Fidelity
This is henceforth going to be required reading for any and all pre-marital sessions I am a part of.
I don’t necessarily agree with every aspect of how the author diagnoses the problem, and I might have some questions about her “decision” not to suffer, but what a breath of fresh-air in the divorce-happy, narcissistic culture we live in!
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Rumblings 
I was sure this was going to be a link to The Love Dare.
I appreciate her perseverance and loyalty to the relationship they embarked on and not taking the easy road…. that is refreshing. However, I would object to her decision as well not to suffer. The husbands actions at some point should be more forcefully dealt with than “I am not buying it.” It doesn’t really seem to hold him accountable for his lack or perseverance.
She does mention she had a time limit of six months in mind. So it wasn’t like she going to hold the ‘I am not buying it’ attitude indefinitely. It seemed to me she valued her marriage enough to attempt to see what was behind her husbands actions. It’s a pretty bold move and I am not sure everyone is smart enough to recognize what she did.
I don’t know quite how to decipher her decision to not suffer. Is she trying to try and perform some sort of mind over matter feat here or is it a rational attempt to place circumstances in their proper context and not let them control her emotionally?
Re: the decision not to suffer, on a second reading of the article I see a bit of both of the options jc has presented. I think she is trying to mentally transcend her circumstances somehow, whether that’s “mind over matter” or reason trumping emotion, or something else. Like Tyler, I still suspect it would be extremely difficult to hear some of the things she heard and choose to “not suffer.” Perhaps she’s extremely heroic. Perhaps she’s being very careful how much she discloses in print and how she portrays her husbands actions and her own. It sounds like an extremely complex situation (and one no reasonable outside person would expect full disclosure from), but I still think the choice to not just give up on the marriage is an admirable one.
Definitely in agreement Ryan, much is unknown to the reader.
Transcending emotion might not be a good thing. Temperance is not getting emotional, it’s the act of getting emotional over the correct things. There is a huge difference to me between not suffering and attempting to understand. Attempting to understand doesn’t mean she can’t hold her husband accountable for his actions. Six months is a long time to put a family through limbo. Yes, her patience is respectable and it worked out for her. But what if she was wrong? What if he was really unhappy? In her case she appears to be correct but the “I’m not buying it” mentality assumes she was correct from the beginning.
Good article Ryan.
I think the ending could have gone either way for her. Jutsy lady š
Your comment about Premarital Counselling caused me to remember what we did when my daughter got married. We paid for the couple to go to a Registered Psycologist for their premarital. They went to the pastor for wedding prep and I think to discuss some of the finer points of biblical marriage such as how to be introduced during the service. My wife and I walked her down the aisle (nobody ‘gave’ her away). My wife and I had them well versed on mutuality within Christian marriage (Christians for Biblical Equality).
Anyway, I’m not too sure about the quality of most pastoral premarital counselling and think our money for the registered psycologist was well spent.
It’s been a very curious thing for me (and my wife) to observe how simply by virtue of wearing the “pastor” hat, I (we) are now assumed to have some unique insight into helping young couples prepare for weddings and marriages. Studying theology and philosophy seems like a pretty poor preparation for premarital counseling on one level! I guess I’ll have to wait a few years to assess the quality of the premarital counseling I offered š
My daughter’s only eight but I’ve already thought about how we’ll do the service thing (believe it or not!), should she decide to get married. I can’t imagine being comfortable “giving her away” either. She’s not my property, after all. Having said that, I can’t imagine much more of an honour than being able walk your daughter down the aisle… But not for a while yet. Like a couple decades š
It was real special having my wife and I walk down the aisle with our daughter between us. Hug and kiss and she moved on to her man – whom we had let into the ‘circle of trust.’ I loved that movie what was it called – ‘Meet the Parents’ I identified with the father.