Marriage Advice from a Catholic Priest and from Your Blogger

Being lazy yesterday and today in terms of hunting down interesting stories, I have yet another NY Times article to point out. This one is an op-ed piece by Maureen Dowd, this time on marriage. In it, she gets marriage advice from a Catholic priest, who gives Dowd the spiel he gives seniors in high school.

Getting marriage advice and counseling (like my wife and I did) from a celibate man forbidden to marry is one of the two supremely ironic features of the Catholic Church to me who was born and bred Roman Catholic (the other one being that at the same time women aren't equal to men, the Church venerates Jesus's mother as being greater than all other humans ever born.) But the advice seems pretty good to me after what I've learned in five years of marriage: i.e., being able to communicate, manage money, etc.

In my humble opinion, however, the one piece of advice missing from the priest's talk to high schoolers is this:

Marriage is hard work.

Don't expect it to always be fun, or easy. There will be hard times when you really don't like your spouse (my wife and I use the line from a movie "I love you, but you are not my favorite person right now!"), but the hard times will make you stronger.

My wife and I are part of the generation just getting married right now, and we're scared for our peers. Using our friends from before we were married (we won't count since we've been married because married people tend to befriend married people, naturally), only three are currently married; five if you count our siblings. But we know almost a dozen people our age who have been married and divorced already.

I'm ashamed that my generation has also come up with the concept of the "starter marriage." Just like a starter house is one that you live in for a few years as you get to know the ropes of home ownership but never imagine you'll settle down in, a starter marriage is one where you get a feel for what marriage is like, but not one where you're fully committed to it lasting. Is it any wonder that a marriage with such a level of commitment doesn't make it?

It all comes back to the misconception that marriage is supposed to be easy, or solve your problems. I know of one couple where the wife wanted to work on their problems after two years of marriage, but the husband thought it was too hard because marriage should be easier than theirs was. And if you don't take seriously the vow "to love, honor, and cherish till death," why go through the hassle of trying? Just use it as a learning experience so you will avoid the same mistakes in your next marriage, you know, the one that won't be so difficult because you're older and wiser. But are you more committed, though?

That brings me to another piece of Catholic advice I received that shows the commitment needed for a successful marriage: "Murder, yes. Divorce, never." That is marriage advice I'll trust, given not by a priest but by my Catholic mother.

It is advice that works: my parents have been married for 45 years and counting. Maybe because Dad always gets nervous when she says that.