Letters to Children: Marriage: Part 2
You should also understand that marriage is romantic only because it is permanent. It's a thing most people fail to see: If you strip away all the props, drama and lust that surround a romantic venture, you are left with one thing: permanency or at least the lure of permanency.
I would be careful before repeating this assertion to any of your friends. It might be met with howls of laughter. Although it is hard to anticipate arguments, I would guess that they would give some examples of highly romantic things that are, in fact, highly impermanent, like a date in which the man is trying to seduce the woman. I, too, will use this example to help explain why romantic things are permanent things.
On such a date, the man makes dinner reservations at a nice restaurant with an isolated table that has a rose on it. He orders a bottle of good wine and engages the woman in leisurely and carefree conversation. He compliments her. He tries to show her that he's a compassionate and caring man. It's all so romantic, yet it's all geared to the ephemeral one-night stand.
But it is romantic only because it has the lure of permanency. If it didn't, it wouldn't be romantic. If instead of a nice dinner and leisurely conversation, the man took her to a McDonald's drive-through, explaining that this expediency will leave more time for sex, would that work? Would the woman be at all enticed? Why does the man use elegance, leisure, and gentleness?
Because they have the air of permanency. They give the impression of someone the woman wants to be with for a long time, not just for a one-night stand. The woman is enticed by the appearance of a good guy and therefore, if even such rationale is tucked away into the deep crevices of her conscious where she can't even see it, better justified sleeping with him that night. (Children: this analysis is obviously looking at the man and woman as presented by our popular culture; I assume you realize sleeping with someone before marriage is never justified–it is always grave sin and normally mortal sin.)
So marriage is romantic because it is permanent. Now, the first thing you should see is: If marriage is permanent, divorce is wrong. Indeed, if marriage is permanent, divorce is a fiction. Couples can say they're divorced, but they're not, and if a “divorced” individual remarries, he has committed bigamy.
It can be difficult to deal with marriage's permanency because we are mutable beings. We change from year-to-year (heck, from hour-to-hour). Change is a good thing: without it, we have no chance of progressing in wisdom, virtue, and holiness. But that doesn't mean all change is good. Although we have the possibility of changing in good ways, due to original sin we have a tendency to change in bad ways.
From the standpoint of marriage, this means that you always need to keep an eye on how you're changing. If you're changing in a manner that makes you unhappy in your marriage, you're probably changing in a bad way and you need to take steps to alter your course of change. If, for instance, Jack takes up golf and finds that his time at the links is interfering with his duties as a father and husband and the resulting tension is making him upset with his family role, he needs to re-think his love for golf. If Abbie takes up volunteer work in the community to the extent that her husband is complaining, and they're fighting, about the messy state of the house, Abbie needs to re-consider her level of community involvement.
This is a good thing about marriage. It's a blessing that guides us toward wisdom and virtue. It gives us a natural and readily-discernible benchmark for determining how we're progressing in holiness. Few people take the time to contemplate quietly the state of their soul: such contemplation, done right, requires much study and dedication. But the marriage benchmark is an easy measuring rod. If our marriage is succeeding, chances are we are succeeding as human beings. If our marriage is crumbling, we may be crumbling as human beings.
