Thoughts on Marriage

I'm finally sitting down to Lauren F. Winner's book Real Sex: The Naked Truth about Chastity. She came to chapel at Wheaton 2 years ago, where I sat in the back row of the balcony and cringed; she was talking straight at me. So now I'm finally getting down to what she's getting at, and I'm surprised. I'm surprised by how sensible it is and how receptive I am to it. So here's the passage that keeps bothering me:

"The reasons we give for delaying marriage are entirely understandable. We want to make sure we know ourselves...We want to see the world, or finish college, or graduate from law school before making a time-consuming domestic commitment to another person....
But these impulses, while perhaps laudable, speak to a distorted understanding of marriage. The anxious parent who wants her college-aged daughter to postpone marriage rightly recognizes that people change a lot in their early twenties. But what that parent perhaps fails to recognize is that there is no point at which we can be sure. There is no age at which we truly know ourselves, and there is no length of courtship after which we really know our sweetie. To underscore that making a marriage is not about making an informed, rational calculation is not to suggest that in an ideal world, high school seniors would marry arbitrarily and hope for the best. It is not to join the chorus on Christian college campuses that sings about having a 'ring by spring.' Rather it is to remember that marriage not merely an exercise in finding the perfect mate; though the companionate marriage has reigned triumphant for these last two centuries, marriage is not only about companionship. It is about children, and household economy, and stability. And marriage is also about God. No matter how clearly we see ourselves and our fiances, marriage will prove difficult. We will both change. We will argue, and feel broken, and wonder why we ever married in the first place--and it is God who will sustain us in those spells." (emphasis mine)

So this passage keeps haunting me, and while I feel twinges of regret at not having read this earlier, I've more importantly come to my own conclusion that I was wrong. I've been assaulting myself with this idea that I have no business being in a relationship until I really know who I am, until I can be fair to the other person by being confident in myself as an individual. This, stated plainly, is crap. At least I think it is.

As Winner reminded me, who among us is ever really sure of ourselves? Which of us can stand at an age and say, "Now. This is who I am; it will not change."? I cannot do that, and I will not because I know I will continue to change as I gather life experience and wisdom. As caught up as I've been in this idea of companionate love and being truly compatible, people change anyways. If they're compatible now, they may not be in another 5 years, and vice-versa. Maybe if I'd read this 3 months ago, my life would look different now. Then again, maybe not.