Introduction: Highway to Heaven
Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.
-- Romans 12:21
To love another person is to see the face of God
-- Victor Hugo
Love is our true destiny. We do not find the meaning of life by ourselves alone - we find it with another.
-- Thomas Merton
If marriage is more than just a contract, more than just two people meeting one another’s needs, what is it?
It’s a collaboration in love.
In Christian teaching, the great story of God's relationship with humanity is one of collaboration. God never imposes things on us; he invites us to collaborate, to cooperate, to participate. God doesn't want to have a monologue with us; he wants to have a dialogue with us. In the same way, Christian marriage is intended to be a dynamic relationship in which the spouses collaborate with one another, and with God, to create moments of genuine intimacy.
So how do we get there?
Purgatory is getting rid of the things that make marriage a hell. But a great marriage does not come about just by getting rid of bad habits—it requires the building of new, good habits.
In Dante’s Paradise, the poet and his guide reach the top of Purgatory and, freed of the burden of their sins, they are weightless, and can fly to Heaven. But the travelers soon learn that moving forward through Heaven -- which is to say, deeper and deeper into the presence of love itself -- requires more than just abandoning one’s vices.
It requires the building of virtues.
This section is about the Seven Cardinal Virtues and their place in your marriage. The term “cardinal” comes from a Latin word for “hinge,” which the ancients found appropriate because everything good in your life hinges on these virtues. Originally identified by Classical philosophers, then revised and incorporated into Christian theology, the seven virtues are:
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Prudence: the ability to apply your principles to the complex, anxious and confusing situations of everyday life in a calm, logical and informed manner.
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Justice: the capacity to treat others with equity and integrity even when they have done wrong.
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Fortitude: the strength to overcome obstacles--not only those that the world puts in your way, or that your loved ones create for you, but especially the obstacles that you create for yourself.
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Temperance: the ability to master your own needs and desires so that you can share more of yourself with others.
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Faith: the firm belief that whatever mess you are in, however bad your situation seems, it can and will get better if you take appropriate action
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Hope: the basic trust that love is shining beyond whatever darkness you face, like an ember glowing beneath the ash
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Love: willing the good of other people in their own right, without regard to your own self-interest.
The cardinal virtues do not encompass all virtues any more than the seven deadly sins encompass all sins. There are many other important virtues in marriage, some of which we explored in the previous section, but if one practices the cardinal virtues, all the other virtues will come easily.
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Hell is envisioned by Dante as a downward spiral. Bad marriages are rarely created by one big awful problem, but hundreds of everyday actions taken over the course of years. Purgatory is an upward spiral, whose purpose is not to create great marriages but to counter the negative actions that create the downward spiral into utter selfishness. Purgatory prepares you for greatness.
A heavenly marriage is the opposite of a hellish marriage. Instead of a downward spiral created by a continual enactment of selfish habits, a heavenly marriage is a dynamic process of growing in love through the enactment of virtuous habits. Since virtues are acts of love, you require other people in order to have them. Your vocation to marriage and family, no matter how challenging the circumstances in which you find yourselves, is your chief resource for building virtue.
In heaven, the huge, marriage-breaking issues have been dealt with. But there are still many everyday issues that require courage and honesty to get through so that the marriages do not begin to backslide.
Virtues as Actions
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Inherent in all this discussion of virtue is a fundamental truth: virtues are not personality traits. They are not inborn characteristics that make you who you are. They are actions, and sources of actions. Virtue involves subjecting your body and your desires to your will. In the beginning, building and strengthening virtues is a difficult path. As you succeed, though, you build virtue, just like strengthening a muscle, and over time you become stronger and stronger, more and more easily able to reach out in love to those around you. Eventually, your virtues become habits, courses of action you take so regularly you usually don’t even have to think about them.
Becoming virtuous in your marriage is not always an easy journey, but there are joys along the way. Pope Francis promises couples that they will be “led patiently further on in order to achieve a deeper grasp and a fuller integration of this mystery (of marriage) in their lives” if they act with
(1) commitment,
(2) creativity,
(3) perseverance, and
(4) daily effort
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This list is rooted in the assumption that love is shown more by deeds than by words.If we love, our actions should show the fruitfulness of that love. Love “allows us to experience the happiness of giving, the nobility and grandeur of spending ourselves unstintingly, without asking to be repaid, purely for the pleasure of giving and serving,” writes Pope Francis.
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The focus on action is a focus on communication, but it is not always communication through words. Many books tell you that the secret of a good marriage is communication, but often they just mean talking about your thoughts, dreams and feelings. This can be very important for many couples, but communicating through our actions is even more crucial. When you act out love, your spouse will feel loved whether or not you spend a lot of time talking about your relationship. As Ralph Waldo Emerson once wrote, “What you do speaks so loudly, I cannot hear what you say.”
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In this chapter, we will discuss three powerful tools to help you in your journey toward heavenly marriage: finding marital models, building virtuous habits, and empathic listening.
Models and narratives
As Dante and his guide Virgil pass through Heaven, they meet saints who exemplify various aspects of the cardinal virtues that permeate each sphere. It’s a reminder to those of us on the journey that we need models to follow and guide us.
Where do you find your models? Who are your “saints”? Do you intentionally look for good models, or do you, like most of us, unconsciously absorb your models of marriage from the books you read, the families you encounter, and the movies and television you watch?
Both of the authors of this book were children of divorce whose families of origin were not models they wanted to emulate. Mark absorbed many models from books and media but what tended to stick was a view of marriage as a union of equals who lived parallel lives and hooked up periodically because they were “in love.” This was a reasonable model for a contemporary life partnership -- supporting one another’s educations, professional objectives and work life while being sexually exclusive -- but it was not a recipe for growing intimacy, whether of the minds, of family, or of sexuality.
What was missing from his models were details. In the movies and television of Mark’s era, couples fell in love in all sorts of ways but once they were together there was little attention to what kept them together, and happy in that togetherness.
Dawna, on the other hand, had built a vision of marriage based on that of her maternal grandparents. They were patient and kind with their grandchildren and one another, and their marriage survived the highs and lows typical to those all couples experience: economic difficulties, personal challenges, and health and family issues.
Yet they functioned seamlessly as a team in everything. They balanced the work of running a household with personal acts of kindness. Her grandfather made coffee each morning and brought his wife a cup in bed. He did the dishes every evening, and handled all the bills and budgeting. Dawna’s grandmother did everything else indoors, as well as tended flower beds and kept the dog and cats fed, while her husband did the outdoor work of running their ranch.
Small acts of kindness mattered. Dawna’s grandfather told her that when he was out in the fields haying, which is really hot and dusty work, his wife would bring him ice water. As he sat reminiscing Dawna could see the love he felt this gesture offered him and how much it still meant to him.
Perhaps most importantly, her grandparents did not focus on one another's shortcomings or wonder if one of them was working harder than the other; rather they rejoiced in their blessings. Raised a Southern gentleman, Dawna never heard her grandfather raise his voice in anger. He was respectful toward his wife at all times. Once when Dawna told him she was “so mad” at her younger brother, he told her that animals go mad, people get angry. It was many years before Dawna realized that he was passing on his own great virtue: self-discipline through self-respect. Because he held himself to a standard, he behaved toward others, even those with whom he disagreed, with unfailing respect and courtesy.
Dawna’s grandmother was cheerful, singing hymns as she went about doing housework. She was raised in the American Lutheran Church, and was a teetotaler, yet she tolerated her husband's nightly whiskey “neat” before dinner. When she was angry, she became quiet and took herself away in order to regain her composure. She never gossiped or vented to others about what her husband might have done to displease her.
This was Dawna’s model: a couple who worked together as a team, treated one another with courtesy and respect, tolerated one another’s foibles, and engaged in small, everyday acts of love.
Finding Your Saints
Close your eyes and try to remember a time when someone you loved epitomized marriage for you. Maybe it was your grandparents, parents, or neighbors. Perhaps it was the parents of your best friend or an aunt and uncle.
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Who were they and how did they embody marriage for you?
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What were their blessings in marriage?
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What were their challenges?
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How did you know they were engaged in a good marriage?
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What were the signs and behaviors which defined their goodness for you?
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What is the “key” to their enduring marriage?
Many of us are surrounded by unhappy or broken marriages. What if, like Mark, you don’t have live role models? One recent study showed that watching romantic movies together really could improve relationships -- but only if you watch actively and intentionally, and talk about them afterward.
The study of 174 couples showed that discussing five movies about relationships over a month could cut the three-year divorce rate for newlyweds in half -- which made it just as effective as taking specialized marital skills training.
The technique is deceptively simple: Watch a romantic movie together, answer the following questions, and discuss them together after the movie.
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What main problem(s) did this couple face? Are any of these similar to the problems that the two of you have faced or might face as a couple?
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Did the couple have a strong friendship with each other? Were they able to support each other through bad moods, stressful days, and hard times? Did they listen to each other like good friends?
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Did the couple in the movie do considerate or affectionate things for each other? In what way was this similar to or different from how you express affection?
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How did the couple handle arguments or differences of opinion? Were they able to open up and tell each other how they really felt, or did they tend to just snap at each other with anger? Did they try using humor to keep things from getting nasty? Did it feel like they were really trying to understand each other? In what way was this relationship similar to or different from the ways you handle differences of opinion in your marriage?
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If the couple got into arguments, did they tend to become heated? Did the couple ever start attacking each other, getting increasingly mean and hostile? Did they end up saying things they didn’t really mean? Once this started happening, how did the arguments tend to end? Are their styles of arguing similar to or different from the ways you argue ?
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When one of the partners brought up a problem, did he or she seem to do it in a constructive way (keeping things specific, explaining his or her feelings without attacking), or did it seem more like an attack? Did it seem like bringing up a problem became an assassination of the partner’s character? In what way was this relationship similar to or different from how you manage problems as a couple?
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How did the couple in the movie handle hurt feelings? Did they apologize to each other? Did the apologies seem sincere? Did they tend to jump to negative conclusions when their feelings got hurt, or did they tend to give each other the benefit of the doubt? In what way was their ability to manage hurt feelings similar to or different from your own relationship?
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Did the partners seem to have similar expectations of their relationship? Where did their expectations differ? Did it seem like they were aware of their own expectations? Were their expectations reasonable? Did they share their expectations with each other? Do you share expectations in ways similar to or different from the couple in the movie?
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What other things happened in the movie that might lead you to think differently about your relationship/marriage?
The goal of this tool is to find models, whether in real life or in the media, to whom you can imaginatively turn in times of stress and doubt and ask: In this situation, what would x do? How would they respond? What would they ask of their spouse? Saintly models can produce heavenly marriages.
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Reflective Listening
When others speak to us, we usually only half listen.
The other half of our brain is busy trying to formulate a good response. We are simply waiting our turn in conversation with others, wanting to share what we know, or offer our opinion. That’s why we typically remember so little of what people have told us.
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Reflective listening is a specific communication strategy in which the listener seeks to understand the speaker’s ideas and feelings, and then responds in a way that confirms to the speaker that their point of view has been understood and respected. The goal of the practice is to learn to be a good listener who is open to understanding their partner’s point of view and communicating that understanding by putting themselves in their partner’s shoes, viewing the situation from their point of view.
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Feeling understood is a powerful and often deeply moving experience which engenders feelings of being loved, nurtured, and respected. As loving spouses we can give this gift simply by becoming a good listener.
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Steps to reflective listening:
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Take turns listening to one another. In general, the spouse who has the strongest feelings should speak first. This first speaker has the floor until he or she chooses to relinquish it. They must pause from time to time to give the listener a chance to reflect what they are hearing, and the speaker can correct the listener if they feel the listener has not fully or correctly understood them. Only when the speaker feels fully heard should they relinquish the floor. At this point, the roles reverse.
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Use a Talking Stick. Talking sticks are used by many aboriginal people to ensure democratic debate. In a council, only the person with the talking stick has the right to speak until they pass it to another person. Some counselors find it useful to have the speaker in this exercise hold a pencil or pen. They hold it upright when they are speaking, and gesture to their partner when they are ready to hear a reflection.
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Use Time-Outs. From time to time the listener may request a “time out.” We usually indicate this with a hand gesture (making a “T” with one hand vertical and the other horizontal). There are two types of time-outs. The first is to indicate that you are overwhelmed by the content of the speaker’s self-sharing and you need to reflect before they move on. The second is when you feel emotionally overwhelmed by what the speaker is sharing and you need to take a break. When this happens, it is important that you do not simply flee--you need to set a time to resume the activity.
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Give them your attention. While listening, cell phones and other distractions are turned off or put away. Give your full attention to your spouse by maintaining eye contact, talking less, and focusing on their thoughts and feelings, not on how you will respond when it is your turn to speak.
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Focus on what is personal. Focus on the thoughts and feelings underlying what your partner is saying, rather than details about the events or ideas being presented.
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Reflect feelings first. When you are empathically responding, state your partner’s feelings directly. A good formula is “You feel x when I do y because z.”. It is clearer and more useful to reflect, “You feel lonely when I bring several hours of work home several nights in a row because you think I’ve abandoned you,” instead of couching it in awkward phrasing such as, “What I hear you saying is that you don’t like it when I bring home the work I don’t get done but still need to do.”
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Restate and clarify. Don’t repeat the speaker’s exact words. Keep the focus on what the speaker has said, and the feelings you hear behind those words, not on what you feel, believe or want. It is important to keep your attention on your partner’s perspective of the situation, even if you disagree with their frame of reference, or their interpretation of the sequence of events.
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Accept corrections. Don’t ask questions or get impatient if your partner indicates that you have misunderstood them and restates their position. Accept clarification and correct your responses until they hear you accurately reflecting what they are saying, and believe that you fully understand them.
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Be Accepting. Respond with acceptance and empathy, not with indifference, cold objectivity, or false concern, even if you completely disagree with your spouse’s account of an event, or their interpretation of your motives and actions.
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To determine whether you are using reflective listening effectively, ask yourself:
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Did you allow your spouse to completely state their thoughts or opinions without interrupting?
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Did you try to remember the important facts or points?
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Did you repeat back the gist of your partner’s points of view?
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Did you put yourself in their shoes, and name the emotions they were expressing?
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Did you keep an open mind, even when you disagreed with the points made by your partner?
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Did you maintain a kind stance towards views that differed from your own?
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Were you genuine?
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When you first use reflective listening techniques, they will feel unnatural. That’s because they are. This is a special technique intended to help you learn to become better listeners and to be more in tune with one another.
As you learn to reflectively listen routinely, the more formal aspects will fade away in most everyday situations, perhaps reserved only for your state of our union meetings. But there will still be times when you need to get out the talking stick, make two cups of tea, sit your spouse down and say, “Honey, we need to talk. And I’d like us to use the reflective listening technique.”
Building Habits of Virtue
St. Thomas Aquinas believed that at every moment of our lives we are challenged to turn toward love, or to turn away from love toward ourselves and our own desires.
When we turn toward ourselves more and more, we build habits of vice. We make the deadly sins an intimate part of our lives. But the reverse is also true. Virtue is essentially a matter of building love-centered habits.
Building good habits is a topic that has enjoyed a great deal of attention among psychologists and cognitive scientists in recent years. Much of this research was boiled down and synthesized in a bestselling book entitled Atomic Habits: An Easy and Proven Way to Build Good Habits and Break Bad Ones by James Clear.
Clear lays out 4 simple laws of behavior change that research has shown to be simple and effective.
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Make It Specific: To say “I’m going to be more attentive to my spouse’s love languages” is to set yourself up to continue to disappoint yourself and your spouse. To say, “Every morning I’m going to get up ten minutes early and write my wife a short love note giving her words of affirmation” gives you something specific and measurable to do that you can put in your date book. It’s not just an intention, it’s a plan.
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Make It Attractive: Fun gets stuff done. We build habits when we turn them from chores into something more enjoyable. One way is to combine something you love with a habit you want to build. For example, one man whose hobby was calligraphy and making elegant cards for his friends and family, began a nightly ritual of writing a love note to his wife in which he could try out new fonts, border styles and other techniques. Another approach is to find someone with whom to share your new habit. One woman who was accustomed to meeting with a friend to vent about what was wrong with their marriages and families, switched friendships and met with another woman to discuss what was good in their relationships and what they could do to make their marriages better.
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Make It Easy: Starting new habits is intimidating. One solution for this is to change your environment so that it is harder to engage in bad habits and easier to engage in good ones. If you want to write your spouse a love note in the morning instead of check your e-mail, put your pens and stationary on the kitchen counter or breakfast table where you will encounter them first thing in the morning, and put your smart phone and iPad away in a drawer. A second solution is to start small. Even really small. Start a few times a week with a post it note saying “I love you” on the refrigerator in the morning, or slipped into your loved one’s briefcase or purse or workout bag. Once that has become second nature to you, increase the number of times and the thoughtfulness of the notes in small stages.
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Make It Satisfying: Reward yourself for your accomplishments. In the beginning, when you need to reinforce yourself, give yourself a reward for each love note. Once you’ve started building the habit, reward yourself when you’ve accomplished a week. Then every month, and so on.
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It’s not for nothing that Purgatory was described as a spiral path up the mountain -- spiral paths go upward against gravity and backsliding is expected. Heaven is portrayed differently. Each sphere represents a different virtue, and as each one is attained, moving further upward becomes possible.
But how do you avoid falling?
One technique is to make each virtue a part of your identity. As each new virtue becomes more and more habitual, recognize that you are a new, and renewed, person. Remind yourself of that: “I am a prudent person.” “I’m someone who takes what life throws at them and turns obstacles into opportunities.” “I’m a caring and loving spouse.”
The trick to building habits of virtue isn’t that it will make you better at doing things. It will make you a better spouse, and a better person.
These three tools--finding models, reflective listening, and building better habits--are crucial to moving upward and creating heavenly marriages. The ultimate goal is to use your marriage itself as a tool to make yourself into the best possible spouse you can be.
Not all virtues are equal.
So far, we have written about the cardinal virtues in ways that apply equally to Christians and secularists alike. But the Church teaches us that the final three virtues–faith, hope, and love–are different from other virtues. The first four are moral virtues that can be acquired by practice and habit. But faith, hope and love are theological virtues that are aimed not merely at making ourselves better persons, or improving our relationships with our spouse (although they do); they are oriented toward God.
In the context of marriage, we can understand this in three ways.
First, practicing faith, hope and love moves us beyond a marriage conceived as a union of two persons each willing the good of the other and acting to make that good happen. These three virtues move us in the direction of a sacramental love, in which our marriage becomes a channel for moving into a greater and more fulfilling relationship with God.
Second, we do not only pursue our own salvation through our marriage. The astonishing economy of heaven is such that the only way to achieve our own salvation through marriage is by seeking in every way that we can to be a channel for our spouse’s salvation.
Finally, faith, hope and love are so demanding–especially in challenging times–that they cannot be sustained through our efforts alone. They require God’s grace.
As a result, our chapters on Faith, Hope, and Love will be more spiritual, more scriptural, and more theologically-oriented than previous chapters. In accordance with the teachings of St. Thomas Aquinas, however, we have sought to make them simultaneously practical and spiritual, as all good Catholic teachings strive to be.
Resources
Clear, James. 2018. Atomic Habits: An Easy & Proven Way to Build Good Habits & Break Bad Ones. Avery publishing.
Rogge, R. D., Cobb, R. J., Lawrence, E., Johnson, M. D., & Bradbury, T. N. (2013). Is skills training necessary for the primary prevention of marital distress and dissolution? A 3-year experimental study of three interventions. Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, 81(6), 949-961.