Marriage Supplement

Marriage witnesses God’s love in communities

By Daniel Sarell (Special to The Criterion)

Is it your goal in life to be well-connected with other people?

That question can be interpreted many ways, but some well-meaning people will respond, “When I said ‘I do’ to my spouse, I promised to forsake all others.”

It’s probably a healthy sign if you think that response is a bit crazy. There is a vast difference between putting one’s spouse and family at the top of one’s priorities and making one’s family your only priority.

I don’t know anyone who has taken family life to that absurd extreme, but social research in the past several years reveals a trend that shows married people to be more socially isolated than others, and the usual attempts to explain away this data have proven untenable.

I remember shortly after my wife, Angela, and I got married, we remained relatively well-connected with family and friends, but the amount of time we spent with them during our courtship dropped precipitously after our wedding.

According to sociologists Naomi Gerstel of the University of Massachusetts and Natalia Sarkisian of Boston College, Americans in particular have a tendency to buy into the myth that the married couple should “retreat from other interactions into private self-sufficiency.”

They noted in their report that the “percentage of Americans who rely on their spouses as their only confidants has nearly doubled over the last 20 years. ... As we increasingly expect our partners ... to be our soul mates, we become less involved with other people.”

Television images of guys escaping their wives to watch the big game with their buddies hits close to home for many of us.

“You’d rather watch a stupid game with them than go shopping with me?”

Plenty of husbands also resist similar excursions by wives to party it up with the girls.

Perhaps the problem with our collective tendency to cling to our spouse relates somewhat to the particular activities we perceive that our spouse is “abandoning” us for or that we perceive “abandonment” at all.

Social scientists have made great strides in developing what is known as “attachment theory” to explain some of these phenomena.

Understanding these issues better may lead us toward more healthy and balanced relationships as well as more active involvement in our civic and faith communities.

One simple attachment model put forward by John Van Epp, author of How to Avoid Marrying a Jerk (or Jerkette), states that intimate relationships should be built on a sequence of, first, knowledge of the other and, second, trust, which leads to, third, reliance (and reliability), which forms, fourth, commitment, and the ultimate level of intimacy, fifth, is termed “touch,” the sexual intimacy between husband and wife.

The point of Van Epp’s “Relationship Attachment Model” is that no one level in the sequence should ever get higher than the previous step.

I have reflected on some of the relationships that I have known personally and some I have seen in marriage preparation programs, and too often couples get this sequence completely out of order and out of balance.

Too many so-called commitments are founded on “touch,” intimacy first, preceding any sufficient knowledge or trust of one another, creating a completely false sense of reliance, or dependency, for meeting certain perceived needs, perhaps even just personal gratification, the quick fix for lacking real intimacy.

Research shows that unmarried people tend to be more socially connected than those who are married because of our society’s unrealistic and privatized expectations for marriage.

The usual set of explanations about the time it takes to care for children or that insulation within family life is simply a natural part of the life stage do not hold up when many of these variables are accounted for.

Gerstel and Sarkisian argue that social isolation in marriage deprives elderly family members and other friends from the care and attention they need. This disconnectedness strains those who are single to fill these voids.

They note that neighborhoods are not as safe when there are no established communication networks for emergencies or even daily monitoring, and marriages themselves can become “fragile” when the burden of emotional dependency strains one’s spouse to the predictable breaking point.

While much of married life is appropriately private, marriage creates families, the basic building blocks of our Church and society. Therefore, married people have an essential role, a social responsibility, in publicly witnessing to and sharing in the needs of families in our society.

“With children” or not, through extended families and friends, schools, parishes and civic organizations, participation in public community life expresses more fully not only what it means to be a disciple of Christ in communion with God and the Church, but also what it means to be a married couple, living witnesses in the world of God’s unconditional, life-giving and never-ending love for us.

So break out of your cave! Call a friend or visit an elderly loved one. Get involved in your parish. Be generous with your time to others and flexible with how much time you expect of your spouse.

The Church, our communities and your marriage will benefit greatly from your contribution and sacrifice of time and self.

(Daniel Sarell is the director of the archdiocesan Office of Family Ministries. His sources for this column are “Marriage Reduces Social Ties,” a January 2007 discussion paper by Naomi Gerstel and Natalia Sarkisian for the Council on Contemporary Families, and “One Plan … Two Programs,” a brochure explaining Marriage Links and the Relationship Attachment Model from Lifechangers, based in Medina, Ohio.) †