On our wedding day, we stand at the altar filled with many hopes, dreams, and great expectations. And this is as it should be. It is a joyous day worthy of celebration.
But the honeymoon does not last forever. And sooner or later, a deeper reality arrives. We discover our wife cannot be everything we need, just as she discovers the same about us. And when this moment comes, it is time to enter the house of mourning.
Every marriage contains a funeral. Not necessarily the funeral of a person, but the funeral of our expectations.
We Marry More Than a Person
Even when we date wisely and take our time, there are many things we discover only after we’ve committed our lives wholeheartedly to each another. In this way, marriage is an act of faith – stepping into the unknown together.
Part of what quickly gets exposed is that we did not fully know the person we married.
This is rarely malicious and often not even conscious. We marry not only a person, but also an image, a hope, and a story. We carry expectations about who our spouse will be and what life together will provide. Many of these desires are good, with some also being deep and transcendent.
And therein lies the problem.
The Problem of Unrealistic Expectations in Marriage
We enter marriage with a desire to experience perfect love. And we naturally look to our spouse to fulfill this desire while forgetting they are not God.
We are finite creatures.
We get tired. We miss things. We disappoint and regularly misunderstand each other. This does not suggest a lack of love, but simply the realities of being human.
Why Disappointment Often Feels Like Anger
It is easy in these moments to get angry and blame each other. We assume our spouse is holding out on us. And we fight as though the love we crave is sitting just on the other side of their stubbornness, blindness, or failure. But this only keeps us stuck.
Leave the Boxing Match and Attend the Funeral
A better approach is to leave the boxing match and attend the funeral.
Beneath our criticism and contempt is often unacknowledged grief. There is something we wanted but did not receive. There is a dream that did not come true. There is a longing that remains unmet.
Grief allows us to acknowledge this loss and accept reality on its own terms.
The loss matters. It hurts. But no amount of anger, bargaining, denial, or control can change what is. Funerals create space for the soul to stop fighting reality and finally face it.
This does not mean we married the wrong person. This funeral would be necessary regardless of whom we married. In fact, it often appears in friendship, family, and every close relationship as well. Nothing is fundamentally wrong with these relationships. We have simply encountered the reality of our finitude.
The fantasy dies.
The idealized spouse dies.
The dream of finding in another human being what only God can provide dies.
The Beginning of Wisdom
This is a death, but it is not a failure. It is the beginning of wisdom. Before we can love another person as they truly are, we must first recognize who they are not.
They are not infinite.
They are not perfect.
They cannot be everything for us.
They are simply human.
