Tag Archives: Virtues

“Just” Friends

They go out to a movie. She likes this one better than the one they saw two weeks ago. He doesn’t say much about it.

They are husband and wife, young enough in their relationship to find occasional surprises in the likes and dislikes of each other, and not realizing it will always be this way. They are good friends, coaxing each other to openness. What do you really think about that movie? Come on…I really want to know.

Thinkers and singers have explored friendship and love for thousands of years. There is the pursuit and the passion, and oh, yes, the steadfast promise.

“I want a woman, I want a lover, I want a friend,” sang Jackie Wilson in a 1959 rhythm and blues classic, naming in simple terms the multiple relationships of husband and wife.

It is reality: male and female we are created, and we seek out each other, to be lovers and friends, to reveal and to be revealed.

“What can be more delightful than to have some one to whom you can say everything with the same absolute confidence as to yourself?” Cicero wrote. “Is not prosperity robbed of half its value if you have no one to share your joy? On the other hand, misfortunes would be hard to bear if there were not some one to feel them even more acutely than yourself.”

They sit across from each other at the table, and learn of the day’s events, his and hers. Some days are uncertain, some days are a song. I may lose my job. I wish we could afford something better. If I get a promotion, are you willing to move? The baby kicked today!

Spouses and friends, they sort through such matters, open to each other and assured that come what may, their sorrows and uncertainties will be shared and supported, their joy will be doubled.

Children may come to take their total attention, or nearly so. But if friendship is to endure, couples will nurture this central relationship of their marriage and family. Through school and sports and growing up, married friends share their love with their children, not reducing their own, but expanding it. And among the greatest gifts the children receive is the experience of their parents’ love and friendship.

They talk in bed. She is worried about the bills. He says God will provide.

Fear and faith are revealed. The bills are real and so is the faith.

Faith and truth will overcome the fears of friends who have come to rely on each other – the strength of one to shore up the weakness of the other. Their strength is in the Lord, and in their own unity.

There are some things they don’t have to talk about. He leaves the table saw and other tools in the middle of the garage long after the project is finished. She forgets to give him a telephone message. Neither complains.

Friends know each other’s quirks. Perfection was never part of the promise they made each other, or possible.

Married friends need time together. It takes time to get to know each other’s failings and flaws, and it takes time to get over them.

She tells him he ought to take better care of his health. They both know her concern is genuine.

Married friends hold each other accountable, willing to speak the truth to each other, always forgiving but not excusing.

Do you see yourself in any of these vignettes? If you do, congratulations. If you don’t there are some steps to take to strengthen your friendship in marriage.

Author John M. Gottman says that happily married couples actually like each other, and they express their fondness and admiration for each other.

Remember when I locked my keys in the car and you rescued me? I am really happy you wanted to get involved in that project. I was touched when you were sensitive, or careful, tender, playful, lusty, understanding.

Happily married couples concentrate on the positive qualities of each other.

When we are apart, I often think fondly of my partner. I am really proud of my partner. My partner finds me sexy and attractive. When I come into a room, my partner is glad to see me.

Couples spend time together. “Spending time with your partner tells him or her in no uncertain terms, ‘You matter to me,’” writes Michele Weiner-Davis. “Time together gives people opportunities to collect new memories, do activities they enjoy, to laugh at each other’s jokes, to renew their love.”

She advises couples to plan and schedule time together, to make dates (and leave the kids at home), to not waste time figuring out whose fault it is you haven’t been spending time together, and that you don’t need a trip to a tropical island when you can walk around the block together.

They take a walk in the evening. At their age, time together no longer feels like a luxury; it has come to be the necessity they always knew it was. They talk about her day, his day, the kids and their careers, the appointment with a doctor and what it might mean, tomorrow’s hopes, the week’s demands. And for long stretches, they don’t need to talk at all.

Try a Little Kindness

Kindness in words creates confidence, kindness in thinking creates profoundness, and kindness in feeling creates love (Lau Tzu).

Michelle hates to make decisions. Her husband, Craig, enjoys it. Over the years of their marriage Craig has learned that Michelle doesn’t like having decision made for her either, so how he makes a decision is very important. He has learned to ask for her opinion and to offer his in return. He takes her feelings into consideration; he knows what she likes and dislikes, and respects that. Craig loves Michelle and one way he demonstrates his love by making decisions with kindness and consideration, and Michelle loves him all the more for that.

Kindness is a difficult attribute to define, but not to illustrate. Each of us, if asked, could tell personal stories about when we have been treated kindly and when we have been treated unkindly. We know it when we experience it, and we recognize when it isn’t there.

A kind person acts in benevolent, gentle, and loving ways. In marriage, kindness is demonstrated through generous acts, considerate behavior, and comforting words. A kind person usually has a mild and pleasant disposition and acts with tenderness and concern for others. A man who brings his wife flowers as a sign of his love and a woman who strokes her husband’s arm as they watch a movie are acting with kindness.

Kindness is one of the seven virtues, and is considered the opposite of envy. A kind person celebrates another’s good fortune while an envious person grows angry at another’s success.

For example, Marta and Luis both have high stress jobs, but Marta is far more successful at her job than Luis is in his. While this is, at times, a source of tension in their marriage, Marta and Luis recognize the tension and deal with it as adults. Marta tries not to brag about her success and never uses it as a weapon when they argue. She cares about Luis and doesn’t want to hurt his self-esteem. For his part, Luis tries to celebrate Marta’s successes. He struggles at times with feeling that he is not carrying his share of the family responsibility, but because Marta treats him with such kindness, Luis is a happy man.

Kindness comes from the same root as the word “kin,” someone who is a part of your family. Thus, when you show kindness to your spouse, you are treating him or her as a part of your family, as “bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh” (Genesis 2:23). These words are used at weddings to describe the ideal relationship between husband and wife. This scripture passage makes clear that for marriages to succeed—that is, to be happy and healthy—then couples must treat each other with the same gentleness, courtesy, compassion, and respect that they want for themselves.

Kindness is a way of showing love to another. Everything that St. Paul wrote about love in 1 Corinthians 13 (Love is patient; not jealous, pompous, inflated, or rude; does not seek its own interests, is not quick-tempered, does not brood over injury or rejoice over wrongdoing) also defines how a kind person acts.

Kindness is an essential virtue in a healthy and happy marriage. A recent study conducted in various cultures around the world asked people to name the trait they desired most in a mate. For both sexes, people overwhelmingly wanted their mates to be kind.

Marriages are strengthened when both members of a couple treat each other kindly: with love and understanding and with dignity and respect. Kindness is evident when a person puts the needs of his or her spouse first, acting on what will please or help the other most, and not on self-interest. By never being rude or abusive to your spouse in any way, you build a relationship of mutual trust and respect. A marriage based upon compassionate and caring thoughts, words, and actions—a marriage based on kindness—will be a generous relationship, with both man and wife sharing freely all that they have with each other, with their children, and with the larger society. These are signs of healthy, happy, and strong marriages.

A Spanish proverb says that “He who sows courtesy reaps friendship, and he who plants kindness gathers love.” This is also true in marriage. Little acts of kindness can mean a lot. Simple acts work wonders: cooking your spouse’s favorite meal when he or she has had a hard day or bringing home a little gift “just because.” Many couples divide up chore responsibilities because of personal preferences. Sometimes doing another person’s chore, like taking the car to get tires rotated, can be a wonderful act of kindness. So can putting love notes in a briefcase or lunch bag, or allowing your spouse just to sit and watch a ballgame on TV when you’d rather do something else.

Disagreements happen in every relationship; the healthy married couple has learned to resolve these disagreements kindly. By offering a gentle word to an angry remark or by refusing to say harsh things when you feel them, you let kindness wrap you and your spouse in a loving blanket of respect that smothers the flame of anger before it can erupt into an inferno of emotions. In this way, kindness leads to happiness.

Gratitude: Foundational for Marriage

If you consult one of the larger dictionaries about the meaning of the word virtue you will discover three categories of virtue. They are cardinal virtues, natural virtues and theological virtues. There is no mention, however, of marriage virtues. This series will be filling that absence, with a monthly discussion of a particular virtue which can strengthen the great adventure of marriage. This month the focus is on gratitude.

Why do people marry? The short answer is that they are in love. Being in love and practicing love is truly the essence of the Christian vocation, no matter what one’s state in life because all true love is ultimately about falling in love with God.

Marriage affords endless opportunities to practice loving. But because the intimacy of the relationship also reveals personal flaws, (the other’s and our own), we can slip into negativity, forgetting what it was like to initially fall in love, and what it is now to live in love. The virtue of gratitude can help us remember.

Implicit in the term virtue is the notion of habitual, of a way of being that shapes our character. So it follows that to develop the virtue of gratitude it is important to be grateful, both in the recesses of our inner selves, and in external exchanges with our marriage partner, and to do so with some regularity.

So important did St. Ignatius of Loyola consider gratitude that he thought the absence of it was the only real sin. Without gratitude we cannot appreciate the grace of God which surrounds us, all of us, all the time. One resource for getting in touch with the roots of gratitude is the Ignatian examen.

Jesuit father Dennis Hamm presents a helpful modern version of the ancient examination of conscience which is more an examen of consciousness. He points out that in French and Spanish the word conciencia has a much larger meaning than the English word conscience. Consciousness is about awareness, self-knowledge, and feelings. The practice consists in prayer at the end of the day, reviewing high points and low points and being conscious of one’s feelings in relation to the daily activities, challenges and questions. Feelings will rise up and Fr. Hamm assures us that feelings are genuine clues about what is really going on in our interior lives.

The method is easily adapted to illuminating the marriage relationship. At the end of the day, find a quiet place for a few moments of prayer, and begin by praying for light to see and understand how you regard your spouse. A simple prayer is all that is needed, followed by a review of the day with the emphasis being on thanksgiving. This is not a search for what is wrong, but for seeing more clearly what is right.

One might ask the question, in the spirit of prayer, how the presence of one’s spouse is a source of blessing. What unique qualities of your spouse rise up in your consciousness? As in all prayer, it is essential to be honest with oneself, and of course, with God. Don’t make things up. You are concentrating on a person’s reality, and on your own reality. Over time it is possible that annoying behaviors will be seen more as quirks. The examen can and should include the relationship itself. How is life richer and more meaningful because you and your spouse are given to each other?

If a daily examen seems impossible, then a weekly exercise can still be beneficial. The point is to bring to consciousness the essence of the other person, oneself, and the marital relationship and to express genuine gratitude for all of that.

Because Ignatian prayer usually moves toward action, it seems reasonable to find ways to express this gratitude to your husband or wife. You might try a version of the Elizabeth Barrett Browning poem, “How Do I Love Thee?” You might create something like, “I give thanks for you because. . .”

Gratitude leads to many other “virtues” like laughter and fun, compassion and mercy. In addition to highlighting the gifts of our marriage partner, the examen will also uncover our propensity to magnify small failings, our own and others.

I think of a poem by the Carmelite nun, Jessica Powers, “The Tear in the Shade”. The narrator tells of making a small, half-inch tear in a shade, and then worrying about it (almost in an obsessive way). She goes outside “to lose her worry there”, and when she returns to the room “It seemed that nothing but the tear was there.” She goes on to say that there had been beautiful furniture, purple flowers, rugs—but, “It was amazing how they dwindled, dwindled,/and how the tear grew till it filled the room”. Practicing gratitude will allow the beautiful to flourish. It will also grace all aspects of our life, beyond the boundaries of marriage.

When the wife of the Rev. Martin Luther King Sr. was shot while she was playing the organ in Ebenezer Baptist Church during a Sunday service, Rev. King turned to his congregation and asked everyone to kneel and thank God for all that had been left to them. How could this be? He had lost his son to assassination and now his wife. How could he say such a thing? Because during the course of his life, loving his wife and his children, loving the people he served as pastor, he was falling ever more in love with God. He knew that God was still with them; nothing was lacking.

The effect of practicing gratitude in marriage has the effect of shifting our perspective, enlarging our horizons, and deepening our love, not only for our spouse but for the wider community.

For Reflection and Action

What qualities of your spouse are you most grateful for? Share your lists with each other.
Does your spouse have an annoying behavior or habit that you’ve magnified out of proportion? Make an effort over the next month to let it go.

Patience: Key to a Lasting Marriage

“God, give me patience—right now!”

Most of us have probably said some version of that prayer. Perhaps we’re waiting for a wife to finish dressing when we’re already 20 minutes late. Or we find—again—a husband’s dirty socks and underwear on the floor instead of in the laundry basket.

When long-married couples are asked the recipe for marital success, many identify patience as a key ingredient. It’s the indispensable virtue for living together day after day in relative peace, without constant struggles to change the other to our liking.

Patience in marriage begins with the individual. Our daily routine gives us ample opportunity to practice patience: waiting at the drive-through window, teaching our child a soccer skill, or learning a new computer application. As we grow in patience outside the home, we bring the virtue into the home. Patience with co-workers and store clerks translates into patience with my spouse and children. Sometimes, the answer to the question “What have I done for my marriage today?” is “When I got caught in the traffic jam I used it as a chance to pray and think rather than fume.”

St. Francis de Sales reminds us that we must be patient with everyone, but especially with ourselves. Our faults and failings may tempt us to reproach ourselves harshly and give in to frustration, even despair. Instead, says St. Francis, we need to pick up and move on, trusting that God will help us to do better next time. If we learn to treat ourselves gently, we will be more likely to extend that same charity and understanding to our spouse.

Within marriage, patience means discerning what needs to be changed and what needs to be tolerated. On our wedding day we probably considered our spouse practically perfect—then we immediately set out to improve him or her. Of course, we quickly found out that he or she didn’t necessarily want to be improved. In fact, they probably had ideas for our own improvement!

Some behaviors and personal characteristics resist change. My husband always takes a long time to get ready, whether for work or a social engagement. I am directionally challenged, so I need repeated instructions about how to get from Point A to Point B. These traits are annoying, but neither of us is likely to change. We need to be patient with each other and learn to work around them.

Other behaviors need to be challenged for the good of the marriage. Patience can help to make the challenge effective. One evening, as Mary was paying the bills she found out that Tom had again charged too much to their credit cards. His reckless spending threatened their financial stability. Mary’s first impulse was to storm into the family room and confront Tom. Instead, she gave herself a couple days to calm down. She developed a strategy to hold both of them financially accountable. When she finally approached Tom, she chose a Saturday morning when they were well-rested and could hear what each other was saying.

Some behaviors, such as domestic violence, should never be tolerated. Abuse victims sometimes believe that if they are patient, the abuse will eventually end. Rather, abuse tends to escalate over time and only stops with outside intervention.

In addition to being patient with each other, couples need to be patient with the marriage itself. Healthy marriages grow and change. Social scientists point out that a couple can go through seven or more stages of marriage throughout a lifetime. Some stages hold excitement and promise: a child arrives or the couple moves into their dream home.

Inevitably, however, couples go through periods of disillusionment and boredom. They may find their spouse unappealing and wonder how they can ever spend the rest of their life with this person. Sometimes a couple may even consider divorce.

These stages, although difficult, are normal. With patience, a couple can work through them and emerge into the next stage with a deepened appreciation of each other and the marriage.

Like marriage itself, patience is the work of a lifetime. Each day brings a small opportunity to cultivate the virtue and to grow one’s marriage.

Play: A Virtue to Take Seriously

Our mouths were filled with laughter; our tongues sang for joy. Then it was said among the nations, “The LORD has done great things for them.” (Psalm 126:2)

“We realize that we enjoy working together so much that it feels like play. We’ve taken to calling it Plurk.” (Harville Hendrix and Helen LaKelly Hunt)

There is the story about the man who goes to see his doctor for an exam. After getting a thorough checkup, the doctor calls the man’s wife into his office without the husband and says that her husband is a very ill. He has a life-threatening condition and things do not look very good.

However, if she is willing to be at the husband’s beck and call 24 hours a day, seven days a week, and is willing to cater to his every want and desire, making him special breakfasts in the morning, giving him wonderful meals in the evening, sending him off to work with wonderfully prepared lunches, making love to him whenever he’s desirous of her, and generally doing everything to make him completely happy, for the next several months, there is an excellent likelihood her husband will pull through it and be okay.

As they are driving home the husband turns to his wife and asks, “So what did the doctor tell you?”

To which his wife replies, “He told me you’re going to die.”

Humor serves a couple by providing the space to lighten up the relationship so that neither takes what the other said or did, or the current situation, so personally. The man in the story seemingly needs compassion and sympathy, but what his wife gives instead helps her manage her own anxiety, thus allowing for an important challenge to her husband. Her playfulness makes it possible for him to take charge of his own life – both metaphorically and literally.

Love and good will are essential components of marriage, yet even with love we still become anxious. An anxious response can get confused as a loving and caring one. When we’re anxious we often end up doing what is good for us since it relieves our anxiety, but it’s not necessarily good for the one we supposedly took the action for.

Lighten up

Rather than work on the relationship, each spouse can focus on their own issues in order to become a mature, capable and responsible adult, and do so out of a sense of joy and delight. Work implies a seriousness, which is problematic and points to a lack of self-differentiation. When overly serious we operate from a highly anxious state that cuts us off from our higher levels of functioning – our capacity to reason and problem-solve. Seriousness keeps us operating out a reflex mode. We react rather than respond. There is a Mary Engelbreit poster that says: “Life is mysterious, don’t take it so serious.” Humor helps move us outside a seemingly hopeless situation and to see with new eyes.

Learn to go in the other direction

Akin to humor is the paradoxical intervention when we go along with, or exaggerate, the situation. “It’s the worst thing that could have happened. I think I’ll stay in bed!” Or, “My car broke down; life is terrible.” We sometimes play a game of “Pet Peeves.” Each person must state a complaint and exaggerate it while everyone else exhorts, “That’s terrible!” or “I hate when that happens!” One can’t help have a hilarious time.

George complained that his wife, Sue, makes annoying facial grimaces whenever she thinks he’s worried, causing George to be angry. I suggest he learn to misread her and imagine her facial expression as her “sexy” look. I say this not because it’s right or wrong, but because it frees him to see her less intensely and provide a new way to respond. I chide that he may not know what “that face of hers” really means. Such playfulness slows us down and lowers our reactivity.

Make play central to the relationship

Couples can cultivate play, as well as joy and delight. Playfulness gives the space needed for intimacy as surely as repeating someone’s question gives time for an answer.

When couples first date they tell how they love having fun and even being silly. They do interesting things; they play. Once they start to court each other and move toward marriage they’ll say, “Now we’re in a serious relationship.” Somehow we link commitment to seriousness. The antidote to too much seriousness is play.

Children know how to play and sometimes have such a good time that other kids begin to watch and even take part in their play. Play is attractive and magnetic. We knew something then that is still extremely useful today. Individuals who know how to play make great partners. Playful couples are magical to observe. They have a twinkle in their eyes, a lightness without being flippant. Each partner is loose while remaining solid and grounded. They are grace in action. In short, they remind us that play is a virtue we need to take seriously.

Living Simply: A Lasting and Fulfilling Way of Life

“After a ten-year bender of gaudy dreams and godless consumerism, Americans are starting to trade down….Upscale is out; downscale is in…Flaunting money is considered gauche….In place of materialism, many Americans are embracing simpler pleasures and homier values. ‘I think that people (says one theologian) are going to look back at today as a hinge period in the country’s history.’”

Sound familiar? That assessment is as up-to-date as today’s headlines, but as dated as the week it appeared, in the April 8, 1991 issue of Time Magazine. It was written at the tail end of an eight-month recession and the beginning of a long period of borrowing and spending. If the trend to the simple life had a lasting impact, it escaped my attention, and, I suspect, yours as well.

Maybe it’s time to rethink the simple life, but with a new sense of purpose. Many of us face two alternatives: increase our income or reduce our spending. With millions of jobs lost and retirement savings cut in half, increasing our income may be a pipe dream. The only realistic alternative may be to downshift to a more appropriate lifestyle.

The economic downturn is testing the resiliency of America’s families. There is no greater source of family conflict than money. A survey by Citibank once found that 57 percent of divorces “stem from arguments over money.” Simple living gives us the chance to shift our focus from money and possessions to happiness and a sense of purpose.

Start Small

But to avoid repeating the 1991 “trend” that wasn’t, it’s important to start small and maintain a sense of balance. Cutting the family budget is like cutting back on eating. Crash diets don’t work. That’s why they are often called “yoyo diets.” They are so extreme, we can’t sustain them. So our weight goes up and down, up and down, just like a yoyo. In the same way, paring our budgets should start small and continue to build. The objective is balance, a reasonable compromise between what we want and what we really need.

One way to think about balancing our “needs” and our “wants” is the concept of “superfluous income.” The concept provides a good rule of thumb for measuring the amount of possessions we need for a decent life. Albino Barrera, O.P., an economist and theologian at Providence College, mentions two ways of thinking about superfluous income. On the one hand, we can think of it as an amount of income that’s more than we need to maintain what’s required by what was once called “our station in life.” On the other hand, we can measure our income and our possessions against the needs of others.

This second way of thinking about superfluous income is what drives so many people to give substantial amounts of time and money to others. Economists use a term called “opportunity costs.” We can spend Wednesday night at the mall, or we can spend it teaching the less fortunate. But we can’t do both at the same time. The decisions we make determine the kinds of lives we lead. One benefit of living simply is that it frees us up to do things we find fulfilling.

Doing things that we find fulfilling is the positive side of what is essentially making a sacrifice. When a sacrifice frees us up to do what we believe is important, we’re far more likely to make it voluntarily. And making the sacrifice voluntarily will make it lasting.

Time Magazine reported that in the 1991 trend to simplicity, people were “making a virtue out of necessity.” That explains why the trend didn’t last. As soon as the recession was over, people started a new cycle of borrowing and spending. Without the necessity of living simply, people saw no virtue in it.

Desire for Simplicity Comes From Within

The desire to live simply must come from within, which may be why the book that has been called the “sacred text” of simple living is titled Voluntary Simplicity. Its author, Duane Elgin, makes a distinction between what we “want” and what we “need.” We may want a McMansion, when all we really need is a two-bedroom Cape. The trick is to downshift what we want to what we really need. And that has to come from within; it has to be voluntary.

Most of us, I suspect, believe deep down that the more we possess, the happier we are. But somehow that formula never works out. Philosophers and theologians have been telling us just the opposite for centuries. Now science is reinforcing their insights. When a Washington Post reporter studied a number of scientific studies in 2006, he found that “once personal wealth exceeds about $12,000 a year, more money produces virtually no increase in life satisfaction.”

What may have been even more surprising is the result of a 2006 survey on happiness by the London School of Economics. It found that the nation with the happiest people in the world was Bangladesh, one of the world’s poorest countries. It has an annual income of roughly $500 per person. By contrast, the U.S. has an annual income of $37,000 per person, but ranked just 46th in the survey.

So science is confirming what we probably know deep in our hearts. We shouldn’t let the nation’s advertisers, or our wealthier next door neighbors, convince us otherwise: Wealth and possessions don’t bring happiness for individuals or for families. If we can internalize the desire to live a balanced life, if the choice rises from our own self-determination, if we believe that the simple life is its own best reward – then we stand a chance of making simplicity a lasting and fulfilling way to live.

Moving Beyond “Healthy” Anger

Christian married couples are called to love their spouses with a Christ-like love that is patient and kind, with no selfish or unjust anger, envy, or other unloving emotions (1 Cor. 13:4-7).

Don, a Christian realtor, does not love his wife Jaimee with a Christ-like love when she forgets to give him a phone message about an important real estate deal. Don yells angrily: “How could you forget the phone message? You’re so inconsiderate! Promise me you will never forget any of my phone messages again!”

St. Francis de Sales warns Christians that anger can turn into hatred. Couples can deal with anger effectively by managing their anger and, most of all, by following Jesus with love, wisdom, and other Christian virtues. Anger management helps couples grow from an unhealthy anger to a normal, supposedly healthy anger. Following Jesus virtuously helps couples grow further towards a Christ-like, anger-free marital love.

Moving from unhealthy to “healthy” anger

Anger management experts help couples with unhealthy anger move towards a normal “healthy” anger by managing their anger with such things as timeouts, deep breathing, empathy, cognitive therapy, and communication. With “healthy” anger, couples act constructively and reasonably. But they still feel angry at times. They typically experience a few episodes of moderate anger a week, often with some yelling, according to an American Psychological Association report.

“Healthy” anger is better than unhealthy anger. But “healthy” anger is not all it’s cracked up to be. Suppose a couple’s “healthy” anger lingered for the rest of the day or evening, and suppose the couple experienced also a few episodes of “normal” envy every week, and “normal” anxiety, and other negative, un-Christ-like emotions. That’s a lot of negative, un-Christ-like emotional turmoil!

Jesus calls couples to grow from an unhealthy or “healthy” anger towards a Christ-like, anger-free marital love. But many anger management experts, and even some Christian marriage experts, say that we cannot help being angry at times, so we are not morally responsible for our angry feelings or for other emotions.

Growth towards a Christ-like, anger-free marital love

Jesus can help couples grow towards a Christ-like, anger-free marital love. We couples are often morally responsible for our emotions, and we can become Christ-like emotionally. Jesus teaches that “anyone who is angry with his brother will answer for it before the court” (Matt. 5:22). St. Augustine writes that our emotions are morally good if our love is good, and morally evil if our love is evil. St. Thomas Aquinas teaches that our emotions are morally good if they are reasonable, and morally evil if they are unreasonable.

Aquinas explains that we are not morally responsible for the involuntary, irrational, physical elements of our emotions, such as a rapid heart rate, but we are often morally responsible for the voluntary, rational elements of our emotions, such as thoughts and feelings of anger. Most of us become more reasonable and loving emotionally as we grow from infancy to adulthood. During our Terrible Twos we might have thrown temper tantrums if we had not been given Cap’n Crunch’s Crunch Berries for breakfast, but we would not have been morally responsible for this. Adults, however, would ordinarily be morally responsible for temper tantrums like this.

Couples can gradually reduce and eventually eliminate selfish or unjust anger with love, wisdom, and other Christian virtues, together with God’s healing and divinizing grace. Aquinas teaches that we can control anger and other emotions with a wise intellect (wisdom) and a loving will (love). Suppose that the realtor Don took a timeout when he was mad at Jaimee for forgetting the phone message, but he still felt angry. With Christian wisdom, Don could come up with reasons for not being mad at Jaimee. He could reason that Jaimee just forgot to give him the message, so she was not trying to hurt him, and everyone forgets things at times. He could reason also that anger usually punishes itself and profits nobody, and that Jesus wants him to treat Jaimee well instead of blasting her angrily.

With Christian love in addition to wisdom, Don could desire and choose to love Jaimee generously instead of getting mad at her. Then he would be following the advice of Francis de Sales that it is better “to find the way to live without anger, than to pretend to make a moderate and discreet use of it.” Here Francis criticizes the “anger management” theories of his times.

Christian couples can gradually reduce and eventually eliminate anger with love, wisdom, and other Christian virtues. These virtues kill off anger more powerfully than anger management does–especially if couples commit themselves to following Jesus virtuously in a peaceful and joyful Christian marriage discipleship.

About the author
David Sanderlin (Ph.D., University of Notre Dame) is a retired college professor and author of books and articles on Catholic spirituality, ethics, relationships and other topics.

This article is drawn largely from the author’s Catholic marriage guide, The Christian Way to be Happily Married (Christian Starlight Press, 2010), especially Part III, Chapter 3.

Humility: Foundation for Marital Happiness

J. Paul Getty, the oil man, was a billionaire–and proud of it. He was at one time considered the world’s richest man, but during the most active years in his business, he lived alone in a 72-room mansion outside London. Over a 25-year period, he had married and divorced five women. “I hate to be a failure,” he said. “I would gladly give all my millions for just one, lasting marital success.”

Getty gained a fortune. It brought him fame and power. But by his own admission, it did not seem to bring him happiness. His life is an object lesson for our age, which celebrates celebrity, wealth, power–and the pride that comes with it.

It’s been said that pride is a mortal enemy to love, and if so, we can assume a mortal enemy to lasting marital happiness. That may be because pride, and its excessive focus on our egos, prevents us from seeing the world around us as it is, a world in which we are utterly dependent on the God who created us and dependent as well on those who, in turn, depend on us.

The antidote to pride is humility. It is an outlook on life that accepts reality. The reality is that God is the Creator, and we are his creatures. No matter how smart, how good looking or charming, how hard-working and wealthy, or how powerful we are, we are still creatures.

Humility is the acceptance of things as they are. It is seeing our place in the world, not as we would have it, but as it really is. Only the humble have a firm grasp of reality. The proud are inflated with who they think they are; the humble are content with who they really are.

Most of us think instinctively of pride as a high and humility as a low. When we’re up, we’re proud; when we’re down, we’re humbled. But humility actually falls in the middle, as a golden mean between the two manifestations of pride: the egoism that inflates our self-importance on some days and deflates our true selves on other days.

An adage used by Alcoholics Anonymous describes the way many people view themselves: “Greater than or less than, but never equal to.”

This bouncing back and forth between the earth and the sky takes a toll on our own spiritual and emotional health. When we find that we will never scale the heights we envision for ourselves we become frustrated and dejected, and a burden to those around us, especially our families.

The model of humility is Christ. As Pope John XXIII put it, “the principal center of the divine instruction” is the Gospel passage: “Learn from me, for I am meek and humble of heart.” In other words, this was no idle comment. It was the core of Christ’s personality.

Christ not only preached humility to others, he lived it himself. Though he was the Son of God, he was born in a cave. He worked as a carpenter. He composed no great work of art; built no towering edifice; assumed no great political office. He died nailed to a cross, the fate of a common criminal. He did all this willingly. And yet, he became the central figure in world history.

His central mission was to serve others. If the acceptance of reality is the inward sign of humility, service is its outward sign. It has been said that humility is nothing more or less than the will to serve. Nothing makes it more difficult to serve God and those we live with than pride. Nothing makes it easier than humility, which opens our hearts to the possibility of serving a person other than ourselves.

There are many opportunities for service in the world, but none more important than those within the family. Christ’s service was built on sacrifice. Our opportunity for humble service may mean a great sacrifice like putting a career on hold in order to tend to an ill spouse or child. It may mean nothing more than holding our tongue when criticized or helping a child with homework.

Humility is all about relationships. It is an acceptance of the reality that we are dependent on the God who created us, dependent on the love and help of those around us, and created in order to love and serve God and all his creation.

J. Paul Getty admitted to being a lonely man. He said that people liked him primarily for his money. According to one of his wives, he spent so much time building a business that he had no time to build a relationship with his family.

We don’t need to be wealthy, famous, or powerful to fulfill our destiny. We just need to be humble enough to value the modest gifts we have and loving enough to share them with those around us.

Forgiveness: Healing the Hurts in Marriage

On our 25th wedding anniversary, Neil and I celebrated with our faith community at Mass. By chance the Gospel was the parable of the prodigal son, but it probably wasn’t chance at all! This story is often applied to parents and children, but as I listened, I heard our journey in marriage.

I remembered one of our sons saying that the father didn’t just happen to be on the hill that day, that he went out every day and watched the road, waiting to forgive. In many ways this is what happens in marriage. We become road watchers. Marriage involves waiting, sometimes through real or emotional distance, sometimes through deep hurts, and it calls us to seek and offer forgiveness. Marriage asks that we not take forgiving for granted, but instead that we celebrate when it happens. Love demands that we stand by the road every day watching for each other, welcoming each other home.

At that Mass, I listened to Fr. Rich talk about forgiveness in the Gospel, and I realized that being married to Neil had taught me to stand in a place of forgiveness. In fact, reconcilication is the most critical work of the first years of marriage, and if a couple does it well, it becomes the work and the gift of a lifetime.

One of the graces present in the sacrament of marriage is the grace of healing and forgiveness. When we come to marriage we each bring our histories – healed or broken, reflected upon or repressed – to our life together. Our vocation is to help each other become fully human. This means finding a way to share hurts, to risk allowing the other person to know us so intimately that we are willing to open up old wounds and allow God to heal them through each other. Marriage at its best creates a safe space where healing and forgiveness can take place. It offers the possibility of having a companion to share the journey, someone to will help us to dig a litter deeper, to reflect more fully.

One of the best parts of being forgiven is the freedom it brings. Jesus taught us to ask for forgiveness when he taught us to pray. “Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us” invites God to forgive us as we forgive.

Another way to look at it is to say, loose the cords that bind us as we have released the strands we hold of another’s guilt. In marriage we can hold each other fast, or we can release each other to grow toward wholeness. It is always a choice!

Early in our marriage, Neil and I didn’t know how to free each other. We had grown up in homes where feelings were not shared, and where reconciling was difficult. In my home it was not safe to express anger. In Neil’s home disagreement could lead to estrangement. Because we brought these broken places to our marriage, we found ourselves unable to have healthy conflict and to move to reconciliation. Our joy in each other changed to distance, and living together became a strain. I wanted to leave, but I was too scared, so I picked fights, threw tantrums, and in general made Neil’s life miserable. One evening I asked him, “Why do you put up with this? Why don’t you just leave?” Neil grabbed my arms and said, “Don’t you know, you are worth waiting for?”

I didn’t know. I didn’t think I was worth much at all. But Neil seemed to think so, and somewhere deep inside I felt hope. And hope, once the cords are loosed, will grow. Neil gave me a gift of forgiveness with his words, and with that gift I could begin to forgive myself. And it is a gift that keeps on giving.

When our second son was going through a rough time in his teens, he yelled at me, “Why do you and Dad put up with me? Why don’t you throw me out?” I heard myself in those words, and I hear Neil in my response,“Don’t you know you are worth waiting for?” The gift had come full circle. When we are forgiven and healed we are able to see our true selves, the beloved of God, and because we know it, we can share it.

Because of the things that Neil and I encountered on our road together, I have learned to forgive myself, my parents, uncontrolled events, God, our children, and Neil.

A friend of mine says that the concept of “forgive and forget” comes from chivalry, not from Scripture, and she described forgiving this way: “You know you have forgiven when you can remember the incident but not relive the feelings.”

I would add one more piece to her definition: You have forgiven when you are able to bless the incident. It is easy to bless the good things in life, but when I remember the times I have been hurt and am able to see the blessing that came from it, I know I have been healed. It is in the blessing that the pain becomes a gift.

Perseverance: Love Never Ends

When Courtney crossed the stage to receive her diploma a small crowd in the hall exploded in applause. Her husband Stan cheered loudly, standing with both hands in the air. Exiting the stage, she looked up, pointed to Stan and blew a kiss.

That said it all!

They both knew this moment was a joint victory for them, the culmination of a “steady persistent course of action…in spite of difficulties and discouragement” [perseverance, Webster’s dictionary]. While writing papers and completing an internship, Courtney worked part-time, sharing care of their 18-month-old son with Stan, who worked one and a half jobs to make ends meet.

When they married, they agreed to support each other in completing their education and career plans. But they didn’t anticipate the monetary or emotional cost: days without a decent conversation, weekends without time for relaxation or intimacy, less money for clothes and entertainment, periods of resentment and self-pity. Courtney and Stan faced an unanticipated challenge together yet succeeded in fulfilling their dream for a better future.

Stan and Courtney are models of perseverance. So, too, are Dick and Nancy, who emerged from Dick’s stroke with a radically altered life style, and Imelda and Jose, who worked round-the-clock for three years to start their small business.

With a divorce rate of almost 50%, it’s inspiring to meet couples who struggle, facing difficulties and overcoming them with a stronger partnership and a deeper commitment to their marriage. What makes such perseverance possible for some and not for others? Is it just a matter of gutting it out or is there some magic formula for which challenges yield stronger relationships?

Every couple I have ever known has times when they are disillusioned, angry, depressed, tired, or just plain ready to give up. It could be over money, work, kids, alcohol, the house, sports, sex, or in-laws. Why do some couples persevere and others give up trying to make things work?

As I talk with both newly marrieds and seasoned couples, three things seem to be present in couples who persevere through difficult times.

The first is the ability to hope. Hope in marriage is about believing in a shared but unseen future. Hope is more than optimism. Hope that perseveres is an orientation of the spirit that springs from a source beyond us. To endure, couples need a positive vision to work toward when the present moment looks grim.

When Amy was on bed rest at the end of her pregnancy and Tom was picking up the slack, their hope in the possibility of a healthy baby got them through. When Dick couldn’t walk after his stroke, he and Nancy hoped for future good times with their grandchildren. The scriptures emphasize the importance of hope. “For in hope we were saved. Now hope that sees for itself is not hope. For who hopes for what one sees? But if we hope for what we do not see, we wait with endurance” (Romans 8:24-25).

The second key to perseverance is the ability of both spouses to sacrifice for a better future. While Courtney worked evenings, Stan gave up his poker night with the guys to babysit. There were no vacations, expensive concerts or pricey bottles of wine during graduate school.

Noted marriage researcher Scott Stanley’s studies of sacrifice in marriage show that when both spouses are willing to sacrifice it is a powerful way of expressing love for each other. Sacrifice says what is good for you is important to me. I love you enough to give up my own time and energy for your good. For Imelda and Jose, it meant not having new clothes or nice furniture for almost three years so that all their resources could be invested in a growing business that could support their family in the future.

The third characteristic of persevering couples is faith—in themselves, in one another and in God. Until they faced difficulties, Patrice and Sheldon were unaware that God was with them in their marriage relationship. But when the going got tough, they began to ask for God’s help in resolving their bitter fights and arguments. They experienced being changed through prayer and confidence in God’s power within them.

“It wasn’t like a bolt of lightning or anything,” commented Sheldon. “I had prayed for help at work and when playing sports, so I started to pray for help at home. Then we started to pray together. That led us to learning new ways of communicating with each other. We just slowly began to realize that we couldn’t overcome this by ourselves because we were both part of the problem.” Even when we have only a tiny bit of faith in ourselves or in God, prayer can sustain us.

Courtney and Stan’s graduation celebration, like the success of Jose and Imelda in persevering through difficult times, is directly related to the promise they made on their wedding day to love and honor each other forever. Today, when many have lost confidence in married love, they prove it is possible!

When couples persevere, they bring this unique steadfast love into their families, their communities and into the world. It is encouraging to see that the love St. Paul speaks about in his letter to the Corinthians is possible for all of us: “Love is always ready to make allowances, to trust, to hope and to endure whatever comes. Love never ends ” (Corinthians 13:7,8).

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