Wednesday, May 7, 2008
Since we are on this topicSociety’s underlying message – that there is something wrong with people who are not married or in serious dating relationships – pushes single people to fret and flirt and market themselves. Too often they hurl themselves at the first candidate who comes along.
The
first myth that motivates some people to marry is this:
Marriage will end my aloneness.
A single person wrote this about her struggle with loneliness: ‘I can’t think of anything I hate more than being alone. Everywhere I turn I see couples – couples on television, couples in cars, couples on planes, couples in restaurants. Everywhere there are reminders that I am alone. I wonder if I will ever find a person to fill that hole in my heart.’
I wonder if I will ever find a person to fill that hole in my heart. This line is a flashing warning signal. Apparently this woman, like many others, is dreaming of a knight on a white horse who will gallop into her life and rescue her from then gnawing ache in her soul. She is longing for a human being who will offer her perfect intimacy. She is crying out for someone who will understand her fully, accept her unconditionally, and end her sense of isolation. The right man, she believes, can forever end her aloneness – can fill the hole in her heart. Behind her words rumbles the myth that too many young men and women believe: marriage is the cure-all for human loneliness.
The truth is, there are millions of desperately lonely married people. They may share a table, a sofa and even a bed with their marriage partner, but they still feel lonely. They may even have an ideal marriage – a genuinely intimate and loving relationship – and still feel lonely deep inside.
Did that marry the wrong person? Build a shallow marriage? Or did they simply place an unrealistic demand on marriage? Perhaps they failed to understand that God created human beings to yearn for two levels of relational intimacy. The first level can be met by establishing a deep, honest, trusting relationship with a friend or marriage partner. The second level can only be met by entering into an authentic, growing relationship with God.
Most unmarried people are conscious of their first level of yearning – for a close relationship with another human being. But their second level of yearning, that longing to be intimate with God, is often buried beneath the surface of their conscious awareness; they feel it, but don’t understand it. So the two yearnings get ‘mixed’; they lumped together in one giant gnawing need. The result is a doubled drive – an obsession, sometimes – to find the person who can satisfy all the intimacy needs. Clearly, that is a setup for heartbreak.
- Fit to be tied
1:46 PM
