Marriage Is a Friendship

 

Marriage 5

 

          We have, perhaps unknowingly, accepted a warped view of marriage from our experience, our upbringing, our friends, and our culture. Thus, I am taking substantial time at the beginning of this series to emphasize how God views marriage. Because as God views marriage, we ought to view marriage.

          To that end, a brief but essential thought today: God views marriage as a friendship. In a passage in which he was rebuking Israel's leadership for their failing homes, Malachi tells us as much. Yet ye say, Wherefore? Because the Lord hath been witness between thee and the wife of thy youth, against whom thou hast dealt treacherously: yet is she thy companion, and the wife of thy covenant. (Malachi 2.14)  Solomon agrees, imparting the same sentiment to the wife in his story, though in reverse. His mouth is most sweet: yea, he is altogether lovely. This is my beloved, and this is my friend, O daughters of Jerusalem. (Song of Solomon 5.16)

          Friends are the family you pick. They are the ones we choose to spend time with, choose to place ourselves under obligation to, and choose to mingle our lives with. The resulting friendships, carried along on streams of affection and loyalty, enrich our lives for years, sometimes decades.

          My point here is this: the friend relationship was the first one you had with each other; add to that, do not replace it.

          It is easy, in marriage, to allow all the subsequent relationships to absorb or overtake that initial relationship. First, he was your friend, but then he became your lover, your provider, your maintenance man, and your co-parent. Reacting to each of those relationships takes time and focus, and in the process of learning to manage these and other aspects of the marriage relationship, all too often, the friendship is lost.

          I have long ago forgotten where I read this, but I remember it well nevertheless. The husband was discussing his marriage of twenty-five years or thereabouts. They had lived together as man and wife, kept the wolf away from the door, and raised children with all the grief and joy and prayer that entails. He said, “I looked up from my morning coffee over my newspaper and realized I didn’t know the woman sitting across from me at the breakfast table anymore.” Life happened. And in the process, friendship died.

          Sadly, such stories are not uncommon. We all know couples who were together for decades and then divorced. “We just grew apart,” they inevitably say. The question then before us is how do we prevent that from happening to us. Here again, I believe Scripture has the answer. A man that hath friends must shew himself friendly: and there is a friend that sticketh closer than a brother. (Proverbs 18.24)

One of the most important foundational truths about marriage is you must be constantly moving toward each other. Move towards each other physically. Be in the same space. Move towards each other emotionally. Seek to understand how the other thinks and feels and why they do. Move towards each other financially. Mingle your lives together, support each other’s dreams. Move towards each other chronologically. Adjust whatever is necessary for you to adjust to spend time together. I could go on, but you get my drift, I think.

          Friendships may happen spontaneously, but they are not maintained spontaneously, especially when the relationship becomes complicated by the myriad of aspects included in a long-lasting marriage. In this environment, friendships are only maintained by showing yourself as friendly, to use the biblical phrase. Do what friends do. Be interested in their lives. Hang out together. Cultivate enjoyment in each other's company. Do not just love them; like them.

          Too many marriages become a business relationship. Schedule dominates while emotional connection evaporates. You wake up one day, and it dawns on you that you are just strangers who share a common history with all the accompanying entanglements.

          God designed marriage as a companionship first, or perhaps I should say, foundationally. Underneath everything else you two do and are is friendship. Whatever you place above that is dependent on that foundation. Marry your best friend, yes. And then stay married to your best friend.