"Simply Purgatory"
"Marriage needs to be worked upon every day, it is like doing a ‘craftsman’ job! Man helps his wife to be a better woman, and the woman helps her husband to be a better man.”
--Pope Francis
Abraham Lincoln once said, “marriage is neither heaven nor hell. It is simply purgatory.”
Since Purgatory was often depicted as a place of torment and punishment, in which souls writhed in flames, this statement was often taken as a reflection on Lincoln’s own troubled marriage. And no doubt it was.
But in Catholic teaching Purgatory is not a place where people passively receive punishments over which they have no control; rather, it is a place where souls eagerly accept often harsh disciplines as a way to scourge themselves of their sinful habit and rise to become better persons. Purgatory is a place filled with people who want true love but have fallen short, and are willing to do whatever it takes to become worthy of giving and receiving true love.
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Now imagine family in the light of this allegory. Marriages have times of joy but also times of sorrow, anger, jealousy, frustration, hurt, and wounded pride. What if we understood the hard times not as signs that there is something wrong with the marriage, but as challenges that we must overcome in order to grow into better spouses, better lovers, and better human beings?
One of our parish priests was fond of saying, "The thing I've noticed about most dysfunctional families is how well they function." He was drawing attention to the fact that people throw around the words "dysfunctional family" to describe any problems any family has--and what family doesn't have problems?
Technically, "dysfunction" refers to a family whose problems are so great that it can no longer function as a family. But what are the functions of a family?
A family can be dysfunctional with regard to infrastructure, if it can no longer feed and shelter its members. A family can be socially dysfunctional, existing in isolation from other families, from neighbors and from friends, creating an unhealthy atmosphere that often involves child abuse, spousal abuse and drug and alcohol abuse.
But a family can also be spiritually dysfunctional. The Church teaches us that the function of the family is to make the married couple holy, and perhaps to bring into this world children who can also be made holy within the family.
Marriages really do go in cycles of highs to lows, and however slowly the low phase passes, there is usually a rebounding phase that leads to an equal and opposite high. This is particularly true for those who investigate healthier and more satisfying ways of interacting.
Research by Linda Waite and Maggie Gallagher in their book A Case for Marriage found that 86 percent of unhappily married people who stick it out find that, five years later, their marriages are happier. The National Survey of Families and Households also found that most couples who said they were unhappy at one point in their marriage, say in subsequent surveys that they’ve become very happy indeed. In fact, nearly three-fifths of those who said their marriage was unhappy in the late 1980s and who stayed married, rated this same marriage as either “very happy” or “quite happy” when interviewed again in the early 1990s. We've learned that couples who rate themselves as very unhappy but remain married will rate themselves pleased with their decision to remain married only 5 years after the crisis passed.
During the worst phases of your marriage, though, people may feel that there are only a few ways out of a bad marriage. The most common involve divorces, abandonment of the marriages and efforts to start over again with someone else--often carrying with us the faults that caused the problems in the first marriage into the next.
But there is another way. We can face our spiritual faults and make our marriages better from within.
This is the path that understands marriage as a vocation, a Holy work, that we must daily set out to achieve. If marriage is a long, long road stretching out before us, we must realize it is a road that can go either down or up.
The upward road is the path of purgatory, expressed by Dante as a seven story mountain that one can ascend by means of a long and winding road. At each level, penitents confront their sins and are purged of them through penances, prayers and meditations.
The average marriage in the US lasts only 8 years. Yet, the Church tells us that marriage is for life. If you are like me you are asking, even demanding to know what is the means to make a lifelong commitment work well, not just tolerably. I don't want to hang in there for the children's sake. Nor will I just endure a life-long commitment simply to comply with Church teaching.
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How are we to find the means or method possible to grow a sturdy, lifelong marriage?
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First, you work at it. As you move forward you have to recognize marriage is work and it's always going to be work. God calls on us to follow Him. This means putting aside everything that might hold us back from doing his will. Marriage demands sacrifice, sacrificing your own will to that of God's, setting your partner's good above your own, and letting our spouse transform us by his or her love.
Second, you don't look back. In the Gospel, Jesus warns us that “No one who sets a hand to the plow and looks to what was left behind is fit for the Kingdom of God.” (Lk 9:72). As we move forward, we need to let go of the sins of the past—both those we committed and those committed against us. If we look back in marriage and second guess ourselves and our actions, we will miss what God has planned for us in our marriage. We are so often tempted to compare our spouse to the people who we dated, who we might have ended up with, or just recalling the "good old days" of our dating and courtship. Living in the past rather than the present, we miss what we are supposed to be doing in the moment.
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This section revisits the sins we saw in the marriages described in Part One. This time, though, the emphasis is on overcoming those sins, on becoming a better spouse, a better lover, a better helpmeet and partner. The chapters that follow offer exercises, advice, prayers and meditations to help you overcome the deadly sins that threaten to turn your marriage into a Hell.
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Instead of Hell, make your marriage a Purgatory.
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If marriage is a Purgatory, it is because it is our best chance at growing in love. As a silversmith refines silver by putting it into a furnace to burn out the impurities, so too your relationship with your spouse may sometimes be the crucible through which you make yourself a better friend, a better partner, a better lover. And the best part is that unlike Dante’s penitents, you don’t have to make the journey upward alone. It is a journey you and your spouse can make together.
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In Dante's poem, as people ascend Mount Purgatory, working out their flaws and looking ever forward, they grow lighter and lighter until they reach the top and, unburdened by bad habits and self-centered affections, they are ready to fly!
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Are you ready to fly?
A Tool For the Journey
It is a truism to say that the core of any good marriage is communication, but many people seem to think good communication is primarily about spouses letting one another know they are loved--going on dates, giving gifts, leaving love notes. In fact, expressions of love are the frosting on the cake. Without the cake itself, one quickly grows ill on a diet of frosting. The cake, in this metaphor, is the structure of the marital bond itself, the mutual commitment to the shared project of making and sustaining a family.
Clear, open communication requires a safe space in which spouses can share their concerns honestly about issues such as justice, trust and need, where worries can be heard and addressed, and solutions can be discussed without anger, defensiveness, and recrimination.
The most effective way to accomplish this is through regular relationship “check-ins,” also known as “marriage meetings.” We have always called ours “state of our union meetings.” These meetings offer an opportunity to reflect together on your relationship, and share with one another your sense of what’s working well and what things need to be addressed. Instead of allowing little things to build up over time until they lead to either arguments or distance, a State of Our Union meeting can help you stay connected, engaged and working on your relationship.
The crucial element of a marriage check-in is to give each spouse an opportunity to share honestly what they think is going right in the marriage, what they think is not going well, and how they feel about it. It can also be a place to plan solutions, and to organize and become aware of one another’s time commitments outside the family.
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While some counselors recommend regular but informal meetings in which the spouses run through a checklist of questions, we prefer a more structured approach. Our weekly agenda looks like this:
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Prayer. We open with a prayer, usually one thanking God for the blessings we enjoy within our marriage.
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Gratitude. Each partner shares one specific thing they appreciate that their partner did during the week. This cannot be a generic characteristic such as ”I appreciate how insightful you are” or “I appreciate what a good parent you are.” Rather, it must focus on a specific action or activity: “I really appreciate the advice you gave me last week on how I should handle that personnel problem at work. Your insights were spot on and helped me resolve it with a minimum of embarrassment to everybody” or “I was so proud that you took time off work to attend Jason’s honors society induction with me last week. Our son was the only one with both parents in attendance, and I think it really shows the kids how much we support them.”
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Intention. Each of the spouses offers one thing they want to do better in the coming week in their interaction with their spouse, whether it is breaking a bad habit or focusing on some aspect of the relationship that has been neglected. Each spouse acknowledges a failing they want to focus on correcting in the coming week. Often, as part of this, we assess how well we think we have followed through on our previous week’s commitment. It is important that this is a self-assessment, and the other spouse not pass judgment or offer an opinion unless asked.
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Unresolved Issues. One of the most important aspects of the state of our union meetings is the addressing of unresolved issues. Often, conflicts or misunderstandings arise during the week that cannot easily be addressed in the moment, either because you are out with friends, you are running late for work, or both of you feel too passionately to discuss it in the moment without escalating into a heated argument.
The core of the State of Our Union meeting is a space to safely share our feelings and concerns about how our spouse’s behavior is affecting us. The spouse who raises the issue should focus on how they feel as a result of their partner’s behavior, rather than focusing on the behavior itself. The listening partner should seek to show that they are hearing how their spouse felt, rather than explaining or defending their own behavior. Only after the spouse who initiated the conversation feels heard and understood should the couple move on to discussing resolutions to the problem. Interestingly, we sometimes find that we don’t really move on to concrete solutions; there are times when being fully heard, understood and acknowledged restores the breach created by the conflict or misunderstanding.
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Make Plans. We trot out our calendars and make sure that we both share the same information, so that there are no misunderstandings or confusions about planned activities together, who needs to work late on certain nights, who needs the car and so forth. In addition, we take this time to plan couples activities. These can range from evening dates to full-day activities to a quick game of cards depending on what else is going on. We try to ensure that we engage in at least one shared activity every day.
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Vocations. Marriage is a vocation that requires the cooperation of two people. We end our meetings by asking, “What is one thing I can do to help you in your vocation this week?” Whereas in the Intentions part of the meeting we offer to focus on some weakness in the relationship to which we know we contribute, in this part we get to ask our spouses to help us by changing some behavior or assisting us in some way. Often our vocational requests are tied to the issues raised earlier in the meeting, or involve seeking assistance to help us in our stated intention. It may be as simple as asking for a morning kiss, or a daily love note by text. It may be much bigger, such as asking your partner to spend 15 minutes every night with you reconciling the bank accounts to help get your family spending under control.
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Prayer. We close with a short prayer, usually one asking God’s help in overcoming the challenges we’ve identified in our marriage, and supporting us in the actions to which we have committed ourselves.
The State of Our Union meeting should be a regular weekly or biweekly meeting. It should have high priority. Couples should take turns being in charge of organizing it and leading it. In our own case, we meet weekly, and alternate who is in charge of the meeting every month.
Many couples have rituals that accompany the meeting. Some people like to have their check-ins while taking a walk, or sitting at the park, over dinner, or at a favorite coffee house. One couple called their weekly check-ins “couch time” and sat on a specific comfortable piece of furniture (on which, they claimed, their first child was conceived after a check-in!). In our case, we sit beside one another on a sofa so that we are touching and there’s no adversarial posture possible. We bought a porcelain pour-over coffee set during a trip to Vietnam, and we make coffee this way only when we are having our State of Our Union meeting.
The fundamental point of having a State of Our Union meeting is to create a communicative space that is totally focused on your relationship. While most spousal conversations involve everything from running the household to managing children’s activities to what to have for dinner, this is a dedicated, ongoing dialogue centered solely on your relationship.
This is crucial because it creates a space in which you can talk about any relationship issues openly and safely. Whereas couples often feel blindsided when a partner brings up hurt or angry feelings in the midst of day-to-day conversations (often with the result that they escalate quickly and turn into more hurt and angry feelings), the State of Our Union meeting is designed to be the place in which difficult conversations are expected and welcomed.
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We started regular weekly meetings 29 years into our relationship, and they’ve been a game changer. We wish we’d done this from the beginning.