The Virtues of a Strong Marriage Commitment

In a Catholic Marriage ritual, the groom and bride make strong promises to each other saying:

I promise to be faithful to you, in good times and in bad, in sickness and in health, to love you and to honor you all the days of my life.

Based on years of clinical studies, modern psychologists have identified some key virtues or dispositions, which strengthen these promises by supporting mutual trust. In strong marriages, this culture of trustworthiness reinforces and defends the Marriage bond. Not surprisingly, these truths are the same advice our faith offers.

Trustworthiness

This sense of trustworthiness in one’s partner has five elements: (1) honesty, (2) transparency, (3) accountability, (4) ethics, and (5) alliance. [i]

Couples need to be mutually committed to complete honesty with each other. While we can never see inside another person’s heart, we must be convinced that our spouse is not trying to deceive us, lie to us, or to live a secret separate life from us. “Therefore, putting away falsehood, speak the truth, each one to his neighbor; for we are all members of one another” (Ephesians 4:25).

Related to this is the idea of transparency. We need to strive to make our life an open book to our spouse. We need to be convinced in our heart that our spouse is not keeping secrets from us. This means you have an intimate knowledge of their life, their friends, relatives, and family and their goals and ambitions. They should be completely forthcoming with us when we request information from them. As Proverbs reminds us, “Put away from you crooked speech, and put devious talk far from you” (Prov. 4:24, RSVCE).

Your relationship also needs to have accountability. Our spouse should do what he or she says and promises. As Jesus reminds us, “Let your ‘Yes’ mean ‘Yes,’ and your ‘No’ mean ‘No.’ Anything more is from the evil one” (Matthew; James 5:12). Our spouse should be straightforward about any significant transactions they have with others, financially or otherwise.

Do we see a life guided by the good ethical standards of our faith? Our spouse’s life should bear witness to consistently living these standards of just and fair conduct with others. Very often, when we form a belief about whether a person is trustworthy, it is based on our observation of their entire life. If we observe a person who lies or treats others unjustly, even if we have no evidence that they have done the same to us, we still do not trust them. Ethical hypocrisy erodes trust.  

The idea of alliance means that our spouse is totally on your side, at times even against others. In practice, this means that our spouse has our true interests at heart, and does not operate out of self-interest, or form coalitions against us. Love “does not seek its own interests” (1 Corinthians 13:5).

Marriages, which strive to live this sense of trustworthiness, have strong commitment. Upholding the virtue of trustworthiness protects our marriages from future betrayal.

Continue reading: Part II the Dynamics of Betrayal 

Unless otherwise indicated scripture quotations are from the New American Bible RE(2010)

[i] Gottman, John M. (2011) The Science of Trust: Emotional Attunement for Couples New York: W. W. Norton, 2011. p. 336. See esp. Chapter 9, “The Dynamics of Betrayal” p. 331-354.


Comments

Post a Comment

Thank you for your comment on the threefoldcord blog. All comments are moderated.

Popular posts from this blog

Gottman and Faith

Image
I wanted to take a minute to reflect on our faith in relation to the book we are reading. Dr. Gottman’s book, The Seven Principles for Making Marriage Work is not about our faith, but the psychology of good relationships.While not directly about the faith, there is nothing in the book which I believe conflicts with our faith, and the author John Gottman is a practicing Jew from an Orthodox Jewish background. Since Gottman’s book is a work of psychology, someone might wonder how psychology in general relates to our faith. In fact there are two ways of knowing things, faith and reason. Catholic tradition has always seen these as complementary ways of knowing truth.  In the Old Testament, the main Hebrew word for ‘truth’ is emeth . This word has the basic meaning of fitness, and trustworthiness. From this emeth takes on the meaning of “that which is opposed to falsity and falsehood.” (Ramsdell, 264) In a similar manner the Greek word for truth found in the New Testament, alētheia mean
Read more

Five things we need to know about the Most Holy Trinity

Image
  Let’s face it, we have trouble understanding and explaining the Most Holy Trinity. The following short video, irreverently pokes fun at this problem. Perhaps the Holy Trinity is a mystery that is too hard to explain? While simple analogies do fail, it is possible to understand some basic truths about the Trinity. In fact, there are five surprising truths we need to learn. Firstly, far from being some obscure and impractically belief, the Catechism reminds us that, “The mystery of the Most Holy Trinity is the central mystery of the Christian faith and of Christian life ” (CCC   261). It is the most fundamental and essential teaching of our faith (CCC 234).   Everything God does is the common work of the three divine persons. Every aspect of our faith is touched by this mystery. Secondly, when God created man and women in the “image and likeness of God” (Genesis 1:27) this truth highlights a dual unity of the human couple who image the relations between the Father, Son and Holy S
Read more

Finding Joy in Your Marriage (Week 2: Nurture Your Fondness and Admiration)

Image
Finding Joy in Your Marriage  (Week 2: Nurture Your Fondness and Admiration) I can recall some of the first memories I have of meeting my wife more than 35 years ago. We met at a Baptist church, and were introduced by the young adult pastor. We had both just completed our first university degrees, and I had moved to Vancouver and was now attending a local interdenominational Protestant seminary, and Wendy was training to be a teacher. Although we had previously attended universities in different cities, we were both deeply involved in the same campus ministry, so we shared an immediate spiritual connection. After a brief introduction, I tried to sit by her in church, but she grabbed some other girl and made her sit between us! I didn’t take this as rejection, and continued my pursuit. Soon after this we both ended up going out for coffee with a large group of young adults from church. I made sure to sit across from her. We immediately fell into a deep conversation, so deep in fact, tha
Read more