Meaning of Marriage

I like to ask my clients in couples counseling: What is marriage? What is the purpose of marriage? What does marriage mean to you?

I want to take a stab at answering that myself.

From a psycho-therapist’s point of view (mine), marriage means a commitment of two people to love, honor, and cherish each other for a lifetime. Within and through those commitments, people grow more fully into ‘differentiated Selves’: Selves capable of empathy and compassion for each other; Selves autonomous from each other; Selves capable of giving safety, comfort, and validation, to each other; Selves in ‘effective dependence’ on each other.

Relationships go through stages of brokenness and rebuilding, crisis and development. During infancy, childhood, and adolescence, the Self develops through crisis and resolution of crisis, in relationship with primary care givers, siblings, teachers, and peers. The Self continues to develop through crisis and resolution during our maturity in relationship with intimate loved ones. Often, we reenact brokenness and failures of our developmental tasks of childhood in our relationships. As a couples therapist, I work to help couples get unstuck from old patterns and develop new potentialities for relationship and independence in their growth and development process.

As a pastoral counselor within a Christian tradition, I recognize the sacramental nature of marriage, something that leads to a deeper experience of the presence and grace of God. From this point of view, I believe that marriage leads to love of God, love of neighbor, and love of self. I also believe that growth as Selves and neighbors (partners, community) is part of the nature of God’s creation.

As a pastoral counselor, I am committed to, and love to, work with couples and help them grow into the people and the family they are capable of becoming. It feels much like a farmer preparing the soil and watching the miracle of life and growth take hold.

Struggle for Blessing

Genesis, chapters 31-33, tells the story of Jacob returning to face his older brother, Esau, whom he had cheated out of Esau’s birthright and their father’s, Isaac’s, blessing. Afterwards Jacob ran away in fear for his life. Years later, he goes back, fearfully hoping for reconciliation and forgiveness with his brother. The night before he meets Esau, Jacob spends the night alone, wrestling with a man (?), an angel (?), God (?). During the struggle, Jacob is injured but he continues to struggle demanding a blessing before he releases his opponent (?).

People seeking counseling and psychotherapy are often struggling with issues of guilt, grief, broken relationships, broken spirits, and/or broken bodies. It takes courage to come to counseling, prepared to engage in the struggle, knowing it may include facing real pain. It takes faith to hang onto the trust that there is a blessing to be claimed that is worth fighting for.

As a pastoral counselor, I believe in the hope of healing: physical, emotional, relational, and spiritual. As a pastoral counselor, I work to remember I am not God. I do not heal. Instead I strive to serve as God’s hands, ears, and heart, as a companion in the night of struggle, as my clients strive for blessings in their brokenness.

Freedom from 'Shoulds'

Squelching my anger sent me to counseling the first time. I grew up believing that good people don’t get angry. I believed I was a bad person if I felt angry, much less expressed anger. I thought “Thou shalt not get angry” must have been one of the Ten Commandments. My family taught me those beliefs.

I have since learned the Bible really teaches “do not let the sun set on your anger” (Eph 4:26). I understand anger as a God given alarm system to help me know something is wrong, something I need to pay attention to and resolve: either by giving up false hope and expectations, or by taking action to protect myself or to confront the threat.

The cognitive/behavioral schools of counseling teach that we suffer when we live by distorted thoughts and beliefs. These theories name “shoulds, musts, and oughts” as a type of thinking error. I lived by the thinking errors that 'I should not get angry.'

Sometimes we confuse the ‘shoulds’ we have been taught, (by family, church, culture) with reality. As pastoral counselors, we practice being sensitive and respectful of our client’s spiritual beliefs and emotional feelings while helping them to give up false and unhealthy beliefs, and to make life giving choices.

Attachment, Life Cycle and Spiritual Journey

The Buddha teaches that our suffering comes from our attachments to our ideas and beliefs about ourselves, the world, and they way things should be. To avoid suffering, we need to give up our attachments.

In a conversation with a Japanese Buddhist friend, he explained to me that in Buddhist cultures like Japan, they recognize that adolescents and people in general developmentally need to make attachments to family, culture, and self-identity before they move on in the spiritual journey towards detachment.

In the field of psychology, John Bowlby has demonstrated that secure attachment between primary caregiver (typically the mother) and child in early childhood gives children the security and confidence to grow into independence, exploring their world with confidence, and returning to the safety and protective field of the caregivers presence when needed. (as cited in Karen 1994)

Erik Erikson created the psycho/social model of development identifies various developmental crises that we go through on our journey towards our full humanity.(Newman) These stages are:

• Trust vs. Mistrust;
• Autonomy vs. Shame and Doubt;
• Initiative vs. Guilt;
• Industry vs. Inferiority;
• Group Identity vs. Alienation;
• Individual Identity vs. Identity Confusion;
• Intimacy vs. Isolation;
• Generativity vs. Stagnation;
• Integrity vs. Despair;
• Immortality vs. Extinction.

Each of these crises could be interpreted as moving from a necessary attachment to detachment, which leads to developing the strength and resilience to prepare for the next stage of attachment/detachment crisis.

The Christian Myth (myth meaning a truth larger than the the story itself) demonstrates this reality in the movement of Jesus from birth to attachment to his Father God, and attachment to his ministry and friends, to his painful agonizing surrender and detachment from all of those: betrayed and abandoned by friends, mocked, scorned and tortured, and feeling abandoned even by God ("My God why have your forsaken me?"). All of this served as necessary steps in preparation for his new life as resurrected and living God.

Counseling sometimes accompanies people in their discovery of old attachments they need to let go of, discovering new stages of life and meaning and new attachments, of sometimes accompanies people through the painful periods, and always looks forward to new experiences, to resurrection, and to new life.

Karen, R (1994). Becoming attached: first relationships and how the shape our capicity to love. Oxford University Press, Oxford.

Newman, B & Newman, P (2003) Development trhough life: a psychosocial approach. Wadsworth/Thompson Learning. Belmot, CA.

Encouragement

My ninth grade PE coach made us jog a mile as warm-up for our day’s activities. I experienced those four laps as an interminable distance that I barely had the strength and stamina to finish. I plodded, pounded, huffed and puffed along and felt miserable. Then one day, a classmate, who ran cross-country and was always nearly a lap ahead of everyone else, said “Come on Jay, stick with me. You can do it. Just stretch your legs out a little more.” And from that day forward, I had a companion; I ran with a friend, I ran lighter, with more energy, and with joy.

Sometimes counseling works like my friend, a little encouragement, a little coaching, and having someone alongside you during the journey.