System

System #6: Sustainable Marriage

by David Hadwin 2 years ago 5 min read

Relationships can bring up many feelings in us. Some of us might think of good things like, love, caring, vulnerability, teamwork; being better together. Others might think of bad things like abuse, arguments, disagreements, restriction; being weighed down. But relationships are a core part of being human, and though I'm not Christian myself, I'm convinced that the model that The Bible portrays for marriage is one of the only sustainable models of marriage that when followed (usually accompanied with faith of some sort) allows each individual to thrive and become more of who they were meant to be.

Love is not a feeling, it's a choice

Why Marriage?

While we all might agree that we are relational beings, isn't marriage just an archaic convenent that's no longer necessary in modern life and only used for tax exemptions? Maybe, but here are some reason why I believe marriage is still a valuable, if not, necessary thing.

Commitment - Marriage, first off, speaks of commitment. Love is not a feeling, it's a choice and most of the time, when you pair two people together and throw life at them, they'll get angry, frustrated, depressed, tired, burnt-out, mean, and scared. Marriage, allows for two people to remember their promise to one another which allows a couple of wonderful things to happen in the height of those troubled waters.

Security - It allows people to be vulnerable and to really show themselves without fear of someone leaving. Unless they're a psychopath, you'll have a pretty good idea of who they were (assuming you met them within community and practiced chastity which we'll talk about in another article). This security also extends to your children. Your family will not fall apart because your commitment is stronger than your struggle and takes longer than just walking away to desolve.

Growth - Your spouse will see the ins and outs of who you are...or at minimum, how you act in given situations. Given this, and the fact that you are a team, marriage, and the commitment that comes with it, can be a wonderful arena for personal growth as well as interpersonal growth. It's so easy to run away from problems when they come, but the real success is overcoming them. Will it be easy? Absolutely not, but hopefully applying the guidance from the rest of the article will provide a good starting point. But in most cases, these struggles will be caused by pieces of each of you that you need to let die.

Leadership

Biblically, leadership has always been given the men. Women, historically, are more emotional because of their hormonal cycles (though as you can read about in the Human Design System, potentially not necessarily intrinsically) which can make them less consistent, but historically wiser, or more intuitive (again, not necessarily intrinsically). Many cultures have had elder women be leaders which helps overcome that deficit since they've gone through menopause; consistency, paired with greater intuition and wisdom can make for great leaders. However, since that shift happens later in life when couples are already established in most of their areas of life, it makes sense to default to men as the leaders of the household, otherwise, you'd need to hand off the reigns half way through the marriage...which would be kind of strange. Human beings are better when they understand their roles. In a two person relationship, where there is one leader, there needs to be one follower. If both people are leaders, that leads to enormous conflict and if both people are followers...that relationship has no backbone.

Wives, submit yourselves to your husbands, as is fitting in the Lord. Husbands, love your wives and do not be harsh with them. - Colossians 3:18-19

Wives Submit

In Colossians, The Bible states that wives (followers) should submit to their husbands. This immediately brings about alerts in our minds about abuse and oppression but it doesn't need to. First off, husbands aren't tasked with subjugating their wives...wives instead are asked to willingly submit to their husbands. This handing over of the reigns from both party to one helps align this two person team. It creates space for the leader to lead.

Submitting also doesn't mean to be quite. It doesn't mean that the leader can be a dictator and whatever they say goes. Advice and information is necessary for a leader to lead. Being a good follower is a skill just as much as being a good leader.

Husbands Love

Following this verse, husbands (leaders) are called to love their wives (followers). What does it mean to love? In a basic sense, love is attractive while hate is repulsive. Love means taking something into yourself while hate is pushing it away. Therefore, loving something would be akin to treating it as yourself. Bringing it into your fullness, treating their desires as your own, their knowledge as your own, and their well-being as your own.

Leaders should, therefore, lead sacrificially. Attuning themselves to the desires of their followers while helping them walk a good path. What does it mean to lead sacrificially? Leaders, having the reigns, also hold the power. Holding the power and only regarding yourself can lead to situations where you make decisions that benefit you at the expense of others. A sacrificial leader, or stated another way, a servant leader, given the choice between making decisions that benefit themselves at the expense of their followers, or benefits their followers at the expense of themselves would always choose the later. Obviously, the best solution would be a decision that benefits everyone...but holding the power shouldn't allow the decision to be biased towards your preferences. Why hurt your wive/follower if she's you?

Vulnerability

As I hope you've noticed belying these two roles is an enormous amount of vulnerability. Obviously, followers submitting themselves to an oppressive leader to be a party to all sorts of abuse. But even on the other side, husbands sacrificing themselves for their wives could just become doormats for their followers oppressive demands with no regard for that leaders' wellbeing (ex. insane spending habits leading to working 120 hours per week). Strangely enough (as we'll see with many relational systems) vulnerability is the only path to trust even though it can even more easily lead to abuse. If the husband doesn't love his wife it'll be harder for her to submit, but if she doesn't submit it'll be harder for the husband to show that he would lead in a way that shows that he loves her. In a Christian context, this is handled by choosing a partner that is committed to following Jesus. This is one way that Christians soften the risk, but they've also got some other tricks up their sleeves such as community, and chastity (which we'll talk about in another post).

Value

Another integral part of this is the assumption that wives are not less valuable than husbands. Followers are not less valuable than their leaders. Each roles has a wonderful part to play. A husband with wise counsel is an even better leader. A wife with a strong, loving, sacrificial husband overflows with love to nurture their family. Humanity needs both roles and both sexes and every flavor of gradient in between those sexes.

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