I know what it’s like to fail here. Recommitment involves going against yourself. But life is defined by the moments we’re asked to go against ourselves. Marriage, like all commitments, isn’t there to make you happy; it is there to make you grow. As Mason puts it, “A marriage lives, paradoxically, upon those almost impossible times when it is perfectly clear to the two partners that nothing else but pure sacrificial love can hold them together.”
In a weird way, one model of marital recommitment can be found in Abraham Lincoln’s second inaugural address. He gave the speech at a time of great national brokenness. It was clear by that point that the North was going to win the Civil War. Lincoln could have used this moment as a chance for great chest-thumping: We prevailed in a righteous cause. We fought for good; you fought for evil. We were right; you were wrong. We are vindicated, and you Southerners, who have so much of our blood on your hands, are disgraced.
Lincoln’s love of union—the whole nation—was stronger than his love for his own side. In the second inaugural, the key words are unifying words: “we,” “all,” “both.” “All thoughts were anxiously directed to an impending civil war. All dreaded it, all sought to avert it….Both parties deprecated war.” He puts North and South on the same humble footing.
Lincoln does not say slavery was a Southern institution. He says it was an American institution. The scourge of war, which purges this sin, falls rightly on both sides. Lincoln puts us all in the same category of culpability and fallenness. He realistically acknowledges the divisions and disappointments that plague the nation. But he does not accept the inevitability of a house divided, and calls for a radical turning of the heart: “With malice toward none, with charity for all.”
Healing a broken marriage is not all that different from healing a broken nation. There are always differences and disagreements in relationships, but most of the time that’s not what destroys them. It’s the way we turn disagreement into a quest for superiority. It’s not I’m right / you’re wrong; it’s I’m better / you’re lesser, I’m righteous / you’re deplorable, I’m good / you’re contemptible. It’s the tendency to be quick to take offense in a way that declares your own moral superiority. Marshall McLuhan was harsh but not wrong when he observed, “Moral indignation is a technique used to endow the idiot with dignity.”
Recommitment often means putting your own sins on the table. Forbearance means acknowledging the wrongs that have been committed, and even the anger that they have created, but it puts anger in the context of love. Loyalty just repeats “I love you.” It is astonishing how often that sentence “I love you” needs to be said, and how powerful it can be in a moment of disagreement and crisis.
The experts are aligned when it comes to how to recommit: Don’t expect some ultimate solution to the big disagreement in your marriage. Overwhelm the negative by increasing the positive. Swamp negative interactions with the five love languages: words of affirmation, acts of service, gifts, quality time, and personal touch.
Recommitment is the time for “Can we take a walk this afternoon?” and “You relax. I’ll vacuum.” This is the time for what Abraham Joshua Heschel called “an ecstasy of deeds.” You do a mitzvah, a good deed, and then you do another, and each one creates “luminous moments in which we are raised by overpowering deeds above our own will, moments filled with outgoing joy, with intense delight.” It is an immemorial law of human nature that behavior change precedes and causes attitudinal change. If you behave kindly toward a person, you will become kind and you will cherish them. Sex heals a lot of wounds in marriage, or at least provides a start to their healing. There is an ancient wisdom in the Jewish belief that a marriage without sex is not a marriage. “The ethic of marriage is hedonistic, not monastic,” writes Rabbi Joseph Soloveitchik; it is dangerous to be too spiritual about it.
A few years ago, Lydia Netzer wrote a blog post called “15 Ways to Stay Married for 15 Years,” which gave some good, realistic advice on sailing through the hazards of life together:
Go to bed mad. Everybody says you shouldn’t let the sun go down on your wrath. Sometimes that’s just stupid. You’re tired. Go to bed. Get some sleep. Wake up the next morning