Issue #146 Why Some Marriages Deepen While Others Drift

Last weekend I had the privilege of officiating my cousin Matt and Vanessa’s wedding.

As I stood with them during the ceremony, I couldn’t help but smile at an irony that few others there would have appreciated.

Thirty-two years earlier, almost to the day, Matt had stood beside Kelly and I at our own wedding.

He was our ring bearer.

This time, I was his.

Life has a remarkable way of bringing us full circle.

Over the last few days, I have found myself reflecting on the celebration. Not simply because weddings have a way of stirring our emotions, but because watching Matt and Vanessa begin their journey together caused me to look back over my own.

At our age and stage, Kelly and I have spent more of our adult life married than not. Enough time has passed for me to begin to see things that simply weren’t visible when we first exchanged our own vows.

Like most young couples, I assumed marriage would largely be defined by extraordinary moments: The wedding, raising children, building a career, family vacations and milestone anniversaries. Those moments certainly have mattered, and many have become treasured memories. 

Yet I no longer believe they are the true foundation of our marriage. I have come to realize that strong marriages are created in the long stretches between those memorable occasions. They are built and forged by two people working through the ordinary rhythm of everyday life.

Most of our thirty-two years together have been seasons of sameness. This was occasionally interrupted by moments of joyful celebration, deep sorrow, unexpected loss and in some cases genuine fear. 

But this sameness is where real connection is built. It looks like sipping coffee together before the day begins, going for evening walks, doing the dishes, paying bills, folding laundry, driving kids to practice and debating the never-ending list of things around the house that still need attention.

The extraordinary moments are the ones we tend to remember; yet it is the ordinary days that quietly become the architecture of a meaningful shared life. The strange thing is that while we are living out those ordinary moments, they do not feel significant. It is only over time, when we look back that we can begin to realize they were the story all along.

It is with that insight that I have found myself wondering why some marriages seem to deepen with time while others slowly drift apart. Two people can begin with the same vows, filled with the same hopes and dreams, yet decades later arrive in remarkably different places.

What is it that makes the difference?

The Long Conversation

If the greatest gift we can give another person is our presence, then what does years of shared presence actually create?

A conversation with a friend recently helped me answer that question.

He was describing someone close to him who had recently lost his wife and said something I haven’t been able to stop thinking about.

“The absence of presence has been replaced by the presence of absence.”

I’ve replayed that sentence in my mind many times since.

The more I have reflected on those words, the more I have realized they describe something far deeper than grief. They reveal the extraordinary gift that slowly develops through decades of simply sharing life with another person.

We become so accustomed to another person’s presence that we stop noticing how profoundly it shapes us. Morning walks together. Familiar conversations at the end of the day. Moments sitting across the table. Simply hearing another person moving about the house. None of these moments seem remarkable while we are living them; they simply become life.

Until one day they are gone.

Only then do we realize that what felt ordinary was quietly becoming extraordinary all along.

And I believe that is why weddings tend to move us so deeply.

Instinctively we understand that what begins on that day is not merely a legal commitment or a romantic promise. It is the beginning of a shared life where two separate stories slowly become one.

In The Second Mountain, David Brooks describes marriage as “having a fifty-year conversation.”

At first, I simply thought it was a beautiful phrase but now I believe that it might be one of the most profound descriptions of marriage I have ever encountered.

We often think conversation is about exchanging information, solving problems or simply passing time together. But over decades, conversation becomes something else entirely. It becomes the place where two people slowly reveal themselves to one another.

Their hopes.

Their disappointments.

Their fears.

Their dreams.

Their failures.

Their insecurities.

Presence allows us to share our life together but conversation is what slowly weaves our lives together.

A single conversation rarely changes a marriage, however fifty years of conversations do.

Slowly, almost imperceptibly, two separate lives merge until it becomes difficult to know where one story ends and the other begins.  

Perhaps that is why the most important question before marriage isn’t simply whether we’ve found the right person. Rather, it is whether this is the person I want to spend the rest of my life talking with.

And equally important, am I willing to become the kind of person they would want to spend the rest of theirs talking to?

Beyond Transaction

One of the greatest misconceptions about marriage is that it exists primarily to make us happy. I believe marriage exists to transform the individuals within it.

The world teaches us to view most relationships as contractual  transactions:

If you treat me well, I’ll treat you well.

If you meet my needs, I’ll meet yours.

If you make me happy, I’ll make you happy.

Without realizing it, we begin measuring the health of our relationships by what we are receiving rather than by who we are becoming.

Marriage challenges that way of thinking.

At the altar, the words “I do” are simple but also radical.

Notice what isn’t said.

There is no “If you …”

There is only “I do.”

Those two words represent one of the most profound shifts in perspective a person can make. From that day forward, the question is no longer, what does this relationship owe me? Instead, it becomes a commitment for each individual to ask, who is this relationship inviting me to become?

That doesn’t mean our needs no longer matter; it means they are no longer the center of the story.

We have moved from a transactional way of thinking to a transformational one. I am no longer simply there to have my needs met or to change another person. I am there both to be an agent of change and to be changed myself, becoming someone different because of them.

The Gift of Friction

Lord Shaftesbury once compared marriage to placing two rough stones together in a tumbler. Over time, through constant contact and friction, the sharp edges are gradually worn away to reveal the polished gems within. 

The process is neither quick nor particularly comfortable. Yet without the friction, the transformation never takes place. The very thing we instinctively try to avoid is often the thing making us who we are becoming.

I have often thought about that image.

Most of us spend the early years of marriage trying to smooth the rough edges of our spouse.

Marriage, however, seems far more interested in exposing our own.

I believe that is why marriage can feel so difficult at times. Not because we married the wrong person, but because we underestimated how determined love is to bring about our transformation.

Ironically, the moments when we begin questioning whether we made the right choice are often the very moments when the deepest work is taking place within us. The pain and discomfort are not simply exposing the weaknesses in our marriage; they are revealing the places within us that still need to be transformed. What feels like the breaking apart of a relationship may, in fact, be the breaking open of our hearts to become a better version of ourselves.

Looking back over the years, I can honestly say that Kelly has not simply shared my life; she has helped shape it.

Not because she set out to change me, but because loving another imperfect person has continually revealed the places where I still needed to grow.

Marriage, at its best, is not a transaction between two people exchanging love. It is a lifelong invitation for two imperfect people to be transformed by love.

Transformation, however, doesn’t happen by accident.

It requires intentional rhythms that keep the conversation alive.

Reflect and Align

When Kelly and I stood together thirty-two years ago and said, “I do,” I don’t think either of us fully understood what those two simple words would eventually require of us.

At the time, we believed we were making a commitment to one another. Looking back now, I believe we were also committing ourselves to a lifelong process of becoming.

Marriage has a remarkable way of exposing both the best and the worst within us. It reveals our capacity for generosity, patience and forgiveness, while at the same time uncovering our pride, selfishness and desire to control. If we are willing to remain in the relationship rather than run from the discomfort, those very moments become the places where our deepest growth takes place.

That, I have come to believe, is what ultimately shapes the difference between marriages that merely endure and those that continue to deepen over time.

Not the absence of difficulty.

Not the absence of conflict.

But two people who remain committed to allowing love to transform them.

Perhaps that is why marriage, at its best, is not a transaction of love.

It is a lifelong invitation for two imperfect people to be transformed by love.

As you reflect this week, perhaps these questions are worth considering:

• Am I approaching my closest relationships transactionally, asking what they owe me, or transformationally, asking who they are inviting me to become?
• Where might the friction I am currently experiencing actually be inviting growth rather than signaling failure?
• What kind of husband, wife, parent, friend or leader is this season of life shaping me into?

The older I get, the more convinced I become that the purpose of marriage is not simply to build a life together.

It is to become different people because we chose to share one.

What I have also come to realize, is that transformation doesn’t happen automatically. Like every meaningful relationship, it requires intentional practices that keep the conversation alive.

That, however, is a conversation for next week’s newsletter.

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