Choosing the right person to marry
A question that many young people, in particular, may ask themselves is:- ‘How do I find or choose the right person to marry?’ This is a huge topic so I will address only a little about the choosing rather than finding here.
Contrary to what the ‘the media’ would have you believe, most young people still hold onto the hope and belief that they will find and marry their life partner. A survey of 1000 ‘millennials’ and ‘generation Z’ people conducted by the Thriving Center for Psychology in the U.S. reported 83% would like to get married at some point in their lives. Given that there are approximately 8 billion people on the planet, we believe that it is a little far-fetched to believe that there is only ‘the one’ that is destined to be suitable for us – even taking into account that many are already married or the wrong age to be suitable. That said, we have heard many say that you are ‘lucky’ if you marry the right person. Certainly, as Christians, we can take solace that God will guide us in our choices. In our case, we believe God guided us even though we both didn’t have a faith when we met and first dated.
So, when looking for ‘the one’, what is the criteria we should be using for our selection? Is it physical attraction? Is it a shared sense of humour and values? Is it trustworthiness or dependability or is it friendship and kindness etcetera, etcetera? Well of course elements of all these things will affect our choices but first of all we need to understand the purpose of marriage. If we see marriage as merely getting all our needs and desires met by ‘the other’, then perhaps we have missed God’s design for marriage. As the human species, we have all been wired to have a basic human need of wanting to be loved and to give out love – so why marry? Some would say let’s just stay and live with a person for a season or two and give love and receive love from them, but when we get bored, tired or irritated with them we will just give up on that relationship and move on to someone else. This is certainly the case in western culture where we live in a throw way society. A new phone, car or house offers the hope of new features, a fresh start or better tomorrow, so relationships are treated the same way. The best way to understand marriage is to understand what God’s design for it is.
Almost universally around the world, despite differences in culture, religion and language there is a general understanding that marriage is sacred and it is protected in law. This implies a level of commitment to it. However, in recent decades, there is a pervasive belief that marriage is just ‘a bit of paper’- a legal contract that holds no value. In fact, many couples avoid the whole contract thing and choose to live ‘as if married’ by living together in a cohabiting relationship or in a domestic partnership. A marriage, as designed by God, is a covenant promise to Him to serve Him and each other for the purpose of building family and mirroring His love in all of our frailty, for the benefit of society. (See Mathew 19: 4-6). A covenant is more of a solemn commitment than a legal contract. Perhaps a less self-centred approach to marriage is to ask ourselves ‘what can I do for the person I would like to journey through life together with?’ This is not about helping them fix their imperfections – because that’s not our role – but more about how can I help them achieve their aspirations in life, in the service of God. The main reasons for getting married from a biblical perspective are, but not limited to:-
1) Companionship: ‘it’s not good for man to be alone’ (see Genesis 2:18),
2) To model God’s love for the church in our relationships (see Ephesians 5:21-33)
3) Procreation of children (see Malachi 2:15)
Whilst 40% of the study of ‘millennials’ and ‘generation Z’ mentioned above think that marriage is an outdated tradition, many cite that it is too expensive to get married. Often, the wedding (and hence the marriage) is seen as the ‘icing on the cake’ and postponement of the wedding ensues leading to a decision that gets deferred. The wedding then becomes a special party type occasion which seems less about vows and the reasons for marriage and more about celebrations and creating a photographic extravaganza. Unfortunately, many couples fall into parenthood either accidentally or by choice before they are fully prepared for marriage whilst either hesitating to decide or struggling to save up for a vision of their wedding day that far exceeds anything that is affordable or realistic.
Many couples enter or approach marriage from the direction of sex. They have sexually intimate experiences with their partner and may feel genuinely ‘in-love’ but hope that this love will grow into faithfulness, that will lead into marriage – but this is not always the case. though there are many that would disagree with our views, marriages that typically survive and thrive most successfully are those where the male partner makes a conscious decision to marry his lady, rather than feel pressured to by her, her parents or circumstance. The unconscious concept of ‘sliding versus deciding’ in a relationship is discussed at length in various articles that can be found by searching in google for ‘sliding or deciding’. One of the benefits of our marriage coaching is that we can help couples to re-enforce the decisions they have and will make rather than allowing things to drift. Making decisions carefully and purposefully enables couples to make a lasting commitment. We will explore the controversial subject of male headship in marriage, in a future blog.
