All In (Bed)

On several talk shows and within a few commentaries, I've heard the institution of marriage be accused of being obsolete. For a handful of different reasons, but often revolving around monogamy: sex with only one person. Because it's hard, or unreasonable, or contrary to evolution, or someother reason. And in thinking about what other people I know experience in their marriages, I can understand that perspective.

Do I think it's obsolete? Not at all. But "it" - marriage - is a relationship that can operate in a great variety of ways. And a great many of those ways are, quite simply, obsolete. Outdated. Sad. Useless. Dead weight.

Am I suggesting that the bad ones end? Nope. I'd like to offer a picture that makes sense of how marriage can be undertood and approached with such a broad range of perspectives.

I imagine that what most people experience in marriage would be like how most children experience gardening. I don't mean to be patronizng by using children here, but just to give an understood example of people who don't understand gardening. I'll explain.

My son Micah, seed in hand, made his way to the backyard of his grandparents house to plant a tree. The seed was found in a pod that he collected while exploring the yard. He dug a hole barely an inch deep, dropped the seed inside, and got grandma to put a few sprinkles of water on it for him. All the right ingredients, right? But is he likely to come back next spring to find a tree? Not likely. Odds are stacked against him.  Similarly, I think many adults approach marrage with a bare-bones understanding of the ingredients of marriage - one man, one woman, one bed - and expect it to produce a fruitful relationship.

Obviously there's affections and many other shared and benefitial peices that are present, but most often the expectation of dying to yourself isn't part of the equation. I realize that's a term that needs unpacking, and an odd term with negative conotations at that, but the sense I'd like to give you understand what I mean is what poker players know as "all in": a total abandon of your chips for the bet that your hand is strong enough to take it all.

Sometimes this call is your only way to stay in the game. Sometimes this is not only your single option to survive, but may ultimately result in you taking the entire game: to win it all.  I propose that this is the same type of move that can make up for years of cashing in relational chips and get you out of the red. In fact, I believe going "all in" with your spouse is the way that marriages are intended to operate, and the only way that successful, life-giving, mutually benefitial ones do exist.

This can play out a number of different ways within a marriage, but one signficant, and cultuarally poinient, way that this is often overlooked is in regards to our sexuality. To go "all in" with your spouse sexually looks like fully relying on them to satify your sexuality. Not looking elsewhere with your eyes, or dreaming elsewhere in your mind, or taking things into your own hands. And it will involve being honest, and vulnerable, and generous, and patient - all of which feed into your marriage and built one another up.