Matt and I have been married for fourteen years now, which feels like but a day, and one of the institutions upon which we rely, as a drowning person might feel emotionally attached to his life preserver, is Date Night.
A long while ago I read a little article by Tim Challies explaining that Date Night shouldn’t be a law, he himself is not in need of this institution, and it’s ok to try to just spend time every day with your spouse. I was appalled that so sensible a man could be so wrong. In my, much more limited, experience, if you have a miserable couple staring at you over the coffee pot, finally ready to admit that nothing in their marriage is going as they want it to, you can cut right through to the heart of the matter by asking, “When was the last time you went out together, just the two of you?” Couples who feel miserable about each other almost never say, “We go out once a week, as you commanded,” it’s always some moment they can’t remember a year and a half ago.
This revelation always causes Matt to shout and wave his arms. “We told you to go out!” he will cry, “We said Once a Week, No Exceptions.” The couple will sit there looking dubious, almost desperate enough to try anything. And really, that’s the key element to the institution of Date Night–desperation. The more you spend that single solitary evening gazing at and talking to the person you promised to spend the rest of your life with, the more necessary that hour becomes.
You don’t have to go out, of course, you can stay in. But you shouldn’t watch a movie. You shouldn’t putter the evening away on your phone. You shouldn’t let children sidle up to find out what you’re eating. You shouldn’t suddenly decide to catch up on the laundry and bills. You should, instead, contrive some way to sit opposite each other, drinking something you both like, trying to untangle the week. You should both open your mouths and talk, Especially when you are young and in love so that you don’t even have to think about it when you are old and Need it. So, you see, it might just be easier to go out.
Human beings think they want to be intimately connected to other human beings, but, after the initial business of falling in love, its very hard not to build up walls, to cover the soul with vast swaths of emotionally protective layers. There are a thousand interesting ways to keep the other person emotionally at bay. You’ve got irritation, busyness, misunderstanding, stress, bickering, forgetfulness–all these are useful weapons in the arsenal of marriage. Just don’t talk, about anything. Just skirt around the edges of all minor and major issues. Just assume you know what the other person is thinking and feeling. Then, when the other person misunderstands and makes assumptions about you, build that into a great big offense that can never be forgiven. And, above all, Don’t Talk. Whatever you do, don’t do the difficult and painful work of figuring out what’s happened, where you went wrong, where you need to ask for forgiveness.
You might wonder why I’m going on about this on a Sunday, when I’m supposed to be castigating all of creation to go to church. But the application, I think, should be obvious. Relationships take work, they take habit building, they do well when you build liturgical structures for them. And if this is true for human beings trying to get along with each other, it is even nor true for human beings trying to get along with God.
We value authenticity rather too highly in this culture–which is funny because our main squeeze, The Internet, isn’t exactly a bright shining light of honesty and grace. We think that our feelings have to be right and overpowering otherwise it doesn’t count. Whatever you feel at any particular moment is the thing that is Most True. If you feel something one moment, but then another moment feel something else, that’s ok. Follow your heart. Or your pituitary gland. Or whatever.
It’s ok, sometimes, to just go through the motions. It’s ok to get up and bash around your bedroom looking for something that you don’t hate as much as all the other things so that you can go to church with a lot of people you don’t feel like seeing today. It’s ok to sit there morose and lonely, wishing it would end already so that you can go home. It’s ok to sometimes sit across a cluttered table, eating something you don’t Love, trying to go through the impossible business of putting an entire week into words. So, in both cases, you don’t soar up to the heavens in glory. So you might feel like it’s a waste of time. So you may not be able to pray the way you wish you could, or get the root of a niggling disagreement. The main thing is that you are there.
And that you keep going there. You keep trying, no matter how you feel about it. I think a lot of people feel like they are too good for Date Night, and maybe too busy to go to church. We don’t need a date because we text each other all day. Or, we don’t need to go out because we went out with friends last week (Doesn’t Count). Or, we don’t need to talk because we already know how we feel about each other. That’s like saying, I don’t need to breathe because I did it last month and I’m all set now.
It’s difficult to talk to another person, to try to put into words the complicated bundle of troubles and irritations a week or a day might hold. It’s easier to retreat into the lives of the children or the office. It’s probably even more difficult to go to church and say some of those things to God. It’s not going to be comfortable and easy every time. You’re going to sit there wishing you weren’t bound by the limitations of body and speech. But the more you go, the more desperate you become. The more you try, the more you are able to cling on for dear life.
Have a lovely Sunday! And go out with the one you ostensibly love!
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