I was talking with a young married mother this weekend about what would have been helpful for her to know about before she got married and she was emphatic that she should have been warned how hard marriage was going to be.
But on the other hand, another friend I chatted to this week was very disappointed with a recent church wedding service where the many and hard difficulties of marriage were so emphasised that it seemed to him that the minister was sentencing the couple to a life term in a prison. He asked "where was the joy"?
This is a hard balance to strike when talking with those preparing for marriage, and yet we know that the reality is that most marriages will have difficult times: with some having what seem like almost insurmountable difficulties, such as the death of a child or the permanent disabling of one partner.
In my own marriage, one of our hard times was when one of our children was a very challenging teenager, acting out way beyond a normal sullen withdrawal and subtle teenage disapproval of parental values. We found ourselves in serious disagreements about how to meet the challenge of this child over several years, alongside dealing with the serious outcomes of their behaviour. At times we withdrew from each other as a way of avoiding more conflict, but that was a no more comfortable place.
There are various doomsayers that predict that marriages cannot survive these stresses easily. One, now mostly discredited statistic, was the one that there is an extremely high divorce rate (80-90%) in couples following the death of a child. ("Compassionate Friends", a charity supporting bereaved parents, say the figure is nearer to 16 percent).
However, what is common to these situations is that both parties may be so caught in their own grief or distress, that they are unable to be there in a supportive way for their partner. When we are at the extremes of our ability to cope with what life is throwing at us, we (unconsciously) expect our spouse to be able to deal with us and our instability in that place. And they often can't.
As a counsellor, I find my role at these times is to provide a holding, safe emotional space, where each person can explore the depths of their distress and agony, and any problems in their relationship with God. Often their ambivalence is expressed in both wanting to rail at God for what has happened, but also expressing Peter's statement of belief "to whom shall we go?"
It is often said that one shouldn't interfere or get between a husband and wife, yet at times like these, we can be the comforter, the listener, the prayer, the holder of hope that they cannot be for each other. It is a privilege to be there.
