How many people ever contemplate the psychological meaning of marriage?
Marriage has its origin in the concept of a man and a woman giving themselves to each other for life in order to bring new life into the world: to have children and to create a family in which the children are raised to honor such values as faith, hope, and charity—not to fear love. The conjugal act between the man and the woman guarantees this generation of life. Marriage, therefore, is an act of service, not a psychological “right” to soothe your fear of emptiness through a “relationship” with another person.
Across cultures and through the ages, however, the concept of marriage has been perverted into a mere economic contract that simply guarantees the closed transmission of wealth, status, and power. Even the concept of “family” is irrelevant to this kind of marriage, except in so far as children serve as necessary and vital agents of hereditary transmission. Keep in mind that none of this has anything to do with romance—or love.
When most people today think of marriage, however, they think of love. Even though they might talk about committed relationships, to what is the “commitment”? Free sex? Financial security? Self-indulgence? What sort of commitments are these? And so here is precisely where the psychological problems begin.
The great philosopher and theologian Thomas Aquinas said that “To love is to will the good of another.” [1] So if you think about it, all the moral decisions about marriage and family actually derive psychologically from love—real love, not the “love” of popular fantasy. Infidelity, contraception, abortion, divorce, euthanasia, and even embryonic stem-cell research, all defile love through a focus on personal pleasure and convenience, at the expense of the dignity—and even the life—of another human being. And what is depression and trauma if not the despair of seeing life turned into a piece of garbage?
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Unfortunately, contemporary culture tends to think of “love” as a way to find personal fulfillment in life. That is, each person in a “relationship” expects the other to fill up the existential void in his or her life. Ultimately, this is impossible, and so when there are problems, the conflicts are usually about one person complaining of not getting what he or she wants. In this situation, only one psychological solution can be possible: Take responsibility for your own life satisfaction. True love is about giving, not receiving. If you’re mainly concerned about getting pleasure or security, you’re being selfish, not loving.
This means that you have to look carefully at your own life and stop blaming others. If you are not satisfied with your life, it’s probably because you are not living up to your inner potential or are in one way or another betraying your life values. This can be a hard lesson to learn, but be honest—an adulterous sexual affair that defiles your marriage commitment, for example, is just a perverted attempt to avoid the real problem: yourself.