E HAD MARRIED the partner of our dreams. We could overlook our differences. We tried not to talk about our feelings or address issues that would threaten to burst our bubble. There’s a “dream stage” that David Augsburger talks about.1 We were in it. We hadn’t given mutuality much thought. If you had asked, we would probably have said that mutuality is about sharing. We knew, of course, that we already shared everything. Well, almost everything. From that sun-soaked vantage point our eyes could not yet adjust to see the polarities of our differentness. We were blinded to the embryonic state of our couple skills, unmindful of the walls already constructed and fortified between us—as they are between every couple—by thousands of years of the curse of sin spilling across generations. We just knew we were in love, and shaping the other a bit around the edges didn’t seem too daunting.

Little did we know the disillusionment that lay ahead. Inevitably the dream failed us. We found ourselves manipulating and feeling manipulated. Emotions that could no longer be suppressed exploded, often leaving us hurt and confused. Tit-for-tat struggles reflected our inability to be both separate and together. Each pressed for change in the other. Real intimacy was touch and go. We had (as marriage counselors put it) a lot of growth potential.

Celebrating Our Differentness
The widely known family therapist Carl Whitaker has said, “A healthy marriage really is a blending of two foreign cultures.”² The way we deal with “differentness” in marriage, explains Whitaker, will to a large degree determine the quality of our relationship. Painful early experiences confronted us with the magnitude of our differentness, born of disparate temperaments, family of origin experiences, gender issues, and preferences.

Karen admired Ron’s organization and drive. What she didn’t know was how bent he would be on organizing her and how distressed she would feel when, despite her hard work by his side, there would still be no end to his agenda.

Ron was attracted to Karen’s personal appearance and her spontaneity. What he didn’t know was how much time it took each day for her to look that way and how frustrating it could be to live with someone whose life is not guided by a planned agenda, but for whom the day just unfolds.

We learned by personal experience (the one-step-forward, two-steps-back pattern of growth Whitaker describes for acknowledging our differentness) to accept one another with our differences and respect one another in our differentness. We pause now with regularity to celebrate God’s grace that we are heirs together (1 Peter 3:7). That has helped us grow to the point that we actually find ourselves enjoying and treasuring this unique person with whom we have linked our lives. It would be too much to say we never wish to change the other. But we can affirm our happiness that long ago we chose the path of learning to celebrate our differentness rather than trying to press the other into our own mold.

Becoming “We”
Most couples whose marriages stretch across time are likely to pass through at least four phases, which, according to Augsburger, move from romantic idealism, through unrealized expectations, to fresh assessment of personal and couple strengths, and on into a comfort and celebration of life together. Becoming “we” is part of this journey. For us, it’s hard to mark the exact moment that it happened. But it did.

One day we found ourselves looking back—aware in a new way that along the way somewhere we had both turned a corner on commitment, a corner marking the point when we decided again that we were in this marriage for keeps. It was a corner different from the one marked by wedding vows and promises that Dennis Guernsey suggests (tongue in cheek) are better suited to angels than mortals.³ It was a corner closely identified with the day (or days) we each discovered the door on the other side of disillusionment—a door that leads to the discovery of one another as persons in the husband-wife relationship.

Christian marriage counselor Scott Stanley describes the turnabout in the marriage of two career professionals. Dedicated, hardworking, successful, they had little time for church or God, though they considered themselves Christians. They owned many things together and did many things together. But they had not yet come to understand the difference between having and doing, and really being together.

A crisis suddenly emerged when the wife’s employer announced that the corporate headquarters where she worked was moving to a distant city. She would have to move too if she was going to hold her place on the corporate ladder. Assuming her husband would be willing to move, though it would mean changing his job, the wife brought home the news.

His response devastated her. “When I married you, I never agreed to give up my career,” he responded forcefully. “That’s like my whole life, what I’ve worked for all these years!”

To make matters worse, a home pregnancy test positively verified their worst fears. Totally unprepared for fatherhood, the husband suggested an abortion: a second devastating response.

There followed a restless period of soul-searching and prayer for them both. As they were able to come together again and talk he confessed, “I wanted all the best of what we could have together without really wanting to be together. I don’t think being married is all about me or you; it needs to be about us. I don’t know how to do ‘us,’ but I’m willing to start learning.

. . . I wanted this marriage only as long as it was good for both of us. I don’t believe that’s commitment. I want commitment. I want you to know I’ll be by your side, no matter what we decide to do. Will you be married with me? I mean, you and me together.”

His wife responded with tears and hugs. A new life began for them—together.⁴

Interdependence
Growth toward marital mutuality also involves coming to understand the interdependence of husband and wife. The notion of interdependence preserves the important uniqueness, individuality, and personhood of each spouse, but also recognizes that each needs the other and is truly the helper for the other that God designed. Perhaps the clearest biblical support for interdependence in marriage is expressed in 1 Corinthians 7:3-5, where the apostle Paul parts company with traditional concepts of male ownership and dominance and describes the reciprocal belonging of mates to each other. This passages positions mutuality at the very heart of what makes a Christian marriage Christian. Paul expands on its centrality to all Christian relationships in Philippians 2:4, where we are admonished to consider both our own needs and the needs of others.

Interdependence may also be most clearly visible in a time of crisis. Patrick Morley recounts when his sister-in-law Nancy’s mammogram revealed a spot that required a biopsy. Frightened of the worst, she asked her surgeon to call her husband, Hal, with the results. When the bad news came, Hal held the grim report within himself through an important dinner engagement. Alone with her at last, he drew her close and tenderly whispered, “The doctor called me. We need to have surgery.”

His use of “we” spoke volumes about their interdependence. They wept silently in one another’s arms for long minutes. “Nancy,” Hal choked, “I feel a love for you right now like I’ve never felt before.”

The mastectomy over, Hal slept by her bed, helped her in and out, ran errands, cleaned up when nausea overwhelmed her. “‘We felt a new closeness,’ says Nancy. ‘For the first two months we would just hug and hold each other all the time. Hal said to me, “You’ll never know how much I love you and how courageous I think you are.” That really ministered to me.’”

Morley concludes, “When the body of the wife is sick, so is the body of the husband. They are one flesh. When the body of the husband takes ill, so does the body of the wife. They are one flesh. We belong to each other, as we belong to the Lord. How important it is for your mate to have an assurance that you will be there in the dark hour of illness.”⁵

Empowerment
When Ron was a boy his dad built a teeter-totter for the school playground. The children could hardly wait for recess. It was such fun—until bullies began to torment lightweights by holding them high in the air and threatening to drop them with a thud. All of a sudden the teeter-totter wasn’t fun anymore.

“Power over” is the way of fallen human beings. Jesus knew all about it as He followed His disciples up the road to Jerusalem toward the climax of His mission. But in the radical principles of the kingdom of God, persons with power are called to attitudes and acts of self-giving service exemplified by Christ Himself. Power in Christian marriage is stood on its head to create the energy to really hear and understand the needs of each other and to seek solutions that consider the needs and desires of both. It refuses to shortcut mutuality or to exert itself for selfish ends.

In its practical outworkings, power also gives way to empowerment in marriage. Karen’s temperament and life experience have left her keenly aware of her inadequacies, less aware of her strengths. She is often amazed at the power of Ron’s affirmation and encouragement, and credits his belief in her for much of her courage to try new ventures and develop her gifts. Karen’s protestations of love and unconditional acceptance have encouraged Ron to be more open and vulnerable and better able to take her into deeper and deeper confidences.

Shalom
Despite the encouragement of growth in our marriage, we must testify that to speak of mutuality in marriage only in the human sphere is to circle back to a dream as impossible as the fairy-tale hopes with which we embarked on our journey together. At the wedding feast in Cana (John 2) Jesus’ mother poignantly recapped the frailty of all human relationships when she declared, “They have no wine.” The good news is that we have met One who turns the best water we can bring to our marriages into a divine elixir the likes of which no one has tasted who has not tasted of His living water.

Paul sums it all up in Ephesians 2. In Christ barriers that divide us are destroyed and walls come tumbling down. We are brought together in His one body, where on the cross He became our peace. And having brought peace to the world, Christ sets about delivering His peace to the world—one friendship, one marriage, one family at a time.

Mutuality reverberates throughout the Song of Solomon, the special book in the biblical canon that most directly speaks of the intimate relationship of marriage. The pair share names—“Shulamite” (S. of Sol. 6:13) and “Solomon” (S. of Sol. 3:11)—which derive from the Hebrew word shalom (“peace”).

Each surrenders the sin-cursed tendency to control the other. Repeatedly they extend invitations to each other, recognizing the other’s full personhood and freedom of choice. He invites her to a springtime outing (S. of Sol. 2:10-13); she invites him to spend time with her (verse 17). He invites her, “Come with me from Lebanon” (S. of Sol. 4:8); she invites him to enter her “garden,” which is “his garden” (verse 16).

It is from this same song that those enduring lines spring that have inspired wedding vows across the centuries; lines that anticipate Christ’s full restoration of marriage to its original sanctity and beauty; lines that, by His grace, couples may sing together even now as their own song of mutuality and love:

“My lover is mine and I am his” (S. of Sol. 2:16). “I am my lover’s and my lover is mine (S. of Sol. 6:3, NIV).

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1 David Augsburger, Sustaining Love (Ventura, Calif.: Regal Books, 1988).
2 Carl A. Whitaker and William M. Bumberry, Dancing With the Family (New York: Brunner/Hazel, 1988), p. 202.
3 Dennis Guernsey, The Family Covenant (Elgin, Ill.: David C. Cook, 1984).
4 Scott Stanley, The Heart of Commitment (Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 1998), p. 169.
5 Patrick Morley, Two Part Harmony (Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 1994), p. 17.

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Karen and Ron Flowers are codirectors of the Department of Family Ministries for the General Conference.