What Guarding the Solitude of Your Spouse Looks Like
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Editor's Note: Today is World Marriage Day! It's part of both National Marriage Week and Catholic Marriage Week. We're celebrating by publishing some articles more specific to marriage issues. Check out other resources for Catholic Marriage Week here.
My husband and I met in college.
We were just friends for years before deciding to date, and eventually marry. During those friendship years, we had a lot of people telling us just how perfect we were for each other.
“You’re practically the same person!”
“You guys agree on everything, you’d make the best couple!”
Now, while I do think we make a great couple, my husband and I are very different people who disagree on quite a lot.
Even in the smaller things: he’s a social extrovert, while I’m a home-loving introvert; he likes a lot of variety, I tend to find a few favorites to obsess over.
What makes us such a harmonious couple is that we both entered into our relationship embracing the advice of Rainer Maria Rilke “that each should stand guard over the solitude of the other. For … love and friendship are there for the purpose of continually providing the opportunity for solitude.”
Now, solitude isn’t the same as loneliness. Solitude, in this context, is the interior quiet necessary to pursue individual interests and interior growth.
It’s this commitment to “guarding the solitude” of each other that inspires us to support each other’s interests and allows us both to grow and thrive as a couple and as individuals.
The Loneliness Epidemic affects our approach to marriage.
According to polls, Americans just keep getting lonelier and lonelier. Between our ever-increasing dependence on screens, our exhausting work schedules, we’re often painfully lonely.
When we find love, our deep-seated loneliness can make it easy for us fall into unhealthy, over-attachment. After all, we’ve finally found someone to share our lives with.
It’s easy to think “I’ll never be lonely again” when we finally marry. But the truth is, marriage doesn’t promise we’ll never be alone, or that our spouse will always participate in every activity.
There's Vocation and then there are vocations.
Spouses are still individuals. When we marry, we unite ourselves under our shared Vocation and pursue holiness together. In that pursuit, some of our individual interests and needs do have to be set aside. It’s important for spouses to be able to give up lesser callings when they conflict with the primary Vocation of marriage. Recognizing the importance of family time and a shared life together is essential, but you already know that.
We hear about the sacrificial aspect of marriage a lot. Men especially, are reminded that that they need to ‘die to self’ and become “servant leaders” by giving up the interests and pursuits that take them away from family. Women often hear something similar, couched in the trite-but-true phrase “you can’t have it all.”
For both men and women, marriage is often painted as the end of individuality.
They death of all your hobbies and creative dreams—unless those dreams can be shared with your wife and children.
With both society and our own need for companionship demanding constant attention from a spouse, it can be challenging to take a hard look at what you or your spouse actually need in marriage. We like to say, “I married my best friend” and assume that our spouse wants to play the role of middle-school best friend forever. But that sort of intensity isn’t natural to marriage. In fact, family life is most healthy when each person has the freedom to pursue his or her individual interests in a healthy way.
The best way to nourish the individual interests of your spouse is by ‘standing guard’ over his or her solitude. By consistently carving out time for your spouse to pursue his individual interests.
Give them some space to grow.
My husband and I have changed a lot since our marriage. We’ve both gone through periods of rich growth and interior development, as well as stagnant phases where our personal development has been either non-existent, or even regressive.
Those phases are completely natural in any person’s life. We experience them and pass through them. But when our spouse doesn’t give us space to grow, those stagnant phases tend to stick around. They can even overwhelm us.
What helps us get through those periods of stagnation, is that we have each other’s permission to renew. When my husband needs time to create in silence, or just refresh himself by camping with friends, he knows he has that space.
Passions and interests aren’t just inspiring, creative hobbies or side businesses, they’re also simple things: open mic nights, bonfires with friends, fishing trips, and early, uninterrupted mornings alone.
Obviously, there are limitations. I might remind him that we promised to go to a birthday party the day after he planned a fishing trip five hours away. He can either chose to rush back for the party or go fishing another time. But either way, he knows I’m on his side.
You don't owe each other.
At its heart, supporting my spouse’s interests and pursuits demands that I give up that sense of ownership of the other’s time that we often feel in marriage.
Refuse to believe that he or she ‘owes’ you everyone of those evenings after work, every weekend hour, and all of his vacation time.
Remember that to continue to be the individual you fell in love with, your spouse needs some space, time, and freedom. So, the next time he starts planning a weekend trip, or she spends three evenings out with friends stop for a second.
Remember that as tired as you both might be from all the stresses of daily life and your family responsibilities, each of you need time for renewal and refreshment. Avoid treating this guarding of solitude as a points system, your spouse doesn’t owe you a weekend away just because he took one. This isn’t a 50/50 system, it’s the cultivation of an individual. Chose to embrace the person you married and try to make your relationship a safe and nurturing space for him or her to grow in.
You’ll find that honestly and consistently supporting your spouse’s interests is a great way be continually surprised and inspired by the person you married.
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