the fabric of our marriages. But is the "solution" to America's married sex "crisis" really simply to work harder at sex--an idiom that befits a society in thrall to advanced capitalism? Maybe roommate-like status is not what we ought to be aspiring to in marriage--but neither is the thrill and romance that one associates with one's fondly remembered dating days. (Why bother with marriage if the romance of dating is all you're after?) Surely what married people should aspire to is, well, living as husband and wife.
...Our task may not be to cultivate moments when eros can whisk us away from our ordinary routines, but rather to love each other as eros becomes imbedded in, and transformed by, the daily warp and woof of married life.

Lurking underneath the romanticized eros is a certain individualism, and, indeed, almost all of today's marriage guides frame marriage strictly as an individual project. The marriages that emerge from the pages of these books are marriages of two people who rarely engage their communities. Marriage is figured as something that is undertaken by, and that serves, only the husband and wife. None of the books' rules, guidelines, or suggestions urge couples to understand marriage in the context of the communities to which they are committed. ...

And, yet, marriage is meant to be communal as well as couple-centered both in its means and its meanings. At the most practical level, it is our friends, our brothers and sisters in the church, our aunts and uncles and colleagues, who can remind us why we got married in the first place. It is this community that, when we lay our marriages bare before them, are able to hold us accountable, and also celebrate with us. This is what the Book of Common Prayer's Order of Marriage is getting at when it prompts the celebrant to ask the congregation if "all of you witnessing these promises [will] do all in your power to uphold these two persons in their marriage?" The congregation's response is a hearty "We will." If we Christians want to get our divorce rates down below the national average, rendering our marriages visible to our communities--opening ourselves up to our friends' support, prayers, questions, and rebuke--would be a good place to start.

But recalling the communal dimension of marriage is not merely a strategy for sticking it out and navigating the rough patches. It is rather an assertion of God's purposes for marriage. Our surrounding society tells us that marriage is a private endeavor, that what happens between husband and wife behind closed doors is no one else's concern. But in the Christian grammar, marriage is not only for the married couple. Insofar as marriage tells the Christian community a particular story, marriage is for the community. It reminds us of the communion and community that is possible between and among people who have been made new creatures in Christ. And it hints at the eschatological union between Christ and the Church.

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posted by Eve at 8:16 PM VOTE

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