Being Married Sucks

I got married almost three months ago. It was a huge day filled with lots of good friends, excellent food, and a really pretty girl that tagged along with me after it was over. I've known her for quite a long time, so part of it felt completely normal. I was in a car with my best friend after a long day, which wasn't out of the ordinary at all.

But then she didn't go away. She ate all of my food, stole the computer when I wanted to use it, and woke me up at 2 AM with complaints about headaches and an inability to fall asleep because my dang breathing was too loud. My breathing.

My free time became fair game. My evenings could plunge into some horrid social event at any moment. Socializing with people when it's unexpected is, for an introvert, a fate worse that death.

The house cluttered faster. The car got dirty really fast. Money disappeared from my bank account. This person then had the gall to tell me she needed me, even after I had jumped through tons of hoops for her.

Being married sucks.

In those moments, I can be angry and bitter about my needs and wants being subverted, or I can decide to throw myself under the bus and deal with it. Miraculously, my bitterness went away when I tried that, and I actually love my wife more when I defer myself.

Experimenting with this method of dealing with this person I married brought me to realize something: my life can be just as joyless as it was before I was married.

I'm not living on a higher plane of happiness or joy with her. I'm really not. My mood is entirely dependent on how willing I am to

1. Rely on God for my happiness and peace.

2. Sacrifice myself for my those around me.

If I rewind approximately three months, those two principles were just as true.

This has enormous implications.

The biggest one that comes to mind, for me, is that we glorify marriage far too much within our society, and the Christian church in general. I have plenty of single friends that now treat me like some kind of mystical creature that rarely appears.

That really makes me sad. Does God more richly love and bless people who are married? Of course not. Don't married people go and see Him at the end of this life just like everyone else, when all of our differences and sins and joys and loves and hates are all completely irrelevant? Is there anything in God's Word that claims that He is more or less pleased with people who decide to be married? As far as I know, there isn't. It'd be weird to read 1 Timothy 2:4 as "(God) wants all people to be saved and to come to a knowledge of the truth, but especially married people!"

Love people. Love God. If you become married, look for ways to glorify God in your marriage. If you are single, look for ways to glorify God in your singleness. I can guarantee that you will experience the same amount of joy and purpose in your life.

The night I stayed up with her until 2 AM could have been awful. But it wasn't. I love her a lot, and I felt so sad and protective of her that I was happy in the midst of extreme exhaustion while dealing with some mild insomnia. Yes, she takes my money, and my stuff, and my time, but I give it willingly. As soon as I try to hold on to what I want above everything else, my joy goes out the window.

She steals the computer when I want to use it and I smile and ask her if she'd like some tea while she does homework.

When my evenings are sabotaged, I can be miserable in a corner while people chat all around me like chittering squirrels, or I can use the opportunity to meet more people that my wife knows to enrich my life and, by extension, get to know what kind of person she is a little bit better.

The house gets cluttered faster, but let's be honest. I'm more at fault on that account than she is. She's been nothing but gracious to me, so I have no ground to stand on if I'm rude about that. I've been forgiven much by my wife! It's one of the reasons why I love much. (Luke 7:47)



*NOTE:
I just want to make it as clear as possible that I am still falling in love with my wife. Overall, we're doing extremely well, and I'm not just saying that! She's wonderful, and there has been so much patience and love between us. I just wanted to make the point that we should be careful how much we glorify marriage. It's a wonderful institution, and I seriously have no complaints, but the implication that single people are somehow living less joyful lives is so incredibly wrong, whether it's direct or implicit.

The title was a shameless attention grabber. Marriage is awesome! But so is being a child of God, married or no.

The De-Personalization of Our Culture

I have a theory.

It's been cooking for a while now, like an idea for a novel or a slow-cooked christmas ham.

In finding a decent job, looking for a new apartment, applying for credit cards, nagging companies I've worked for to send me my last check already, and generally just doing what adults normally do, I've encountered a large barrier. It's a product of massive amounts of technological and societal complexity in our culture.

For example, I have called/emailed/texted dozens of landlords, realtors, and owners about houses and apartments for rent over the last two months or so. Roughly half of them got back to me. The rest are slowly trickling in, but by now I already found a place to live. So I tell them politely (but in a slightly passive-aggressive fashion):

"I'm sorry, I found a place last week."

To which they respond:

"Oh. Ok." And then they hang up. Or something like this happens:

"Ohhh very nice! Tell me about it!"

Which naturally segways into an attempt to get me to switch. To which I finally reply:

"I'm sorry, but no. I'd rather not go through the hassle. And I'm fairly certain I'm getting a great deal. Good-bye!"

What exactly happened on their end? I envision something similar to this:

Because frankly, I don't understand why somebody would see an email that basically says

OH HAI IMMA GIVE YOU MONEYS IF YER PLACE IS GUD.

And then ignore it. That boggles my mind.

Of course, the job hunt process is much worse, but I do understand that they don't really have any obligation to get back to me (one of hundreds of applicants).

So this is where I began composing my theory. Over the last century the technology in our society has exploded. This is, for the most part, a really good thing. We are the most healthy we've ever been in the history of humanity. We can get places faster than we ever could. We can get more work done, share it with more people, and spread ideas faster than ever. And I can order nutella online and get it delivered to my front door. That's probably the best part.

That said, it's had a subtle side effect.

Let's rewind a hundred years. You went to the post office to send mail. You greeted the clerk who worked there who was probably your neighbor or something. If you wanted a job, you presented yourself to whoever was in charge and attempted to market yourself, to which they would be obliged to accept you or reject you on the spot. How bizarre would it be to approach a barista in a coffee shop, ask them for a mocha, and get this:

Would be vaguely unsettling, yes?

Then for the next three weeks you return to the coffee shop, ask for a mocha, and are met with the same stare. Finally the barista brightens up and says,

"Yes sir, I'll get that to you right away!" And you walk out of the coffee shop with 21 mochas back-ordered from your three weeks of consistent business.

The reason that never happens is because we have a general sense of propriety (most of us, at least) that obliges us to respond politely when we receive a direct, in-person communication from someone.

But with the advent of the internet, all of a sudden we don't have to look someone in the eye to speak to them anymore.

And it becomes very easy to completely ignore an email.

It won't change, definitely not because I've rambled about it online, but I think it should be reformed slightly.

If your business depends on electronic communication to function, every piece of email, text, or voice mail should be considered as viable and urgent as a face to face conversation. Because we still like to be recognized as human beings when we go out of our way to talk to someone, especially if it's waving a check for a security deposit on an apartment under their nose!

Sort of relevant (not really), but funny:

“We've all heard that a million monkeys banging on a million typewriters will eventually reproduce the entire works of Shakespeare. Now, thanks to the Internet, we know this is not true.” 
― Robert Wilensky

So I'm Engaged.

So, I proposed yesterday, and it was awesome.
There are two things I'd like this post to accomplish.
The first is to tell you how I did it (to let anyone know that wants to know that's too shy to ask, that's too far away to ask in person, or whatever. And for the record, if you want to know any more details, feel free to chat with me)


Here begins the saga of frustrated attempts:

I had planned to do it over a weekend when Maeve was coming to Logan for a retreat at bear lake with a Christian Club on USU campus called Cru. This was two weeks ago. The plan was to have her carpool up with somebody else (since I had to be there early), then whoever was in the middle seat would have a sudden urge to use the bathroom at the overlook above the lake. Maeve would get out to let the person go, then they'd shut the door and just drive off. A trail of mason jars with candles would be leading off into the woods next to a pair of snowshoes with me on the other end, and a fantastic view of the valley and the frozen lake behind me.
Good, yeah?
But then we didn't get enough people for the retreat and we couldn't afford to use the facility on friday AND saturday night, so we were forced to drop the first night of the retreat. Following this news, of course, Maeve was all like:
"So I can just ride up with you!"
And I was all,
"YeeEeeEAah! That's...great!"
And then it was snowing like the inside of a snow cone maker on the drive up so it would have been miserable anyway.


NARRATOR INTERJECTION: I have a slight fixation on candles in mason jars. Yay pinterest. Or something. They look like this:

Don't you make fun of my interest in pinterest. It's like facebook without all of the useless drivel and more interesting/funny things.


On with the story.

So, of course, I was frustrated. The ring, unfortunately, had not yet come in the mail, so I was planning on using an heirloom ring that Maeve's family graciously offered for temporary use, or a plain silver band to stand in the place of the real one.

The following weekend rolled around and I was itching to go ask this crazy, beautiful girl to be my wife. I figured I could ambush her after work on friday night, with candles in mason jars (duh) surrounding her car, and me in her truck bed playing this song: (on Oswald, mah guitar)

The timing was wrong, however. I called Maeve's mom before each of these attempts, and she was marvelously patient and helpful as I sorted everything out. That weekend her family wanted to go skiing, and she wanted to have friends from Salt Lake over the following day.
One of the things Maeve has been frustrated about has been the fact that school, work, and I have to admit, me, is crowding out time with her family.
The sense I got was to wait, and to give that time to her family since it was a rare opportunity in this stage of life. So I did.


'NUTHER NARRATOR INTERJECTION: "What gives, man! You had the opportunity, so why didn't you just do it? Who cares if everything is perfect?"
I'm glad you asked.
The engagement, as you will soon see, consisted of a few withdrawals from my checking account, an evening spent with someone I love to be around, and a purdy ring. From a worldly stance, if that is all that an engagement consists of, then it's just a nice date that sets a marker for happy marriage times when it's more socially acceptable to move in together (which we aren't right now, just to clarify).
Being a Christian, I believe a marriage is a symbol of Christ's relationship with the Church. Thus an engagement is similar to the period when God "chose us before the foundation of the world" as stated many times in the letters of Paul. He pursues us, marks us as his own, then makes it so.
I have pursued her, and now have marked her as somebody that I would like to make my own. I have yet to make it so.
Thus, if she shares this view, I don't have to feel hard-pressed to grab her before she's gone. If she wants to be mine, she will say yes.
Thus, I can and should consider the lives of others into this thing, and look for a time that will cause the least stress possible.


That said, onward.

Week three. Spring break was coming, so I figured this would be a good time to do it since neither of us had an agenda for the time off.
I was feeling all depressed about it on Monday, when lo and behold, I got an email from the private metal smith I ordered the ring from saying she shipped it that morning.
I hadn't been expecting it for another two weeks.
So I started to get excited.
The following day my boss offered to let me use a piece of property his father owned that was under his care while his dad was gone. It was really cool. There was a big open field, lots of trees, and a pond. The snow had recently melted and everything was still dead, but it looked rustic and calm. If you know Maeve, she loves that kind of thing.
I started to get really excited.
Then the ring didn't show up on the expected day.
I started to panic. I checked the tracking number online probably thirty times over the next two days when bam, it showed up on Friday morning two hours after the tracking number displayed its arrival in Utah.

So, of course, lots of mason jars with candles were everywhere.
There was sushi, and it was good.
There was hot chocolate and Stewart's Cream Soda (cuz, well, you know) and a variety of other snacks and s'mores beautifully arranged by my family.
There was lovely tableware provided by my mother and grandmother.
There was my sister hiding in a bush at precisely six o'clock, twenty-four minutes before sunset with a camera to catch the moment.
There was a rock three stones from the top of a set of makeshift stairs where she'd be standing, with tree branches knocked out of the way to give my sister a clear shot,
And there was a ring,
and a lovely woman.

Here's a fairly accurate script of what I said (I planned it quite carefully):

"When a man proposes, oftentimes he'll start by saying something about how long they've been together.
I think that's silly,
because it betrays a lack of thought as to the significance of what he's preparing to do.
I then thought of the symbolism of a man kneeling while he does it.
I think the reasons for this are twofold.
The first is that he is utterly smitten by how radiantly beautiful she is, and can do nothing but fall to his knees before her.
The second is that he is offering up the most tender thing he can possibly give to another human being for the rest of his life.
So, Maeve Buchanan,
will you be my wife?"

So there you have it.

I mentioned I had two reasons for writing this.

Here's the second, which I started to address earlier: The engagement is not about how "good" the proposal itself is.
This may be old hat to most of you; it's for me to explain to anyone who wants to know what my heart is behind all of this.
Neither of us are emotionally explosive people.
Yes, we're people, so we have our moments, but we don't freak out over things.
Maeve was smiling, and she squeezed the tar out of me afterward and laughed a bit, but she didn't start weeping or squealing or anything.
I'm NOT putting down anyone who reacts like that, I just want you to understand why that didn't happen here.
We already determined that we wanted to be married. That's something that I think needs to be talked about, because in his haste, a man may propose to somebody who is totally not ready for that step. Then she says yes because it seems like a good idea, when in fact most facets of what a marriage would look like between the two have not yet been discussed.
Marriage esplodes, people are sad.
A lovely engagement (as I hope I made it to be with the help of my awesome family) is most likely the other person at their best.
There needs to be a time when you have to deal with the other person at their worst.

Lots of people within the church talk about being "ready" for marriage, then they don't tell you what that means, so all you're left with is a nagging feeling that you have to be more morally stable than you are for God to grant you a spouse. And then you feel guilty that you aren't good enough, and then you become bitter if God never gives you a girlfriend, and then you leave the church because clearly, you were not ready for it and God doesn't love you enough to change you.
I hope you know that this cannot be and is not the way things are.
I can tell you that when Maeve and I started dating, I had just come out of a big video game addiction, and I was dealing with anger, patience issues, and disrespect for authority. I am by no means perfect, but God deemed it necessary for Maeve to come into my life right then. Surprisingly, she loved me through all of that, and was used by God to continue to make me into the man He had in mind for me to be. I am still a very very flawed human being. That's the only kind of human being there is. But I have certainly changed.
Being ready for marriage is not a certain level of good person-ness (not a word. Deal with it). It's being willing to look at someone in the depth of their sin and saying "I will love you anyway through this." Again. And again. And again.
If you have more baggage, it will be harder. But the same principle applies, and it always applies, because it's the same thing God does for you. Again. And again. And again.

Yes I'm engaged. No nothing is certain. But God is good, and Maeve is proof of that. He gets all the credit, and my goal is to reflect his love for me into the way I love Maeve today, the days between now and when we are married, and all of the days after that.