Marital Coasting

I like to think of myself as an uncommonly thoughtful and considerate person.  At the same time, I also know that self-perceptions are more often than not ignorant of their own gaping holes.

This morning, Tara and I had a conversation about where we were a few years ago and how far we've come.  It's a conversation that comes up on occasion, and always seems burdened by the same concerns: we talk, but do we talk?  We love each other, but do we truly cherish?

Part of me resents these questions.  For the same reasons that I like to think I'm thoughtful and considerate, I also want to think that I'm doing everything my wife could possibly want and need.  Maybe that's just masculine arrogance speaking, but the truth is that I want to think I'm a better-than-average husband, because whenever someone posts an obnoxious article with a title like "10 things husbands are incapable of doing," I can check off every item on the list.  That's because I'm a doer.  I see a problem and try to fix it.  I see a need and try to fill it.  I'm not above helping my wife with mundane tasks.  However, doing things for Tara is a self-fulfilling type of love, simply because it feels sacrificial.  That awareness of my own time commitment often makes it more self-fulfilling than selfless.  I feel like I'm loving Tara well when I devote an afternoon to cleaning the house so she doesn't have to.  In itself, it's not a bad thing.  However, the problem with this prideful sense of "sacrifice" is that it often keeps me from doing for her what she really needs because I feel like I've already checked the box of what was required.  It keeps me operating merely at the point of optimum relational efficiency, and not striving to serve her more.

If I truly were the considerate person that I like to think I am, I would not only welcome the "check-up" conversation, but I would also be willing to meet my wife where she is.  Tara is an encourager.  She is deeply thoughtful, a generous giver, a hard worker.  For those reasons and more, she deserves more than my merely "sufficient" effort.  While she appreciates my help, she needs more than just someone tall enough to reach the top shelf.  She needs a leader and an encourager.  She needs me to disciple her and build her up in love.  She desires me to communicate my needs, my thoughts, my fears -- so that she can meet the ones she is able and pray for me in the ones she isn't.  And she needs my help, of course, but I can't just stop at the thing I'm comfortable doing.

That's really the problem.  Comfort.  Husbands (and wives too, for that matter, but husbands especially) deviate toward the most comfortable mode of operation and nest there.  We're like a grumpy cat sleeping in a sunbeam: every time the warmth recedes further into the dining room, we crawl resentfully back toward it, annoyed that it moved away from the carpet and onto the hardwood.  We don't want anything challenging because we just want to punch a relationship time card and exist in the place of contentment.  We hit a plateau where everything seems good and we're getting along with our spouse and decide to pitch our tent there, calling it marital unity when really we're settling for a comfortable façade.

I saw a t-shirt on the internet called the 1st Law of Relationship Inertia.  It read: "After 6 weeks a relationship will continue unless acted upon by an outside force."  That's the picture -- a self-sustaining momentum, a downhill coast that doesn't require any work to keep it going.

We don't want to strive in our marriages.  We want to coast.

Perhaps anticipating this, Paul recorded the following admonition in Ephesians 5:

Husbands, love your wives [in the same way that] Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her, that he might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word, so that he might present the church to himself in splendor, without spot or wrinkle or any such thing, that she might be holy and without blemish.

In the light of that Spirit-given insight, my idolatrous desire for marital coasting seems awfully stale and empty.  My responsibility as a husband isn't to love my wife in such a way that merely facilitates her existence alongside mine.  It's not about keeping a checklist and completing chores so that we can fall asleep on the couch each night watching TV together.

My responsibility as a husband, throughout the remainder of my lifetime, is to prepare Tara to meet her Savior face-to-face.  My principle value should be her spiritual maturity, because I get to play an instrumental role in her sanctification.  That means I should be doing everything I can to avoid the comfort of coasting.  It means I'm invested in my wife, willing to roll up my sleeves -- willing to do and say the hard things.  Loving and cherishing my wife should not be chore.  It should be a privilege.

The bottom line is that, if I truly value Tara -- if I truly want to be an uncommonly thoughtful and considerate husband -- then I'm going to put my desire for marital comfort at the bottom of my list of priorities, elevating instead my bride's need for Christ-like love, encouragement, and intimacy.  I will willingly transform the question "What do I have to give to this marriage?" into "What more can I give to this marriage?"