When it comes to choosing a spouse, there are many resources to help you make the decision. Perhaps most ubiquitous of these resources is the collection of pithy truths offered in Sort-of Helpful Cliches on Marriage and Choosing an Eternal Companion, by John Q. Mormon, published by Everyone You Know (24th ed., 2005). This book has everything, from insightful treatments on the “How he treats his mother is how he’ll treat you!” principle, to in-depth discussion of the mysterious issue of “fat potential.”
Tody, I’d like to address a few of these topics, and see if we can’t take the kernel of truth contained in each, and upgrade them to something genuinely useful. Pull out your trusty copy of Sort-of Helpful Cliches, and follow along:
Sort-of Helpful Cliche #1: Choose your spouse carefully: When you choose your spouse, you choose someone you’ll have to be with for all of eternity!
Genuinely Helpful Upgrade: Choose your spouse carefully: When you choose your spouse, you are in large part choosing who you will be for all of eternity.
Discussion: No, I don’t mean this person will nag at you to become something you’re not. (Possible). And I don’t mean that you are destined to become a person identical to your spouse. (It’s happened). What I’m saying is that we don’t give nearly enough time to telling our young people how likely it is that they will take on very many of the attributes, mannerisms, priorities and character of their spouse. Are you disorganized and boring? Chances are, if you marry someone who is vivacious and detail-oriented, in twenty years you will be much less disorganized and boring. Are you painfully shy? Marry another shy person, and there’s a chance you’ll never conquer that. But after a lifetime of being married to a raging extrovert, you are almost guaranteed to have grown into a much more gregarious human being.
Implications: No, I’m not saying you need to identify your weaknesses and then find a spouse who can perfectly counterbalance them. The point is that marriage is one method in which the Lord can turn our weaknesses into strengths. This is why they say marriage is hard work. It creates tensions that refine us, just like other spiritual institutions. But I’m telling you, show me any couple who’s been happily married for fifty years, and I”ll show you two people who are vastly more similar to each other than they were fifty years ago, and who have infinitely fewer rough edges and extremes, and many more soft middle grounds.
So don’t just pick someone you’d want to be with forever. Pick someone you’d want to be forever.
(now is the time for those of you who know my wife to grin at how funny it is that I now watch cooking shows and care about the cuteness of our window treatments).
Sort-of Helpful Cliche #2: If you’re going to get along in marriage, you’re going to have to give up parts of yourself and make compromises, even when you know you’re right. That is one of the sad side effects of marriage.
Genuinely Helpful Upgrade: If you’re going to succed in marriage, you’re going to have to give up parts of yourself and make compromises, even when you know you’re right. That is one of the major purposes of marriage.
Discussion: How much longer are we going to act like the conflict that arises between two very different people is a bad thing? If some kinds of growth can only occur in a fallen world, doesn’t it make sense that some kinds of growth can only occur in a fallen marriage?
Implications: The world, the church, and our marriages will be better off if we will stop treating conflict and compromise as a necessary evil, and start seeing them as the main point.
Sort-of Helpful Cliche #3: Choose someone you’re physically attracted to. This attraction will help you remain faithful when confronted with other attractive people.
Genuinely Helpful Upgrade: Choose someone you’re physically attracted to. However: if you think this choice has any bearing on whether you remain faithful, I’ve got a perfect woman in Brooklyn to line you up with.
Discussion: There will always be other people who are objectively more attractive than your spouse. However, it’s actually not that difficult to remain more subjectively attracted to your spouse than to any of these other people. You will only achieve this when you realize that attraction consists in significant part of elements of personal choice. If I meet supermodel X, who the entire world agrees is more beautiful than my spouse, I am in no way compelled to be more subjectively attracted to Ms. X, despite her beautific attainments. My subjective state vis these two women depends on 1) what I am willing to allow myself to think about them, and 2) how far and in what way I am willing to continue my relationship with Ms. X. The objective difference in beauty between these two people does not bind me to any specific response whatsoever.
Implications: Sure, it’s important to marry someone you’re attracted to. But it’s more important to be attracted to someone you married. And I PROMISE, this is a lot easier than it sounds.
Several others come to mind, but I’ll cede the floor for now: comments on the above, or other simplistic cliches in need of an upgrade? (Please cite chapter and verse in the book so we can all follow along)