It is undoubtedly true that a husband and a wife must make sacrifices for their marriage to be successful. But is there anything that a husband (or a wife) shouldn't be willing to give up for the sake of their relationship with their spouse?
A few things come to mind, mostly nebulous and hard to nail down, and on further reflection most of those tend to be carried to a level that should really make them less sacrosanct. For instance, you could make a strong case that you should never give up your self respect, and I don't think I'd argue against that too strongly. The thing is, I've seen too many spouses insist that's the ground on which they're making their stand, when what they're really clinging to is their right to be right. But don't get me wrong: I'm not condoning putting up with emotional abuse, or worse, when I argue for a more cautious application of this standard. (Though I do believe that too many people leave their relationships without having undertaken appropriate steps under the guidance of the right professional help to have a decent chance to fix what's wrong.)
How about an essential part of their personality? After all, it's probably true that a loving spouse wouldn't ask their mate to sacrifice a central part of themselves. An important part of loving someone else is accepting the things that make them unique. But there's a difference between asking one's partner to give up some fundamental part of themselves and voluntarily doing so myself for the sake of our relationship. And I probably shouldn't have too great an attachment to any part of myself that interferes with my ability to love my spouse as I ought, right? ("Ought" is a somewhat misplaced concept here, as it places obligation above generosity in love.)
I feel as if I have a lot of experience in this area, but also imagine this is the case for most married people. There is also the question of how fundamental some part of us - some characteristic or tendency - may be. Sometimes, too, there may be the additional issue of just how innate versus how learned some aspect of our self is. But to me those questions seem to take a back seat to that of how much it might hurt my partner were I to indulge some part of myself that doesn't fit in the context of our relationship. More fundamentally, don't we often embrace parts of our self that God would have us let go of to become the best version of our self, and shouldn't we be willing to let those go in the context of our marriage?
Our society tends to think - to trumpet, even - that there are some things that are just so intrinsic to our being that we shouldn't ever be expected, should never even try, to subjugate that part of our being to the greater good of our relationship. And after all, it argues (when it bothers acknowledging Him at all), it is God who made us as we are, and surely God loves and accepts us as we are and even wants us to celebrate who He has made us to be. But I clearly tend to disagree with the way many people apply this principle. Our natural lives alone should be all the evidence that we need to conclude that, in this life, at least, God never, ever intends for us to remain as we are, for there is never a day in which we are exactly the same as the day before. Just as we cannot become mature persons without giving up our dependence on our parents for every aspect of our lives, so we cannot become mature people without giving up other parts of our self that are probably less central to our being than that dependence once was.
I titled this post with a question that I believe is answered with, "Of course not!" I think that we too often mistakenly overvalue the parts of ourselves we're called to give up and undervalue the relationship, the sacrificial love, which we gain in return, and which makes us far more than the one we started out as.
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