A Difficult Road

“I tell you that anyone who divorces his wife, except for sexual immorality, and marries another woman commits adultery.” The disciples said to him, “If this is the situation between a husband and wife, it is better not to marry.” Jesus replied, “Not everyone can accept this word, but only those to whom it has been given. . . . The one who can accept this should accept it.”

Matthew 19:9–12

SOME HOW-TO MARRIAGE BOOKS FALL SHORT BY PRESUMING THAT THE DIFFIculties of marriage can be overcome. Every marriage, no matter how you look at it, is hard and will be hard.

That’s why I like to correct a spouse who says, “I have a difficult marriage.” There’s no need to personalize it: “I have a difficult marriage.” At various points, every marriage is difficult. The problem isn’t necessarily with your marriage, it’s with marriage in general.

At various points, every marriage is difficult.

Let’s look at the honesty of the ancients who went before us. I’m not necessarily endorsing all of the following comments, but it helps to get a historical perspective on how earlier generations viewed marriage.

When Jesus told his disciples that marriage was for life and that only adultery could break its bonds, they immediately blurted out, “If this is the situation between a husband and wife, it is better not to marry” (Matthew 19:9).

Jesus didn’t refute this! He simply said, “The one who can accept this should accept it.”

Chrysostom, a fourth-century church father, argued that when Paul attacked divorce, his real aim was to dissuade people from getting married: “For anyone who hears that, after marriage, he will no longer be his own but will be subject to the will of his wife . . . will not even take the yoke upon himself, since once he has done so, he must be a slave as long as it pleases his wife.”^a

Cicero said this: “Is a man free when he is under a woman’s orders? She imposes laws, prescribes, commands, forbids whatever seems good to her; and as for refusing when she gives a command, he cannot or dare not. In my opinion he should be called, not a slave but the most wretched of slaves, though he be born of the noblest family.”

A writer from the Council of Trent had a word for prospective wives:

Subject to her husband in everything, she must put up with his moodiness, contrariness, nights of eating too much and drinking too much, jealousy, suspicions, incontinence, adulteries, quarrels, blows. She must follow him, be with him everywhere, obey and serve him like a slave. . . . He uses up the money they have on dice, card games, drink, dinners, lavish gifts, ruinous contracts, ill-advised lawsuits and other ways, and the wife can apply no remedy.

And Jerome, writing in the fourth century, gave this whimsical warning to prospective husbands:

Then throughout entire nights [you must endure] the longwinded complaints: “That woman has nicer things to wear outside. . . . Why were you looking at the woman next door? . . . What did you bring back with you from the forum?” No friend may we have, no companion. She suspects that love of the others is hatred for her. Then, too, there is no chance to try a wife out. You take her as she is. If she is hot-tempered, lazy, deformed, conceited, ugly—whatever defect there is, you learn after the wedding. . . . You have to keep noticing her face all the time and praising her and telling her how pretty she is for fear that, if you look at another woman, she’ll think she’s unattractive. If you entrust the entire house to her to be managed, you have to be her servant. If you reserve anything to your own judgment, she doesn’t think you trust her. Then she turns to hatred and quarrels; and if you don’t look out at once, she’ll get some poison ready.

Jacques-Bénigne Bossuet, a French preacher from the late 1600s, made this observation:

Each [spouse] has moods, prejudices, habits, associations. Whatever be the things they have in common, people’s dispositions are always different enough to cause a frequent chafing in so long a life together. They see each other so near at hand, so often, with so many defects on either side, in the most natural situations and ones so unexpected that it is impossible to be prepared. They get tired. The thrill is gone. The other’s imperfection is irritating. Human nature makes itself felt more and more. . . . They love their cross, I am happy to say, but what they are carrying is the cross.

Even the patient and pastoral Fénelon warned, “They get tired of each other in this need of being almost always together and acting in unison on every occasion. It requires a great grace and great fidelity to the grace received to bear this yoke patiently. . . . A person must prepare for it in a spirit of penance when he believes he is called to it by God.”

In an ironic way, I hope this honesty encourages you. When you grow discouraged, when you ask, “Am I the only one who struggles like this?” when you wonder why, at times, the requirements of marriage seem so burdensome, take heart in knowing you are not alone. You’ve chosen a difficult life.

But if marriage is so hard, why stick with it? For starters, except for those called to celibacy, marriage is God’s will for us. It’s how he designed us to live. But secondly, there can be great glory in tackling an almost impossible challenge. Marriage is based on a grand design created by God, extremely difficult but in some peculiar way extraordinarily satisfying. How else can we explain why two people who describe their marriage as “hell on earth” get divorced and then both get remarried within twenty-four months? Even knowing how painful it can be, they can’t wait to jump back in and give it another try, albeit with someone else.

It’s not so much that your marriage is difficult; the state of marriage is difficult. Don’t be discouraged. It’s the price we pay for a glorious return. Certainly, there’s a place for the how-to approach; we can learn how to communicate better, how to resolve conflict, and a host of other skills. But we can’t overcome the reality that it’ll never be easy to be married.

I originally wanted to title my book Sacred Marriage something else: The Greatest Challenge in the World. I know of few other challenges like it; certainly, I can’t imagine any that last as long and test you so personally and so deeply. But that, in an odd sort of way, is its very appeal: “The one who can accept this should accept it.”