Why Marriage Isn't About Happiness

My small group at church is going through Sacred Marriage, by Gary Thomas. In it he makes a startling statement: Marriage isn’t about making you happy; it’s about making you holy. He makes the case that happiness, although a great side benefit, is a poor lynchpin for marriage. With today’s uber-romantic views of marriage, culture screams at us that marriage is about finding ‘the one,’ the special someone who will fulfill us and bring us the joy and happiness that we haven’t been able to find on our own.

That euphoria of courtship and the ‘honeymoon’ phase of marriage, where there’s a twinkle in the eye and a shiver up the spine every time we see our mate, that’s the stuff of legends. That’s what we aim for, what we celebrate in our books, our movies, and in our society. Interestingly, scientists say that this romantic euphoria can only be sustained for about two to three years. Eventually, the honeymoon will be over. The twinkle and shiver may come and go, but it cannot be sustained indefinitely.

Yet for many of us, when that euphoria naturally wears off, we feel like we’ve fallen out of love. Instead of a twinkle, we see a disheveled spouse rolling out of bed at 6 am that looks nothing like those first dates (and the primping involved). We find out a disturbing fact about marriage: it’s hard work. When the euphoria wears off and the hard work sets in, that’s when many call it quits.

But what if God didn’t design marriage primarily to make us happy, but to make us holy? What if he designed marriage as a way to learn to love unconditionally, to reform our own selfish habits, and to get a better picture of the sacrificial love Christ has for the church? What if we made our marriages less about our own selfish wants and more about the glory of God?

QUESTION: Do you agree with the statement? Is marriage more about making us holy than it is about making us happy?

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