Twenty-five years ago, on June 1, I did. Standing before God, my bride and her eight disbelieving Irish-American brothers and sisters in St. Tarcissus Catholic Church on the Northwest Side, I articulated a singular “I do.” I have talked up a storm in life since, but these two words remain the most essential. They represent an embrace of enormous happiness, constant discovery, comforting reassurance in moments of sadness and disappointment, and an invitation to share in the extraordinary co-creation and growth of new life–five times over.
The significance of the marriage commitment surely eluded me as I ambled down the aisle looking oh-so-ridiculously 70s-ish. Who knew what marriage would mean, let alone that we were in the midst of a decade in which clothing designers and haircutters had secretly conspired to play an enormous practical joke.
Millions of couples marry every year in the U.S., and June appears to be the most popular month for walking down the aisle. Chicagoans probably associate that with weather, but for centuries June was thought to be the luckiest month to wed, because June is named after Juno, the Roman goddess who was said to protect the lives of women. So far, so good, I tell my wife.
Not everyone married in 1973 has been this fortunate. A few spouses have died. Some separated. Far too many divorced. According to the Census Bureau, for every 2.3 million marriages each year, there are 1.2 million divorces. Even as this does not mean that one in every two marriages ends in divorce as is commonly assumed, the numbers are too great. The proof for this is less statistical than the fact that we all know friend and family–and especially children of friend and family–who have been devastated by divorce. Only 14 percent of those married in the 1940s ever divorced; Baby Boomer marriages have divorced in numbers three or four times greater.
It’s not that the words of the wedding promise aren’t plain enough. There is nothing ambiguous about pledging to “be true . . . in good times and in bad, in sickness and in health.” The hard part for many turns out to be “loving and honoring all the days of one’s life,” and not just so long as achievement, wealth, convenience or youthful appearances sustain.
There is a nationwide movement to reaffirm the importance of marriage by reforming divorce. State divorce laws were made uniformly “no-fault” about the same time as I was making my personal marital assurance. “Mere coincidence,” says wife whimsically, but academic research confirms that divorce rates skyrocketed thereafter–in some places, by as much as 25 percent. Reformers want divorce procedures to incorporate waiting or cooling off periods at a minimum. But change does not come easy. A mandatory mediation measure died last month in Iowa, for example, and dozens of like-minded bills in 30 or more states have gone nowhere.
The exception: voluntary covenant marriage, enacted first in Louisiana and this month in Arizona. These states give couples a choice between: “Well, I guess I do” and “I really, really do.” A couple can choose the standard marriage, of course, but explaining such choice to one’s true love is bound to be sticky. Covenant marriages, by contrast, require premarital counseling, an agreement to additional counseling if problems develop during the marriage, and a two-year waiting period before a divorce is granted, absent physical or substance abuse, adultery or abandonment.
As attractive as the covenant idea is, it contains its own indirect endorsement of divorce, albeit after a much harder (and probably longer) try at marital success. To be sure, no one ought be locked in a physically endangering relationship, but it’s obvious that the legislated reform still contemplates breaking marital agreements short of that. In this, marriage retains a lesser status than commercial agreements. Try telling your business partner that you’ll keep your word, unless after a suitable wait and a therapy session, you change your mind.
The covenant marriage option is an improvement over the status quo, but it is still not the whole of the obligation. It is, in short, less than what Mike, Pat, Joe and Bub expected of me when I presumed to marry their sister. Unstated perhaps, but these soon-to-be-in-laws understood my two-word promise, whether backed up by civil covenants or not, as an unconditional willingness to provide affection, fidelity, mental, spiritual and financial support, and enough openness to get past selfish demand, anger and annoying behavior–especially annoying behavior. And in the immortal words of Bill Sunday, I was to praise my wife, “even if it does frighten her at first.”
All good advice, because lasting marriages, more than anything the law can supply, necessitate a genuine commitment to see beyond self, and even, beyond each other. Marital love, wrote Antoine de Saint-Exupery, “does not consist in gazing at each other, but in looking outward together in the same direction.” May all our marriages be this otherwise directed.
