What Does Friendship Have to Do With Marriage?

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Why is it so easy to read good intentions into the words and actions of our closest friends yet when it comes to our spouse we find our blood pressure immediately rising as we presume that they should be able to know that this or that little thing bothers us? Many of us have close friends that can read our thoughts, anticipate what we need before we do, and give us gifts that reveal how well they know our soul. They know when to encourage us, joke, or just let us be. Spouses, however, seem to know just exactly how to frustrate us. They talk when we would prefer silence, they mess up our little systems, push all of our buttons (even the ones we did not know we had) and reveal all of our weaknesses. Why can’t our spouse understand us and anticipate our every need just like some of our closest friends?

Spousal friendship is a different kind of thing. You are taking two members of the opposite sex who often have only known each other for a few years and in some sense “forcing” a friendship. In addition to that there is romantic interest, passions, habits, attraction, growth in self awareness, revelations of weaknesses and past failures, different personalities, temperaments, expectations, and experiences of family life. What could possibly go wrong?

Without a healthy foundation of friendship and deep faith, the sexual attraction and the romance in your marriage will not be sustained. Any existing friendship will become strained because a marriage built on attraction, thrills, and fun cannot support a life-long commitment.

Our own friendship story began in Alexandria Virginia, January, 2006 during a winter ice storm. Fr. Francis deRosa found Ryan trying to sleep in our parish cry room after three nights with no power at his new graduate school home. Fr. DeRosa decided to bring the “homeless” guy to a dinner party that happened to be at Mary-Rose’s house. Today we are so thankful to God for that historic ice storm that brought us together and for Fr. deRosa who became a close friend and three years later gave our wedding homily.

For the next two years we formed a deep friendship within a community of friends. We each had plans and ideas for our individual lives, but over time it was obvious that we had so much in common. While there was no romantic interest at first, we later realized that we both loved the same things. Most of the time when one of us had a great idea for something to do everyone else in our group of friends would flake out and Ryan and I (and occasionally Fr. deRosa) would be the only ones to show up. Who wants to do a twenty mile bike ride and see the Cherry Blossoms in DC? Who wants to see La Vie en Rose? Who wants to go to the Pro-Life Indian Summer Ball, smoke cigars under a full moon on the Potomac, take a roadtrip, listen to Les Mis, go see the Christmas Lights in Old Town Alexandria? We did.

Seeing more than our share of marriages unravel, we were very cautious. Commitment was a huge mountain to climb. God seemed to be revealing to us a fundamental detail that we could have easily overlooked - God introduced us as friends first and our friendship has become a sturdy shelter for our marriage!

So, what exactly is a friend and what does friendship have to do with marriage? What is it that has kept our couple relationship alive for almost seven years and hopefully throughout decades more of marriage? Deepening and growing in friendship is the beating heart of marital relationship and in our experience depends upon incorporating these three fundamental values:

●loving truly - friends deeply desire the true good and happiness of the other.

●acting unselfishly - friends consistently act as though they love truly, helping the other to become his or her best self.

●enjoying making a life together - they seek to spend time together and share together the daily trials and joys of life.

By thinking of my spouse as an intimate and dear friend, I find the perfect place from which to think most clearly about my attitudes and actions towards my beloved spouse. My spouse should be able to count on me more than anyone else in the world! If I do not look out first and foremost for his/her good, then who will? True friendship in marriage gives us this priceless experience: I know that this person, who knows me as no other does, is the same person who loves me as no other does. This is the foundation for all that we do. This gives us security and helps us to treat our spouse as a dear friend, never taking them for granted.

Spousal friendship allows us to prioritize giving ourselves to our spouse over “wanting” our spouse. In a culture that places more emphasis on desire or wanting, friendship allows spouses to focus on giving themselves and receiving their spouse. Spousal friendship ultimately reveals Christ’s love to our spouse. We learn what it is like to love without counting the cost and the healing power of receiving sacrificial love. This is how we begin to witness the love of Christ in our marriage and ultimately to the world.

"A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another, even as I have loved you, that you also love one another. By this all men will know that you are My disciples, if you have love for one another." James 13: 34-35

There is no one that I have met in this life that has revealed the love of God to me like my spouse. Spousal friendship is a taste of heaven and an encounter with Christ who is the greatest friend and lover.

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