What We Do

Playing at Marriage
By Leonard Sweet PhD

A marriage that isn't "working" is a marriage that isn't playing. Elizabeth and I are learning how to play at marriage, not work at it. To "make our relationship work" would be for us to grind away at it and grind it down. To "make our relationship play" is to orbit our lives around a mission - creating advance centers in the three landscapes Jesus picked to root and reboot his own spirit: the mountains, the water, and the desert.

The Protestant reformer Martin Luther spoke some "real" words that have become more "real" with every passing anniversary. He said, "Some marriages are motivated by mere lust, but mere lust is felt even by fleas and lice. Love begins when we wish to serve others."

Marriage is a sign of our baptism, a part of our greater covenant relationship to God. What makes matrimony "holy"? One of the first things I remember hearing about holy matrimony is that "marriage is hard work." To have a happy marriage, a marriage where two people are "as happy as two owls in a hole," as poet Elizabeth Barrett said of her marriage to Robert Browning, both parties must be willing to "work at it."

Work at understanding. Work at listening. Work at praying together.

It is all too much work.

Some people are scandalized that my wife and I haven't "worked out" a more routine prayer life together. My wife is Episcopalian. Some of my intimacies with the divine leave her uneasy. My love of southern gospel music (the more nasal the better) leavers her completely mystified. Between her more formal style of spirituality and my tumultuous schedule, we have decided that it is more important that both of us constantly pray and keep growing spiritually than that we consistently pray together. The two of us are not always on the same spiritual track. But we're always moving in the same spiritual direction.

Some people are scandalized that my wife and I don't work harder at "listening to each other." Studies have shown that "active listening" ("So what I hear you saying is.") doesn't work. Why? It is too much work.

Your average run-of-the-mill, run-at-the-mouth marriage runs on the work paradigm. The happiest marriages go with the flow - each giving in to the other, each letting the other "have their own way," each willing to be influenced by the other, each more playing than working at their relationship. For a marriage to sing and dance, for two people to make beautiful music together, they need to play, not work, at their marriage.

You learn to "play" not "work," a musical instrument, a character in a play, any art form. You don't "work" a bassoon; you "play" a bassoon.

Marriages are more complex and chaotic than ever. Dual-career marriages won't "work" on the work paradigm. Ditto commuter marriages and blended families. Especially intimate marriages.

It is hard for us to appreciate the fact that the Boomer generation is the first in history to attempt to base a marriage on something other than duty or obligation. It wasn't too long ago, in historical terms, that marriages were arranged by parents for economic or political reasons, or were at least orchestrated under parental supervision. The Puritans had a saying: "First you chose your love; then you love your choice." By the nineteenth century, a romance ethic came into play, but the love one falls into is the love one quickly can fall out of.

What kept marriages going for as long as they did (the average marriage in the 1890s lasted only twelve years) was the work ethic of duty and responsibility. These duty-based marriages issued in such sayings as "Marriage is a proposition ending in a sentence: and "Marriage is three weeks of curiosity, three months of love, and thirty years of tolerance." These duty-based marriages also issued in parents with separate beds, separate bedrooms and shared lives that could sometimes be a sham. How many of my generation saw parents who could sit beside each other without any acknowledgement of each other's existence? How many of my generation vowed to ourselves in silence, "I'll die first?"

Some have argued that the recent emergence of intimacy-based marriages constitutes an epochal development in history. Whether or not that is overstated, the very concept of a "couple consciousness: or a "soul mate" makes a work-ethic marriage problematic. For soul mates marriage is not a work in progress but an art form in process where each person "plays" his or her strengths and covers the other's weaknesses.

We are at our most amateurish when we "work" anything. We are at our most accomplished when we "play" something. Amateur athletes don't "play" sports; they "work" sports. Michael Jordan didn't "work" basketball; he "played" basketball.

Fort Lauderdale pastor Dick Wills has a principle that goes like this:" "The greater the relationship, the fewer the rules."

`When Eileen and I were first married, I was surprised to find out there were so many rules. There were rules about where to squeeze the toothpaste tube; rules about picking up one's dirty cloths; rules about how you wash dishes; rules about taking out the trash; and on and on. Now after thirty-three years of marriage we have only one rule in our family. The rule is to always tell the truth. Everything else is based on relationship. The greater the relationship, the fewer the rules.

Where relationship rules, there is little need for rules. Or as Augustine put it about the greatest relationship of all, "Love God and do what you will."

Excerpted from Learn to Dance the Soul Salsa by Leonard Sweet PhD. (this book is available to purchase through our online bookstore.)