Marriage Moats-Wait Awhile

Published: Tue, 02/28/12

Marriage Moats

Caring for Marriage

(If you want to hear Lori read the story click)here

My son had been dating a girl for a few months when he came home for Christmas.

"Hey, Mom. Got a quilt I can give to my girlfriend?" While I was flattered that he thought my quilts make lush gifts, part of me bristled. How well did he know her? How serious was this relationship? What was she like? How long would this last?

I did not hand a quilt over to my son, and as it turns out they broke up within a few weeks. While I was sad for his disappointment I was relieved to not have lost a Dresden Plate that cost me thirty hours of piecing and twelve yards of batik to a woman he would never see again.

Generosity is a good thing. I have tried to practice abundance with an open heart over my lifetime. But I am wrestling with the paradox of being too generous.

John Van Epp created a program for teens and young adults called How Not to Marry a Jerk, which he has renamed Love Thinks. He created a six foot wide control panel that illustrates the sequence and balance that makes sense in a relationship. First comes getting to know someone. Then you start to trust them. After that you begin to rely on them, and eventually establish commitment. Last in the sequence is touch.

He wants to recalibrate the skewed tendency of teenagers to thrust physical intimacy to the front of the queue. I grieve that his voice is drowned out by a culture that splats sex on the cover of three quarters of the magazines and DVDs that stare at me in the grocery checkout line when what I came for was bread and cheese.

A movie that I respect is Away From Her. It is about a man who loves his wife even as she slips into dementia and forgets his name. The film offers a tender portrayal of his devotion. Yet smack in the middle, he leaps into bed with another woman for the twisted purpose of gaining a favor for his wife of forty years. What stuns me, is how tertiary the infidelity is to him.

Making love is a gift even more precious than a Pineapple quilt of eight hundred pieces... and as anyone who knows me understands that is saying a lot. What does it cost our hearts to toss intimacy away to people we may never see again?

Photo by Joy Feerrar

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