Married love is difficult: full of confusion and doubt. Because it is a bloodless martyrdom, designed to purge us of selfishness and show us real love it is difficult. Because it is, for most, a nursery for the next generation, it is of great civic consequence. Because it begins, at least, in love, it is of eternal consequence.
And yet, because it is difficult, those very hard parts can seem to be a good reason to flee, like a school child longing to escape a particularly difficult class.
Marriage can seem like a prison, trapping us from something we want. Passion seduced into this classroom, but then sprang the tough stuff on us. Like some very well made piece of educational software, what looked fun at the start turned out to be difficult.
This is just “school for souls!” we cry out in disgust. All that talk of burning romance was just a ruse to get us to die to our selfishness!
The highest grossing film of all time Titanic answered that problem by attacking convention and suggesting that there existed a grand passion that could be only known rarely and outside the boundaries of propriety.
Forget marriage and enduring the school of souls. The real passion was hot and heavy and found in the back of a car . . . even on a ship.
For the lover the immediate problem with this idea is not so much its immorality, but that it is a lie. There is no love to be found in following your heart against the moral law.
On the other hand, convention is not the same as the moral law. The confusion is easy to make. When I argue for obeying the moral law over desire, many people think I am suggesting the tedium of fitting in to culture. Of course, in this age fitting into the culture means following your heart at almost any cost, but the other feature of our age is that it is always reacting to imaginary parents and prigs which are holding us back from passion.
We act as if we were shaking off Victorian repression one hundred and seven years after Victoria died. This is not true, but it feels true. It feels true, because we demand a convention against which we can rebel, since rebelling against natural law is so obviously foolish and wicked.
If only our great-grandparents would come back, then we could feel better about destroying love and marriage.
Whatever is true, those who seek love do often feel trapped in a three way conflict with what, in their hearts, they know they should do, what they want to do, and what convention says they should do. This feeling is real and it must be addressed . . . and in a way that places deepest love and morality on the same side where they belong.
I tried to express this feeling at the start of a novel set on the RMS Titanic. There a middle-aged woman feels trapped in a loveless marriage. Elizabeth Lancy wants more than convention . . . and as far as it goes she is right to want more.
It is not so much that things are bad for her, but that they are intolerably dull.
Here is the opening scene of that novel:
It was amazing how gaining extra weight had made her husband look smaller. He had always been shorter than she, but now he looked dark and round, round and neat. The most irritating thing about Michael Lancy was how neat he always was. His perfectly trimmed dark Edwardian beard framed his face with middle class morality. He was careful, that was the word for it, careful with money, careful with his social life, and sadly quite careful with his affections.
The boards on the promenade deck were also as neat as British seamen could make them, but they were also opulent. They screamed romance and life to her. At least they were something interesting to look at while they had the same fight they always had. Michael was still droning.
She shifted in her dress, her slight shoulders a bit daringly exposed to view, one of the many things that irritated her husband about her. She should be more demure, more like Victoria and less like a modern woman. After all, she was a mother, he would say, and then to proceed to lecture her on etiquette. Nina was hearing all of this as usual, though by now perhaps she was used to the back and forth, at least Elizabeth hoped so.
What was that? Michael had broken the usual pattern of his lecture. He had said something about her duty as a mother and as a wife. Wife. There was that word. Not lover, not beloved, his wife. She always thought the word would be naked with the possessive pronoun. His business. His child. His wife. For today, Elizabeth Lancy had had enough.
She spat the words out at him, “Do not throw the idea of duty into my face!”
Michael blinked behind his glasses, “I am not trying to create difficulties.”
“Then don’t . . .”
Then he said what he always said, weakly, “I am your husband.”
That was true. She had married him and she hated to be reminded of it.
“If all that is left is that name, we’re in trouble.”
Elizabeth looked across the rail at the ocean. They had just left Ireland and soon they would be in New York. Michael would have business there and she would be left alone. That was a happy thought. She was startled when Nina spoke. She had forgotten their daughter, her daughter, was there.
“Please don’t fight. It is our first night on this lovely boat!”
Nina was small for her age, but she dominated every room she entered. She had “it,” that mysterious something that made people notice. Nina was dark like her father, small like her mother. She was very, very grown up all of the sudden, much more grown up than an eleven year old had a right to be.
Michael looked worried, “We are not fighting, Nina.”
“We are fighting, Michael. Don’t lie to the girl.” There was no sense shielding Nina. They did not have a happy marriage. Perhaps the lesson would not be lost on her daughter. Marry for love and not duty. Never marry because you need stability and for God’s sake never marry a man who worked in a bank.
Her daughter looked at her waiting. Waiting for what? There was nothing more to say? When was the next meal? Soon, since meals on this boat were elaborate and would occupy some of her time.
Then Michael surprised her, something he could rarely do anymore. He said something dramatic. “At some point, you are going to ask yourself where I went. The answer will be somewhere where I was wanted.” He trundled off to their first class cabin, men of his dignity did not move quickly.
Elizabeth suddenly felt sorry for Michael. He had done the best he could and he was fond of her and good to their daughter. He wasn’t capable of understanding her pain, she had tried to explain it to him. He provided and he was decent. Many women would have been happy, but as her mother had often pointed out Elizabeth Lancy was not most women. She wanted more, though she could not always identify what the ache in her was about. It had been there so long, it helped define her.
“Momma, what’s wrong with the two of you?” Elizabeth looked at the top of her daughter’s head, afraid of her eyes. Those impossible curls and she was getting taller after all. She would have to say something to her daughter.
“I do not know, darling.”
“Things have been good. We are on this trip. Papa’s business has done well. What’s wrong?”
“Why aren’t we doing well?”
“Exactly.”
Her daughter was born to be a lawyer, girl or no, Elizabeth knew she would have to be told something. Nina would not be put off by anything less than the truth. What was the truth? Was it something that could be told on this ship at this time? She looked around and was relieved to see that the deck was not crowded. The ship was too big for any spot in first-class to be crowded.
“Sometimes people grow apart instead of together.”
“Those are just words. Why does it happen?” Her daughter’s back was too straight, always a bad sign.
“I don’t know, Nina. However, we are still together. And you are right. We are here on this great ship. Let’s try to be happy.” She smiled for Nina. None of this was her fault. She loved her daughter, didn’t she?
Nina’s smile was just as forced. The two stood facing each other as if frozen alone on the great deck in a spot light. The girl’s cheerful voice was harder than sorrow, “Isn’t it lovely? I still cannot believe Papa got us tickets on Titanic.”
“I will say this for your father. It is only the best for his family.” That sounded bitter. She would try again. Elizabeth spoke more quickly, “He does try. He just does not have much. . . “
“Romance?”
“Young lady! This is your father you are talking about.”
“I am sorry, Momma.”
“Well, you ought to be.” How long would this trip to New York take? Six days? Seven days? Elizabeth could not remember. The look on her face must have been all too familiar, because Nina read her mind.
“Bedtime?”
Elizabeth spoke softly. “It had better be.”
Her daughter clung to her like she had when she was a little girl. Every morning back then she would come to her room for “snuggle time.” Elizabeth missed those days. At least some good had come of her marriage. She did not want to let go. At the moment this great White Star liner, perfect and powerful, seemed too hard to be endured without someone with her.
Her daughter pulled away, “I love you!” It was as much dismissal as affection. These constant fights were hurting her little girl.
“I love you too!” Nina walked away toward their cabin.
She should not be going alone, but Elizabeth did not feel up to another confrontation with Michael. Two in one day was two too many. She hated feeling guilty. She hated failing her daughter. She hated how white the ship was. The glare of the fresh paint burned her eyes. She was trapped in a loveless marriage and wanted to be free and she wanted to love her husband and be a good mother. And she wanted both to be true at once. She was the unluckiest woman alive.
Elizabeth’s marriage is not so much loveless as it is bound by convention. Her husband is wrong, very wrong, in the way he views a great deal. His wrong, however, risks blinding Elizabeth to her own selfishness. They vowed to each other on their wedding day to love and cherish.
Michael, the husband, has allowed outside pressures such as business and conventionality “rules” to interfere with passionately laying his life down for his wife.
Elizabeth is seeking excitement and passion. She reacts to Michael’s errors by withdrawing and becoming critical.
In the middle, their daughter, Nina, is shown an image of marriage that is nothing the mystery that Saint Paul and the great saints wrote about.
Michael needs to find the God of the Song of Songs.
Elizabeth needs a good dose of Ephesians.
We need to realize that the trap cannot be escaped in either direction. Dull conformity is not God’s way, but neither is simply following our hearts into personal, family, and cultural destruction.