It seems like every three days there's a new story about another celebrity marriage falling apart. In Hollywood a 5-year marriage is an incredible accomplishment; 10 years is a lifetime. None of them actually seem to last forever. And while the lives of movie stars are far from being representative of the general population, we certainly are not immune from the culture of divorce. It's everywhere.
I will go ahead and admit from the start: I'm not married. I have no idea what it's like to be married; I cannot speak to this from experience. But I get that it's hard. I understand that there are many things that cause marriages to fail, and I know that there is much pain involved in these situations. That is not something I want to make light of at all.
That said, I was watching the movie Crazy, Stupid, Love the other day, and as I thought about it there was something that began to bother me. (Aside from the title's ridiculous punctuation.) At first glance the main point of the film seems rather inspiring: the two main characters have a marriage that is falling apart and decide to get a divorce, but by the end of the movie they come to believe their marriage is worth fighting for. It's honest about the difficulty of marriage but hopeful about the possibility of working it out. How nice; let's all go home and have some ice cream.
But what their change in outlook comes from is the rather creepier storyline involving their son. He's a thirteen year-old boy who is "in love" with his seventeen year-old babysitter. She does not return his affections because, well, he's a thirteen year-old boy, but also because she's "in love" with his father. Creeped out yet? Yeah, me too. Creepy details aside, however, at one point our little thirteen year-old boy tells his father that said babysitter is his soul mate, and when it's your soul mate, you don't give up. Adorable, right? Oh, except that babysitter has asked him to stop bothering her, and she doesn't seen to be appreciating his repeated advances. More creepy.
Of course, in the end, thirteen year-old boy gets worn out by endless rejection and is about to give up, when his dad gets up at his 8th grade graduation ceremony (creepy?) and reaffirms that when you find "the one" you don't give up. Nice for him to say, because he's married to his "the one", less nice for his son. But of course, babysitter comes around--not just yet, but she'll reconsider when they're older. Adorable.
But why do dad and son keep trying to work out their relationships with their respective women? What is the driving force? The fact that they've found their soul mate. And how do they know that they've found their soul mate? It's unclear. What do they do in their given situations if they decide that the woman is not their soul mate?
And that's where we have the problem. We seem to have an idea as a culture that if you find the right person, your marriage will work out, and that if you're unhappy then you married the wrong person, and there's a right one out there that you missed. And usually, if you get a divorce to try to find that right person, the next one isn't going to be the right one either.
That's because there isn't one right person who will magically make a good marriage. In a sense there is a "the one" because I believe that God has prescribed who each of us will marry, but from our limited perspective that's not how it works. We are not being asked to search until we find that one person. We are being asked to find a person and make a commitment. That doesn't mean that there aren't "wrong" people and that we shouldn't be wise in choosing who to marry, but it does mean that you don't have to fret over whether or not you've found your right person. That can only lead to unhappiness, because it turns out, there's no such thing as a perfectly happy marriage. The only way to be close is to fully and completely commit yourself to the one you're with and work at it with all you've got.
This is not intended to be a critique on individual marriages, but I want us to really reconsider the idea that our culture promotes of a "soul mate", a "the one", a "happily ever after". There is no happily ever after, but I think there's something better. Let's call it "love".
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