Smile: Your COVID Marriage Crisis Could Bless Us All

Dr. Scott Peck’s fame as a psychiatrist came mostly through his book The Road Less Traveled. At the time it became the number one nonfiction bestseller in history for 13 years running. Millions remember it only by its most quoted line — its first line — “Life is difficult.” Dr. Peck took that line to heart, tackling those difficulties with a slew of books. One, The Different Drum, has a fascinating chapter outlining four stages to true community. Peck used those stages to bring about harmony primarily among corporate executives where he led workshops. These principles apply to any group of two or more whose success calls for peaceful and harmonious relationships among its constituents. Our case in point: Marriage.

You will find stage two the most intriguing. It will make you smile; it will give you hope; and it will insure that you’ll read what comes next. But stage one comes first in this journey to true community and it is a stage or rather more like a stage-play. It’s called pseudo community and means everything the dictionary piles onto that word pseudo — bogus, sham, fake, artificial, false, contrived, insincere. It describes what might be present among a large group of people at an office party or reception. It’s “hail fellow well met” on the surface but not necessarily underneath. You spill your drink. “No problem” smiles the hostess while mopping the spot and thinking, Drat! That stain will never come out of my new carpet.

Unfortunately, marriages soon develop that kind of thing after saying the “I do” words. It’s far from intentional but it happens. The vows don’t say “Will you promise to keep feeling all these good vibrations so help you God.” No, they say will you love genuinely when the vibrations are absent. And those good vibrations early on become more scarce, and pseudo creeps in. Sometimes a couple may find themselves playing a total pseudo game until something like a world-wide pandemic locks them down together. You can’t pseudo forever. Reality strikes. Husband and wife finally say to each other what they really think and stage two is born — chaos. Yes, chaos! I told you you would smile. And hope is alive, too, in chaos because chaos signals progress — believe it or not. So hold on!

One of my author/mentors instilled in me a question I’ve always asked — since I read it — of couples asking me to marry them: “Have you had a good (non-physical) knock-down-drag-out fight yet?” If not, their marriage may be at risk. I feel far more comfortable marrying chaos veterans. Couples often tank during the chaos stage. You can see why. It sure doesn’t look like progress. The dictionary again; chaos — conflict, mayhem, bedlam, madness, turmoil, shambles. But if you hang-in through chaos to stage three your marriage will make it. You will have gone through the sound barrier of matrimony.

Stage three is emptiness. Emptiness? What’s that? It always conjures up an image with me: A spouse sitting on the floor, back against the wall, arms cast down, face crestfallen, eyes glazed, and mind thinking, “I give up. I can’t change my spouse. My spouse can’t change me. The only person my spouse can change is herself/himself. The only person in the whole world I can change is me. Maybe I need to. I’ve had an agenda for my spouse. Maybe I need to let it go. I’ve always wanted to fix my spouse. Maybe I should just forget it. And I am a control freak. Maybe I should just cool it. Then, too, my preoccupation with money and obsession for neatness probably ain’t fun to live with either. Okay, I’ll empty myself of all that stuff. Hope my spouse is doing this exercise too, but that’s not my business.

Meg Meeker — M.D. and author — writes, “For the first ten years of our marriage, I studied him (I’m a scientist after all) and identified what I thought he needed to change. I compiled a hefty unwritten list. Then, over the second ten years of our marriage I worked to help him make those changes one by one. I won some battles and lost some. Finally, for the third decade… I’ve thrown in the towel and decided to leave the man alone.” (Strong Fathers Strong Daughters pp.200-201)

True community happens when you throw in the towel. I saw some lines once that I liked but felt they were too esoteric to apply anywhere. For this moment I’ll suspend that feeling because those lines seem to fit here:

If there is light in the soul,
There is beauty in the person;
If there is beauty in the person,
There will be harmony in the house;
If there is harmony in the house,
There will be order in the nation;
If there is order in the nation,
There will be peace in the world.