The year was 1980. I was a young married man who had completed my Air Force Basic Training and was starting technical school. It had been six weeks since I had seen my wife and I was hoping that soon she'd be able to join me.
The Air Force required certain training sessions above and beyond technical stuff. This one was with a chaplain who wanted to address more personal concepts specific to military personnel. We gathered in a room that doubled as a theater and he started asking questions.
"You know, the military is well known for various types of deployments. Some of you will be sent for extended duty overseas. In those cases, your spouses can join you. However, the military also uses TDY -- temporary duty. These may be anything from a week or two up to 6 months or more -- up to a year -- and they do not allow spouses on those deployments. So here's my question. How many of you would think that it would be okay to cheat on your spouse if you were deployed for a month? Come up here."
A few people moved to the front and sat down.
"Okay, how many of you would think it was okay to cheat on your spouse if you were deployed for 6 months?"
More people joined the group at the front.
"How many would think it was okay to cheat on your spouse if you were deployed for 10 months?"
At this point the majority was up front, and when he asked about a year, it was an amazing thing to me. I sat alone in the auditorium while all the rest were up front. In this particular group, I was alone in the belief that fidelity in marriage included extended separation.
That was at the beginning of the '80's. Since then, of course, the concept of marital fidelity, like so many other moral values, has eroded. I understand that this was a limited number of people, perhaps an unfair sampling, but I would suspect that today I would be among a very few who actually believed that "forsaking all others", "for better or for worse", and "'til death do us part" were important and valid promises, part of a vanishing covenant. Is it any wonder that people today are confused when we call for "saving marriage"?
15 comments:
Great post Stan.
My wife is in the Coast Guard and just got transferred to Petaluma, CA.
The kids (both grown 18and 23) decided to remain here in the Seattle, WA area.
This is a 4 year deal, but we will visit as much as possible. Probably once every 6 weeks or so. It's also the last four of her 30 year career!
But, to get to my point... I would be the other one joining you in that auditorium. If one cannot go for a month or 2 or even 10 without sex - If sex is the only reason one stays married (which if you consider the choice of those in your example, you'd have to say it plays a big part) then he shouldn't get make the commitment. course he shouldn't be having sex unmarried either, but that's another topic!
I will remain faithful to my wife no matter what. And I expect the same from her. Til death do us part is part of the agreement we made.
These days it's easier to get out of a marriage than it is a cell phone contract. Where did all the integrity go?
Stan... Do you really make all of your posts exactly at 5:00AM? Or is that a trick?
I never see a 5:01 or a 4:59...
Just curious.
Mike,
Fidelity is important. Such a shame that it's so rare.
And I write my posts in advance. I write them when I think of them. Then I put them in blogger lined up for one a day set to post at 5 AM. I'm not actually on the computer every morning at 5 AM posting my thoughts.
My wife runs out for a gallon of milk and I'm at the neighbor's house naked with a glass of wine.
Not really. I'd have been sitting there with you. What part of "vow" don't people get?
BTW, were there any further comments from the chaplan when you were the only one left? I interested to hear what he said next, to either you or those with no self-control.
I have a slightly different take on this. (I can hear Stan going, 'no, really?!')
Yes, your story illustrates fidelity. But it also illustrates something that, perhaps, most conservative christians have a hard time with.
I Cor 7:3-5 indicates that (at least where it is deliberate) abstention from physical relations is 'defrauding'. I don't see Mikes point (which he probably didn't mean in this way) of 'Marriage means being able to go ten months without sex'.
No, it doesn't. Marriage means having sex 24/7... physically when possible, and mentally all the time. Abstention, seperation, and a lack of priority on the physical are, Scripturally, bad things.
15Drink waters out of thine own cistern, and running waters out of thine own well.
16Let thy fountains be dispersed abroad, and rivers of waters in the streets.
17Let them be only thine own, and not strangers' with thee.
18Let thy fountain be blessed: and rejoice with the wife of thy youth.
19Let her be as the loving hind and pleasant roe; let her breasts satisfy thee at all times; and be thou ravished always with her love.
This kind of falls under the heading of your World Against Marriage post. There is a radio ad here for a fast food item that the announcer says will help women find Mr. Right (not being serious, because it has bacon and guys love bacon), and the female character says it did, then proceeds to list 3 or 4 other Mr. Right's it helped her find. It just goes to show America's view on fidelity. Being faithful is just putting a damper on their fun, and we can't have that. Its our constitutional RIGHT to pursue happiness. It doesn't help that most people don't realize happiness is not something done to them, but something they choose for themselves, like Paul who had found how to be content (or happy) in all situations.
That's a very good point that David makes. Folks think love is that bubble they're in when they first fall in it. But what that truly is is lust. OK. That helps get couples together in the first place. Unfortunately, that lasting for the duration of the marriage isn't in the least bit guaranteed or even the point. The promise to love no one but one's spouse until death parts the two does not consider the superficial love, the bubble, the lust. It's not meant to concern itself with that at all, but the deeper true love of submitting to each other as God loves, the "agape" form of love. Should the lust last, that's great. But that isn't the love upon which a lasting marriage should be based or upon which it should depend.
It seems contradictory to some to lose that romantic feeling for their spouse but remain with them nonetheless, to "love" them not by compulsion of some lustful feeling, but by a willful desire to maintain the vow. I love my wife more out of choice than out of compulsion because she's hot.
Again, the fact that I find her attractive helps quite a bit, but at the same time, the novelty of getting to be with a hot babe wears like any other novelty, such as a fancy car one might have always wanted, or living in that dream location. One appreciates it still, but not as one did in the beginning. I think this luster diminishing from the gem leads many to at least contemplate divorce or adultery, and for others, it's a good enough excuse. But that's exactly when one is supposed to remember that vow taken and love, not stray.
It's kind of like forgiveness. As it is easy to love in the beginning, while thrilled with the novelty of the association, it is easy to forgive little annoyances and one considers one's self right with God in those circumstances as far as forgiveness goes. But suffer a serious trespass, and many people refuse to forgive. Well, that's when it's most important to do so. Spill my drink and forgiveness is cheap because it's easy. Loving the new wife is easy. Forgive the fist-fight is tougher. Continuing to love when the wife is older and maybe fatter, well, certainly the lust may have dissipated, but one is still required to love.
Indeed, if love is compelled, that is, if I love my wife because I can't help myself, is it really love? But to love because I choose to seems to have more value to me, and to choose to remain faithful, no matter what the circumstance, is real love of the type the taken vow demands.
The chaplain, as so many "good" military chaplains will do, had no commentary about what anyone chose. He was simply trying to get people to think about their stand before they had to take it. "Fortunately" for most of them, there was no "stand" to take, eh?
von: "Marriage means having sex 24/7... physically when possible, and mentally all the time."
Funny thing. Marshall Art assures me that all sex is a product of lust, and in marriage that's fine. Now you're assuring me that sex doesn't require physical contact. If you two could just get together and work this out ...
But, seriously, you're going to have to explain what you mean by "sex" in your context because most of us haven't got a clue. For instance, if "Marriage means having sex 24/7", then what was Paul talking about when he warned us "Do not deprive one another, except perhaps by agreement for a limited time, that you may devote yourselves to prayer" (1 Cor 7:5)? I get that I need to be (and, in fact, totally am) completely satisfied with my wife at all times, but I wouldn't call it "sex".
>>But, seriously, you're going to have to explain what you mean by "sex" in your context because most of us haven't got a clue. For instance, if "Marriage means having sex 24/7", then what was Paul talking about when he warned us "Do not deprive one another, except perhaps by agreement for a limited time, that you may devote yourselves to prayer" (1 Cor 7:5)? I get that I need to be (and, in fact, totally am) completely satisfied with my wife at all times, but I wouldn't call it "sex".
You remember Jesus's comment about adultery? Move that to the I Cor 7 passage, and look at the flip side. "not now" can mean a lot more than just 'no coitus right now'. You walk by your wife and put your hand on her shoulder and she pulls away, you want to talk to her about his and that, and she refuses, etc. Those would all be violations of I Cor 7:5 just as much as refusing coitus itself, no?
So, now, can we not (indeed do you not) rejoice in our wife mentally as well as all of the various physical manifestations? What did I say that was confusing.
Hey don't bring me into this one, Stan. No physical contact? All lust with no payoff? Not for me!
von: "What did I say that was confusing?"
It's confusing because you're perfectly willing to use terminology that means something to the rest of normal, English-speaking people that means something quite different to you. To refer to "sex" (in terms of marriage rather than in terms of gender) as something that has no (necessarily) physical component is a meaningless concept. There are other terms for what you are describing (as far as I understand what you are describing) such as "affection", "satisfaction", "intimacy" (in a much broader sense than the more narrow sense used by some today). I'm confused from your use of terms here in the same way that I'm confused by advocates' of "same-sex marriage" use of the term "marriage". "But ... that's not what 'marriage' means." In the same way, "But ... that's not what 'sex' means."
Of course, you've never really been greatly concerned about using terminology that conveys what the average English-speaker understands it to convey. Essentially, you take the approach, "It means what I think it means and you're just going to have to keep up and figure it out."
My original post was:
>>No, it doesn't. Marriage means having sex 24/7... physically when possible, and mentally all the time. Abstention, seperation, and a lack of priority on the physical are, Scripturally, bad things.
I was not at all denigrating the physical. I was saying it is all part of one package... call it sex, call it affection, etc.; that should happen 24/7.
I would, for example, say that Mike is violating I Cor 7 in allowing his wife to move away from him and only 'visiting' her every 'six weeks' or so. Of course, having a wife 'in the Coast Guard' violates Scripture in other ways, but here we see the primary relationship (husband and wife) violated by other things (career, grown kids, whatever). This is the defrauding spoken about I Cor, and violates the command of proverbs.
These same men had just stood in the presence of witnesses and stated their oaths of enlistment.
I guess I would really have to wonder, after what you witnessed, just how seriously they took THOSE vows.
Men and women. There were females who were just as quick to jump the fidelity ship.
Vows are all well and good, but, after all, you're not really expected to be inconvenienced by them, are you? I mean, how is THAT realistic?
In other words, I agree with you.
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