My Spouse Isn't Perfect, But I Still Married Him

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“To have and to hold, from this day forward, for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health, until death do us part…”

We’ve all heard the traditional wedding vows repeated in person, on TV and in the movies, and I’m not embarrassed to admit that this profession of love and commitment causes me to tear up nearly every time.

It's been less than a year since I've recited those words to my husband.

In the months before my wedding, I remember really dissecting those words. “To have and to hold, from this day forward” seemed clear enough, and I could handle the “better” reference just fine, but it was the less than glamorous parts of the vows—for worse, for poorer, in sickness—that I really wanted to reflect on. Even placed next to their more positive antonyms, these words in the vows serve as a word of caution to anxious brides and grooms.

Ecclesiastes says that there’s a time for everything and that includes times of trial, sadness and just plain unhappiness—even in marriage!

I know that my younger self unashamedly believed that finding my perfect spouse and saying “I do” would erase the negative aspects of life. I didn’t yet see the intricacies of real adult relationships, including the serious trials coupled with the ups and downs of everyday life.

With most engaged couples focusing on the “for better” and not the “for worse,” a new wedding trend has emerged in an effort to expose negative behaviors, quirks and downsides to your future spouse before you say “I do.” Known as a shadow wedding, a certified therapist guides the couple through a pre-wedding ceremony where each individual reveals their faults, oftentimes in front of family and friends, to ensure they each address the other person’s “shadows.”

With the tagline of “bringing light to dark side of getting hitched,” the organization claims that by sharing these “dirty secrets” like your hatred of laundry or your tendency to gossip, the couple will be more informed about what to expect in marriage and then maintain better relationships and build better families.

I hope that you were just as taken back as I was reading about this new trend. This unusual take on wedding prep is clearly counter-intuitive to our Catholic values and reinforces the worldly view of marriage where love is conditional and definitely not a faith-based covenant.

We all have less than desirable attributes that we should identify and actively address. I know that a cluttered room puts me on edge and that I can hold grudges against others. These aren’t aspects of my life that I’m proud of, so I work hard at minimizing their effect on me and other people. George is well aware of all of my faults based on what he intuitively knows about me and what I’ve told him directly.

But unlike a shadow wedding, we jointly revealed these pieces of ourselves during our dating years and our engagement to partner together to be better people, both as individuals and a couple. Even with these intentional conversations, I know that we will both learn new things about each other throughout our entire marriage, which I see as a blessing, not a drawback.

As Catholics, we know that our worldly traits don’t dictate a successful or unsuccessful union—it’s a union of three after all. Our culture glamorizes weddings and marriage in our culture, so it is important to be real. We should understand that our homes won’t always look like a Pinterest board and that our marriages won’t always be picture perfect, and most importantly, we should prepare for the sacrament of marriage, not just the wedding. It’s through careful discernment, prayer, conversation and emotional intimacy that we reveal parts of ourselves—the good and the bad—to each other and to God, who knows every part of our being.

We are meant to live in the lightnot to ignore the shortcomings of our future spouses but to see them as children of God and to honor each other, in good times and in bad, as husband and wife.

Shadow wedding? No, thanks.

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