Thoughts On Marriage From An Unmarried Baby Adult

 This year my view of marriage has really soured. For various reasons, both personal and societal, there have been a lot of lies that I have believed about marriage and this year I think I saw those beliefs for the first time and felt how wrong they were. I wrongly associated them with the infrastructure of marriage when they were things that flawed humans had created. 

Marriage was God's creation, not man's, which means that I can't listen to man's words or examples of marriage and take them as fact because they are just opinion, not truth. 

So what is the truth about marriage? 

In the Bible, the basis for marriage is this: "For this cause shall a man leave father and mother, and shall cleave to his wife: and they twain shall be one flesh? Wherefore they are no more twain, but one flesh." 

Man and woman as one flesh, one unit together. And the second greatest commandment (and also lowkey the hardest) is to love others as we love ourselves. I think we also learn how to love ourselves (really love ourselves, not selfishly coddle ourselves or be vain or whatever the world's definition of self-love is) by loving others. It is a continuous circle of deeper love and realer love, growing ever closer to the love that God demonstrates. Loving ourselves how we love others and loving others as we love ourselves. 

I'm starting to understand that romantic love is merely a byproduct, a small perk of the sanctification through marriage. The romantic love that we have been sold is a fragile, feelings-based thing that can come and go. The fact that arranged marriages have a higher rate of success demonstrates the fact that romantic love is not the only requirement of a healthy marriage. 

There's a song from the perspective of Adam in the garden, speaking to Eve, and the last line of the song is "You will surely be the death of me, but how could I have known?"

Yes it's referencing the Fall and the sudden mortality of man, but also, it feels like the mission statement for marriage: "You will be the death of me." Dying to ourselves, no longer obsessed the needs of me, but rather, the needs of another, the needs of the whole One Flesh. 

I am not interested in a relationship that is about self-gratification and feeling happy -- that is temporary and unstable, which is kind of how I viewed marriage before. But a partnership that glorifies God through learning unconditional love and that is constantly being put to the test and made even stronger? That puts God at the center in a practical and practiced way? That raises children who know love in a steady and constant way, that know love and obedience as a choice instead of a feeling?  ...I think I could be interested in that.