I live in a sunny part of the world where many American baseball teams come for spring training. These pre-game games are relaxing, enjoyable, and, for spectators such as me, an inexpensive way to connect with family and friends. Others attend the same spring-training events and bring a wholly different perspective, focusing on the players and statistics. Two types of people, each with different visions of the same thing.
We could make a similar analogy for the two ends of marriage. Some view marriage as properly ordered with the procreative end first, then the unitive end. Others view them equally, or they put the unitive end first before the procreative end. Which is it?
Long ago, St. Paul wrote of marriage and the differences between men and women. He alluded all those years ago to the two ends of marriage, the emotional needs of the couple, male-brain motivation, and the mysterious feminine psyche. Rather than simply exhorting husbands and wives to love each other, he used more specific language:
โNevertheless let every one of you in particular love his wife as himself: and let the wife fear her husband.โ (Eph. 5:33)
Consider the original Greek: The word for love in that verse is agapato, which translated into Latin is diligat, which means a cherishing or spiritual love. The word for fear is phobetai in Greek, which translates to timeat in Latin, which means to have respect, to fear offending the other.
Men, according to St. Paul, need to cherish their wives, and women need to respect their husbands. Adding context to the Biblical considerations of marriage, St. Peter wrote that husbands should โhonorโ their wives as weaker vessels but co-heirs to heaven, โthat your prayers be not hinderedโ (1 Pet. 3:7). So, St. Peter warned men that their own prayers will be โhinderedโ if they do not honor their wives.
My work as a Catholic marriage counselor has revealed a few โthemesโ among couples, which make the most sense when considering what I will call interpersonal relationship anthropology. This anthropology consists of a synthesis of a traditional, Thomistic metaphysical approach to the sacrament of holy matrimony and a more phenomenological, lived-experience approach.
Not Divided: The Ends of Marriage
The procreative and unitive ends of marriage are inseparable. The procreative end traditionally is the higher end. Why? When couples experience themes of relationship conflict, where the wife does not feel โseen and heardโ and the husband is โnot emotionally availableโ (phrases Iโve heard probably a hundred times), the couple then needs to rely on the foundational underpinnings of their marriage. The primary end of marriage sustains it when the secondary, unitive end struggles. But the ends are linked: one is metaphysical and foundational; the other is experiential. The experienced phenomenon of unityโmutual understanding and a deep emotional connectedness between the marital partnersโreinforces the foundational, procreative end, which has a lot to do with the household and raising children.
Cherishing and respecting go together. The more a husband cherishes his wife, the more he creates an environment where she can respect him. Just as the man craves respect from his wife and wants her to listen without asking too many direct questions, she also craves cherishing. Just as the man feels awful and completely turned off when his wife insults or mocks him, she feels awful and turned off when he ignores her. St. Paul touched on some fundamental human psychology in his letter to the Ephesians. Ignoring a woman leads to female fury; overwhelming a man leads to male rage.
St. Paul had some other profound words which speak to needs in marriage: โWhen I was a child, I spoke as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child. But, when I became a man, I put away the things of a childโ (1 Cor. 13:11). Emotional maturity involves putting away the things of a child, including egocentrism, defensiveness, self-absorption, and insensitivity toward the needs of others. Maturity is characterized by thinking of othersโ needs and controlling oneโs feelings. Maturity also involves long-term thinking, which is a cognitive technique for impulse control.
Communication In Marriage
Women oftentimes struggle to communicate with men. The women might use direct language when describing how they feelโor they use โyouโ statements such as โyou alwaysโ or โyou neverโ instead of using โIโ statements. What should a man do? As the man, consider that the foundational end of marriage has as much to do with raising children as the act of procreation. Your family needs you. Allow your wife to express herself imperfectly. You donโt need to correct her. The goal is to restore a mutual connection, not to be โrightโ or to correct her because she said you did something on Wednesday when it was actually Thursday. Who cares?
Men oftentimes struggle to communicate with women. Many men find it daunting to put intuitive concepts into words. Men might not understand why women still have unresolved negative feelings when the man already offered advice and told her specifically how to fix her problems. The wife might need to remind her husband that she doesnโt need anything โfixed,โ but she needs him to actively listen without distractions.
When husband and wife argue, they feel divided, not united. The goal is to restore unity, harmony, and mutual understanding. These relationship traits allow the unitive aspect of the marital act to flourish, which reinforces the continued choice of love. Unity of the spouses increases motivation for the foundational, procreative end of marriage and child-raising. This tends to increase confidence in both spouses to feel โemotionally safeโ to continue in their loving openness to life.
We can look all day at the primary end and the secondary end, but if the couple is not united, their entire family suffers. Iโve counseled plenty of couples who ceased the marital act due to their conflict. The two ends of marriage are inseparable. When spouses experience ongoing conflict, sorrow, and loneliness, they can instead take deep consolation in the fruits of the primary end of their sacramental matrimony. Regardless of the health of their relationship in any given phase of marriage, the children and household are the fruits of their union.
Consider the bigger picture of charity and maturity along with St. Paul as you prayerfully rely on the grace of sacramental matrimony. The grace of the sacrament comes from Christ and His redemption on the Cross, not from how well husband and wife get along with each other. Healing should be a joyful journey, rooted in deep abiding love and marital loyalty.
Photo by Dmitry Rodionov on Unsplash
