Just a Piece of Paper? - Marriage Matters

By TIFFANY DAWN NICHOLSON (TDNphoto) from Chicago, usa (_DSC7698)
 [CC-BY-2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0)]
, via Wikimedia Commons

“Marriage is just a piece of paper.”  It’s a popular phrase these days.  If, though, it were “just a piece of paper,” you’d get one. Marriage is presently in sharp decline, but I believe that marriage matters.

 Marriage matters because it is about trust and permanence.  It is about creating safety for children and a place where they can feel secure that those they love today will be here for them tomorrow.

Marriage matters because it encircles, in constancy, the physical giving of self which creates life, and shields that action from devaluation.  Marriage affirms that physical union is much more than physical, but also creates a permanent linking of hearts and souls that is not broken without creating permanent fissures.

Marriage matters because it is assurance that before you break your heart wide open to give it to another, you can trust in that person's intention to stay around to protect your wide open heart.

Marriage matters because once you engage in sexual activity you are not simply engaging in recreation or demonstration of affection, you are  becoming one with another person, forever changing the framework of your emotional and spiritual being, and inviting the creation of life. We all know that contraception is not foolproof.  If you are inviting the creation of life outside of the bonds of marriage, you are inviting a child to live life without a father. Marriage matters because children need fathers and society needs children to have them.  

Sure, marriage is not a guarantee of commitment to lifelong union for some, but electing not to marry guarantees it for no one.  Certainly, there are individual circumstances and people fall short of the ideal, but that is no reason to voluntarily scrap ideals all together. Marriage matters because you matter and children matter and society-at-large matters.

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Marriage, My Man, and Sunday's Gospel Reading - Pentecost 22B

I watched my husband organize the garage today.  No matter how many years we are married, we never seem to be able to get the garage tamed on a permanent basis.  It is mostly my fault; I have a tendency to fill it with things that he has to "deal with".  It is my, "Honey please handle this." methodology.  If I want him to fix, organize, or replace something, I just open the door between the garage and and laundry room and plant it in his territory. This strategy is unfair, but effective.

It struck me, as I was his precise stacking of items upon shelves, that I was looking at a middle aged man.  When did this happen?  I'm not sure.  Just yesterday he was a skinny 23 year old; I'm sure of it.  Now, that 23 years have passed, we have been married for half of his life, and more than half of mine.  Our hard won blessing of a child is now the age that I had been on the day that I met him.

This man has put up with my intensity, the stresses of my grad school years, the sorrows of my infertility, my tendency to be certain that I am right about everything... suffice it to say that he has put up with quite a lot.  Somehow, while we were building a future, we were suddenly overcome by the fact that the future is now.  To borrow a term from my stock car racing filled childhood, the future has "lapped us"...and here we are.

I'm not sure what my life would have been without him. He is my life.  He is part of my very being, and I'm not quite sure where I end, and he where begins. I love this man.

To the young ones who are married, I say, "Hang in there." There will be good times, and there will be bad times. You have made a choice and sealed that choice before God. Stand by it; your relationship will temper under fire, and over time.  To the young ones who are not married, I say, "Choose carefully and do not be afraid."  This modern world would malign marriage, but marriage was ordained of God long before the advent of this modern world.  As you prepare for a marriage vocation, set your mind on holy things, fill your lives with prayer, and stay the course.

To my husband, I say:
Thank you.  Thank you for standing by me.  Thank you for watching over me.  Thank you for providing for us. Thank you for wiping tears in the early morning hours, for running to the store for cough medicine,  and for smiling when I put sweet potatoes in your potatoes au-gratin so many years ago.

Thank you for working long hard hours, and for keeping our yard so beautiful when you could be recovering from the work week instead.  Thank you for holding me up in times of great loss and for gluing me back together when I have shattered. Thank you for cleaning horse pens, and cleaning out your bank account paying feed bills, when you never cared for horses to begin with.  Thank you for cooking meals after a long commute home and for going with me to the grocery store thousand of times.  Thank you for telling me that it is going to be okay, again and again.  Thank you for walking with me, and staying by me, for 26 hours of labor. Thank you for listening to the click of the computer keyboard when the laundry needs folding, and taking it in stride. Thank you for knowing how to fix things, and knowing when to tell me that things don't need fixing. Thank you for being in my life. Thank you for keeping me standing. You could have chosen an easier way, but I'm glad you chose an imperfect life by side, instead. May God bless you evermore for your kindness and goodness. You are an incalculable blessing, the likes of which I could never be worthy.

~~~

Postscript:
Says my husband upon reading this post:"There was a middle-aged man in our garage the other day?  Why didn't you tell me?."
<Smiles>


A portion of Sunday's reading:

Some Pharisees came, and to test Jesus they asked, "Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife?" He answered them, "What did Moses command you?" They said, "Moses allowed a man to write a certificate of dismissal and to divorce her." But Jesus said to them, "Because of your hardness of heart he wrote this commandment for you. But from the beginning of creation, 'God made them male and female.' 'For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh.' So they are no longer two, but one flesh. Therefore what God has joined together, let no one separate."~ Mark 10: 2-9

The remainder of Sunday's Readings are here (Protestant) and here (Roman Catholic).

Linked with:
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Sex on Sunday: Premarital Relationships and Emotional Bonding

By Garry Knight from Bromley, Kent, England (In Love)
[CC-BY-SA-2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0)],
via Wikimedia Commons

Did you know?

According to Joe S. McIlhaney, Jr., M.D., and Freda Mckissic Bush, M.D., authors of Hooked: New Science on How Casual Sex is Affecting Our Children, powerful neurochemicals triggered by sex are at work in the process of emotional bonding. The release of oxytocin (for women), and vasopressin (for men), is stimulated by close physical contact and results in durable emotional ties. What's more, these chemicals don't care if the contact occurs within the context of a relationship that the participant considers valuable or long term.

Oxytocin in the neurochemical that is released during breastfeeding, and bonds a woman to her baby. That same chemical is released in women during intimate physical contact, especially sexual intercourse. The connection created tends to be long term, and to result in significant emotional pain when broken. Strikingly, oxytocin doesn't stop at emotional bonding; when a woman engages in sexual activity with a man, oxytocin also causes to have feelings of trust in him.  Again, oxytocin doesn't care if this bonding or trust is wise; it just creates it.

Francesco Hayez [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

Nature's system does not let men out of this double edged sword. Intimate physical contact causes the release of the neurochemical vasopressin in men. Vasopressin has remarkable structural similarity to oxytocin, and creates powerful emotional bonding of a man to his mate and their children.

These bonds are a masterful plan for creating and sustaining long term monogamous marital and parenting bonds. Simple physical contact can take part in the process of bonding of mother and father to one another, and each to their children, for a lifetime.

Those same bonds are disaster for single youth and adults who are engaging in intimate behavior, even short of sexual intercourse, with a string of partners. Not only can they cause a person to remain in a relationship that is unhealthy or potentially harmful, but they can create a series of "partial bonds" with multiple people as an individual moves from one temporary relationship to another. Further, the authors cite scientific evidence which suggests that a pattern of "hooking up" and breaking up with a string of partners may interfere with the development of brain circuits necessary for long term monogamous relationships.

The creator had a plan and produced an excellent design.  It seems best for us if we follow it.

For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh. So they are no longer two, but one flesh. ~Mark 10: 7-8

~~~~~~~

For interested parents and others, Hooked: New Science on How Casual Sex is Affecting Our Children is a treasure trove of information regarding recent breakthroughs in the field of neuroscience, and how they can be applied to help singles and youth avoid life-changing mistakes.

Linked with: Teach me Tuesday, The Modest Mom, Domestically Divine Tuesday, Wise Woman, EOA @ Deep Roots at Home, Raising Homemakers You'll find their buttons on the Blog Hops page

Have You Read the Instructions?: The Birth Control Pill and Sexual Attraction

By Peter Drier (Flickr) [CC-BY-2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0)],
 via Wikimedia Commons

Does premarital use of the birth control pill impact marriage success?

We Christians tend to focus a lot on "right" and "wrong".  This is a good thing, I suppose.  As Christians, we have been instructed to keep the commandments.  Sometimes though, I think we may lose sight of the fact that the instructions we have been given are there for a reason.

The other day, while perusing Facebook, I came across pictures posted by a single young Christian woman of a trip that she took with a man from her church group.  In the album were several pictures captioned "our room".  It was quite lovely, actually, the bed strewn with rose petals and chocolates and such.  How far we have come.  It seems quite acceptable, in at least some Christian circles, to trash the instruction book in lieu of a focus on "loving" our Lord and being secure in one's salvation.

By Garry Knight from Bromley, Kent, England (In Love)
[CC-BY-SA-2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0)],
via Wikimedia Commons

I'm not interested in a theological discussion of the nature of salvation here.  That's not what this blog is about.  Readers come from all walks of Christendom to visit here, and all are welcome.  What I am interested in, though, is the fact that there is more to "following the instructions" than meets the eye.

As a generation of women in their teens and twenties swallows artificial hormones each day in the form of birth control pills, we might want to take a look at the impact that might have on sexual attraction. We associate attraction with our eyes.  However, in large part, attraction is based on body odor.  The odor in question is mostly mitigated by genes related to our immune systems.  Women are attracted to men with immune systems different from their own.  This provides for a strong immune system in the resultant offspring.  It also probably protects women from producing children with men to whom they are related.  (Roberts et.al 2008)

The pill does something interesting though.  The pill essentially confuses the body into believing that it is already pregnant.  Pregnant women are drawn to men in their families.  This is probably for protection in this vulnerable time.  As one might imagine, the pill has the same result.  Women on the pill are sexually attracted to men with immune systems similar to their own.  Of course, once a woman goes off the pill, the situation reverses.

By Elena Cavinato (Man and divorce) [CC-BY-2.0
 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

The obvious result is this: Choosing a spouse while on the pill is not such a hot idea, either biologically, or in terms of relationships.  When a woman meets and develops a relationship with a man while on the pill, and then later, goes off the pill to produce a family, her attraction to that man can change markedly.  In fact, a recent study has shown that women who chose their partner while on the pill have a lower level of overall sexual satisfaction than women who chose their partner while pill-free, and that their levels of sexual satisfaction decrease significantly more over time (Roberts et.al 2011).  In fact, while there are likely multiple factors involved, there is evidence that couples using contraception may be more likely to divorce than non-contracepting couples.

Of course, there are non-hormonal methods of birth control, such as condoms.  In fact, if people are having sex outside of monogamous marital relationships, they ought to be using them.  But that is not really the point here.  The point is that following the manufacturer's instructions is not such a bad idea. Perhaps the "Me Generation" doesn't know what's in it for them.
Pax Christi,
~Michelle


Roberts et.al 2008: http://rspb.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/275/1652/2715.short
Roberts et.al. 2011: http://rspb.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/279/1732/1430.abstract

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