March 3, 2022
Ah, Relevant Magazine. Still striving very to hard to be… well, relevant.
I still peruse sometimes, and one particular article caught my eye. Written by Licensed Professional Counselor and relationship expert Debra Fileta, it’s called “Marriage Isn’t About Your Happiness.”
Now, I understand clickbait. That’s a clickbait-y title. And just like any other article with a clickbait title, when I read it, I expected there to be a bait-and-switch. A kind of “plot twist,” if you will, where now that you’re reading Mrs. Fileta will assure you that yes, there is happiness to be derived in marriage.
Nope. Not here. According to Mrs. Fileta, if you’re not absolutely fucking miserable in your marriage, then you’re doing it wrong. Let’s explore.
The article starts with this anecdote:
“Did you ever think someone could show you love through a bologna sandwich?
I didn’t think so either.
Until I found out that my then-boyfriend-now-husband (a poor, broke, medical school student at the time) spent close to two months eating bologna sandwiches every day in order to cut down his grocery budget to $10 a week, just so he could save up enough money to buy me an engagement ring.”
This kind of shit drives me crazy. I have friends who did similar things when they were twenty-one years old and wanted to buy their girlfriend an engagement ring.
They think it’s romantic. The girl thinks it’s romantic. You’ve been told by society that it’s romantic. It isn’t romantic—it’s impractical, ridiculous, and a bit insane. It’s also a clear indication that you’re getting married way too early in life.
In my book, I dedicate a chapter solely to relationships since religion is very good at fucking up your relationships. In that chapter I state that no man under the age of 35 (at the very least) should even think about settling down with a long-term partner.
What Mrs. Fileta wrote is precisely why. When you’re young, younger, or even young-ish, you just haven’t had the time to build your life infrastructure. That means establishing and improving your income streams, developing hobbies, spending quality time with your friends, having experiences that form and shape you, and perhaps even developing a spiritual life if that’s your thing.
If you have to eat bologna sandwiches (or do similar ridiculous things) to buy an engagement ring (a tradition that’s just as ridiculous, but I digress) then you just aren’t ready to be settled down with a long-term partner, in my opinion.
Can you do all of the things I listed above while being married or settled down with a long-term partner? Yes, you can. But your time will be severely limited (especially if you have kids) and you won’t make progress very fast. In some cases, you might not be able to do some of those things at all.
The rest of Mrs. Fileta’s article points out exactly why.
“[Marriage] will cost you something great. It will cost you a price much larger than the money you spend on a ring or a wedding or a honeymoon—it will cost you yourself.”
This is exactly the kind of stuff I heard in church.
Here’s the thing about something that’s meant to “cost me myself.” That was how I regarded Christianity, God, Jesus, and my faith. All of that was supposed to “cost me myself” because I was always told by my pastors that it should. Look how well that turned out. Not just me, but millions of people worldwide who are currently deconstructing their faith allowed religion to “cost them themselves” and they were harmed.
So now I’m hyper suspicious of anything that’s supposed to “cost me myself.”
If I’m with a partner who supposedly loves me, then why would she ever, ever ask me to give up myself? And why would I ever want her to give up herself for me?
“I heard a married man on TV say (regarding whether or not he was going to stay in his own marriage), “I shouldn’t be with someone if I’m not happy.” It’s an attitude many people have, and hearing it made my stomach turn.”
Huh? Yes, please leave any and all relationships that don’t make you happy. That includes relationships with girlfriends and wives, relationships with friends who are no longer good for you, and yes, you can even break up with your religion.
Because if you aren’t happy in a relationship (or any long-term situation) then that means it isn’t meshing with who you are as a person or what you want. Or maybe it used to make you happy, but either you or your partner changed. That happens far more often than many of us are willing to admit. People change, and that’s ultimately a good thing, as long as you’re growing. With change comes a shift in the kind of people you want in your life. It’s hard, but it’s normal, and it’s okay.
If anything proved that to me, it was my loss of religion that taught me I can survive detaching pretty much anything from my life and moving on to newer, better things that are more aligned with who I am.
“What an accurate reflection of the self-centered society we live in, everyone believing their main goal in life is their own personal happiness. What a small and shallow way to live.”
Ah, yes. Blame “society.” I love it when Christians pretend they are “in the world, not of it.”
I agree that your personal happiness shouldn’t necessarily be your main goal for your entire life, but there is definitely a period of your life (when you’re young) where you absolutely should focus on yourself.
Because if you aren’t happy, then you’re not in a great position to make others happy, at least not without risking giving too much of yourself to the point of no longer having anything left to give (which is, incidentally, another way in which the Church harms people).
“It’s about offering forgiveness when you’ve been hurt.
It’s about giving your time though it’s not always convenient.
It’s about sharing your heart when you’d rather hold back.
It’s about cleaning the kitchen after a long weekend, even if it’s your least favorite job.
It’s about choosing to respond with love when you’d rather respond in anger.”
Applied widely and indiscriminately, I could easily see this leading toward a very one-sided, possibly abusive relationship.
“It’s about laying down your rights, to make way for the rights of another.”
I would never recommend anyone do this. The rights of another should not transgress on your own. Nor should your rights transgress on others. They can coexist. Romanticizing this idea that they can’t is ridiculous, and borderline dangerous.
“Real love is not self-seeking, and it will always cost you. It will cost your heart, your time and your money.”
Again, if you’re under the age of 35, do not settle down with a long-term partner. The three things on that list need to be 100% yours for a good portion of your life while you build yourself up, explore your world, and come to know yourself through a wide range of varied experiences.
A part of me feels bad writing this. I’ve written before about the importance of mental health, and since Mrs. Fileta is an LPC, my very first instinct is that I shouldn’t push back against her ideas. That first instinct only lasted for a split second, though.
The article is actually an excerpt from Mrs. Fileta’s book, and since it was on Relevant, I assumed she was a Christian. I went to her website just to be sure, and after 9 milliseconds of searching I found a line of bold text declaring that she was in love with Jesus. For that reason, I don’t think she and I will ever see the world through the same lens.
But if you had asked me when I was a Christian what I thought about this article, I’d have nodded my head along with everything Mrs. Fileta had written. I would’ve bought all in. Why? Because this is what my pastors and other older, long-term married men in my church told me marriage was supposed to be like. As I’ve written before, Christians just have this need for marriage to be an overly difficult, back-breaking burden. And as with everything else associated with my time in the church, I just agreed with everything without ever first contemplating on it to determine if it actually made sense.