David McMillian

Strategies for Living

Dear David,

Recently, during a conversation with a male friend, the subject of marriage came up. We both have friends who are contemplating marriage and I made the comment, “I don’t think they will get married...maybe they shouldn’t even get married. My friend posed an interesting question when he asked, “What can she have married that she cannot and does not have unmarried? So, David....what’s the answer??? Please reply and I appreciate your input.

Wondering about Wedlock

Dear WaW,

What a great question, but one not easily “answered.” With that said, I think what you and your friend are failing to contemplate and what we too quickly set aside when we “live together” are the importance of commitment and ritual. Commitment is vital to sustain intimacy and passion in a relationship. Intimacy is the dropping of the protective walls that we all construct around us as we move about socially at work, interacting with co-workers and acquaintances, and living as a social being in the world. Passion is a strong emotional connection that we feel toward the other person and the relationship. If you can imagine a triangle with the word intimacy on one side and the word passion on the other side, in a healthy relationship commitment or safety would form the base of that triangle. Commitment gives us the safety to be who we truly are, with at least one other human being and if nowhere else, inside a committed relationship. I can’t think of a better word to describe commitment within a relationship than safety. The commitment of marriage, at its best, makes things truly safe for the marriage partners. I think we can all relate to needing safe places in our life, and that’s an important function of healthy marriage, creating a truly safe place. We talk about marriage as a major building block for strong families and communities, and weddings are an important ritual opportunity for friends, family and neighbors to come together to recognize a couple’s lifelong commitment to one another. This occasion strengthens a couple’s bond and marks their inclusion as a family into the communities of which they are a part. Like all important rituals in our lives, they are signs and symbols to us and the larger community. But marriage is much more than that too. Marriage is a unique relationship, synonymous with “family,” so that if you’re “married,” no one would challenge a person’s right to be by his or her spouse’s side. The word itself is one of the protections. Second, it is a gateway to hundreds of legal protections established by the state and over 1,000 by the federal government. Married couples can take for granted rights of hospital visitation, security for their children, and rights of inheritance. Marriage is a social institution of the highest importance, one that we’ve collectively defined as the ultimate expression of love and commitment. So, I would say to your friend that there is a great deal that she and he can have when they choose marriage that they just can’t be guaranteed without marriage.

I want to share a quote that I recently ran across that I think go very well with the above question, and help crystallize for us the importance of marriage. I hope you like them.

Why is it that people get married?

Because we need a witness to our lives.

There’s a billion people on the planet.

What does any one life really mean?

But in a marriage, you are promising to care about everything…

The good things, the bad things, the terrible things, the mundane things,

All of it…all the time, every day.

You are saying “your life will not go unnoticed, because I will notice it.

Your life will not go unwitnessed, because I will be your witness.”

Wife in the movieShall We Dance?

Hear Marriage and Family Therapist David McMillian on Strategies for Living onwww.strategiesforliving.com and Sundays 9:05am to 10:00am on NEWSRADIO 710 KEEL. E-mail your questions to deardavid@ live.com.