Sermon: Eros and Reconciliation

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Eros and Reconciliation

By Charles Rush

February 13, 2011

[ Audio (mp3, 7.8Mb) ]

ere are certainly plenty of cynics on the subject of romance. Richard Lewis said, “When you are in love it is the most glorious two-and-a-half days of your life”. He echoes, the Latin poet Catullus, “I hate and love. You ask, perhaps, how can that be? I know not, but I feel the agony. As Ernest Hemingway put it, “If two people love each other there can be no happy end to it”, spoken like a man who knows that over and over and over. Or I think of the haunting words from the great blues singer Billy Holiday after disappointment, heroin addiction had made her cynical at mid-life, “Don't threaten me with love, baby.”

There is ample reason to be jaundiced about love, no question. At the same time, researchers today are documenting what makes for human fulfillment and they can now put some statistics behind the benefits of developing substantive relationships in all dimensions of your life. Getting better at being a people person is the key towards becoming happy.

In the last decade, we've done over 200 studies on over 275,000 people. At the moment, researchers divide the what we mean by happiness in three broad categories that rather remind you of Aristotle back in your Intro to Philosophy class: it is pleasures ( our sex lives remain pretty important to us), but also engagements (our relationships- spouses, family, friends, community, work), and finally meaning (the realm of spirituality/philosophy).[i]

And, like Aristotle, we figured out pretty quickly that genuine fulfillment, or a deeper happiness comes from all three. As one of them put it, real happiness “is the joy we feel striving after [and partly actualizing] our potential.”[ii]

Not surprising that you can correlate deeper happiness with great friendships and a solid love life because it is so often the case that these are the very people that have inspired you towards your potential day in and day out. Or put it the other way around, what a great joy to live around people that encourage you to be your best and, on the whole, bring out the best in you. That is about as much as you can ask for out of this life.

People are warming to this subject in general because we've correlated the fulfillment you feel out of realizing your potential with a lot of other positive things. Happy people tend to also be healthier, also friendlier, also more involved in community, also creative in what you are doing, more productive, better in leadership, better performer, you tend to make more money, have more job security, miss fewer days to illness and are less likely to get burnt out and quit.[iii] Of course, being happy is also more fun.

We have a vested interest in developing solid relationships, solid marriages, plain and simple. Or as we Christians used to say, love is the better way. St. Paul tells us, let your love be genuine; out do each other in affection, honor, zeal, hope, patience, payer… Live in harmony. And insofar as it is up to you, be at peace.

And our present round of research bears out the wisdom of Paul's understanding of the Christian life, the profounder spiritual way of living in the world. Likewise, the present round of research bears out Paul's other insight from 2nd Corinthians. He says, we are Ambassadors of reconciliation to each other. The spiritual way of being in the world is the way of reconciliation. Become a reconciling presence as you mature.

Here is the thing. The single most important thing you can do to improve your love life. The primary way you can put some zip back in your romance, according to the research is… be a reconciling person. Practice that until it becomes subconsciously grooved. That is the long answer, the life answer.

That is not to say that some flowers tomorrow might not be a bad idea, a dinner out, a little bling. There is nothing wrong with a poem or some perfume… But it turns out that reconciliation is the single best give you can give your spouse to spruce up your love life.

The Curmudgeon's I cited at the beginning were half right. That flash of lust that you feel at the beginning of romance doesn't have to last long before you run up against the cold, difficult fact of the actual person that you are trying to love. New relationships experience it as a block of impassable stone that is just there in between sessions of canoodling.

In fairly short order, after you get to know each other, you have arguments with your spouse. They just don't see things the way you do, you just don't live the same way, a lot of small things that you step over quite a bit. Your spouse feels they need to attend every extended family event, you would rather be more independent. You'd like to have a baby in the near future, the person you are seeing isn't ready yet and isn't sure that they ever will be. You think your spouse is too strict with your oldest child, and they think they have about the right approach to parenting. You'd rather plan ahead and your spouse waits until the last minute.

Here is the thing that we have discovered. That argument that you first had from before you were engaged…. In all likelihood, you will be having that same argument in a different version 15 years later. Let me quantify. When we studied married couples and the arguments that they had by actually taping them in hours of daily living, 69% of all the arguments that these couples had fell into this category.

I love the conclusion of one researcher, Dan Wile. “When choosing a long-term partner… you will inevitably be choosing a particular set of unsolvable problems that you'll be grappling with for the next ten, twenty or fifty years.”[iv]

Here is the other thing that we discovered. You don't have to solve these problems to have a great relationship. You just have to cope with them. As it turns out, the key to being able to cope well, is doing the things in the bible that we are told make for reconciliation.

Put it more creatively. Couples that have advanced skill in reconciliation can tolerate a lot of difference. It turns out that the spiritual disposition that keeps you focused on reconciliation and the skill set that makes you emotionally competent to diffuse tension and repair relationships that are injured are the fundamental tools to promote intimacy, love, contentment.

Leave it to the tape to fairly accurately depict what we don't want to happen. We don't want our arguments to degrade into gridlock. The signs we have detailed.

The conflict makes you feel rejected. You talk but make no headway. Both of you become entrenched. Now you start feeling more frustrated and hurt. And these conversations start to become devoid of humor, affection or amusement. You start to vilify each other on this subject which leads you to become more entrenched, extreme, and less interested in compromise. And then you start to just… you know what… withdraw emotionally and then physically.[v]

We have a lot of tape on what you don't want. Fortunately, we now have whole books that give you good insights on resolving conflict productively. We won't go through the how-two.

But I love a couple of John Gottman's observations after reviewing not hours of tape but years of tape. He says that good arguments, big or small, over things you can resolve or bigger stuff you will probably never really resolve, is essentially the same in orientation. You have to “communicate a basic acceptance of your partner.”[vi] If you create a chemistry so that either or both of you feel judged, misunderstood, or rejected- you just punted the ball. You might score some points in the argument but your partner is under siege and will dig in to protect themselves, plain and simple.

That is why people who study these matters often make the observation that in most intimate arguments, there is no right or wrong, there is only the two of you- two subjective realities. When you are in the middle of any argument, you will invariably be thinking internally, ‘what is wrong with my boyfriend that he doesn't see the impeccable logic that I have just laid out?' But if we could zoom out, and it gets easier to do with maturity, so the researchers claim, it is not really about the logic, important as reason is, it is always about the two of you checking in with each other also, more fundamentally…

So when we are younger, we are more likely to say something like, “Honey, you're going 50 in the left hand lane on the Turnpike, are you trying to kill us? Oh my God, you got your license at Wallmart.” After a while, you realize that this only makes your spouse angry and hurt, but with no real change in behavior.

When you have figured out that acceptance is more fundamental, you are more likely to say something like. “Honey, these cars passing us on the right make me nervous. Any chance you could slide over a lane or two to make me feel safer?”

Jesus taught us to put ourselves in one another's place. The Good Samaritan sees a person hurt on the side of the road. “But a certain Samaritan, as he journeyed, came where he was: and when he saw him, he had compassion on him” (Luke 10:33). St. Paul suggested the same idea in Galatians when he says, “Carry each other's burdens, and in this way you will fulfill the law of Christ."(Galatians 6:2). Again, in a letter to the Church at Corinth, Paul says, “For there should be no division in the body, but that its parts should have equal concern for each other. If one part suffers, every part suffers with it; if one part is honored, every part rejoices with it." (1 Corinthians 12:25-26). In the first step and in the last step, mutually, reciprocally we have to communicate this fundamental acceptance of each other, whatever your concerns are, whatever you need to have changed.

When our researchers observed those couples that were really clicking, and some of them had been married for decades, what they noticed was that they communicated to each other a pervasive, fundamental fondness and respect.[vii]

They could also express anger, irritation, disappointment and hurt but they did it in this context of a basic fondness and respect. And then??? This fuller range of emotions can actually be heard. It

But mistakes will be made and emotions will get the better of us. There is good news for those of us who know we have issues with controlling our temper or engaging our emotionally mature sides. It turns out that researchers observed quite a few of us who fall in that category but their relationships remain fairly stable and productive.

They did so if… you were particularly effective at repair attempts. Things are getting out of control… Can you de-escalate? Can you put on the brakes? Can you stop, re-frame, maybe just take a break? Can you find a place to re-connect? Can you soothe yourself and your mate?

The key thing that they noticed is not that these repair attempts are witty or clever or manipulative in any fashion. What makes them work is that they get through. You know what your spouse needs in these moments and you can deliver it. No short-cuts.

St. Paul put it like this in Ephesians, “Do not let the sun go down on your anger.” (4:6) Anger is part of our life. It erupts. But we've recognized its danger from ancient times. Put the brakes on that. Don't let it stew and fester, or if you do, you can fairly well predict that it will start to poison your relationship.

So, St. Paul, said, “Be angry and do not sin” (Eph. 4:7). There is a way to be responsible with your anger. And it is balanced with a spirit of forgiveness. James 1 says, “be slow to anger and quick to forgive”. Don't let it get carried away. Anger is likely pointing you towards something deeper in your relationship or in you that you need to reflect on. But in your intimate relationships with your spouse, in your family, with your closest friends, in the church, keep it in mind to practice an understanding forgiveness of others as Christ has already forgiven you.” Or the Lord's Prayer that daily reminds us, “forgive us our debts (our shortcomings and mistakes) as we forgive one another.”

The key thing is the relationship. The key thing is keeping love flowing in and around us. As our text reminds us this morning, “Live in harmony with one another… if possible, so far as it depends on you, live peaceably with all.” Amen.

[i] The distinction is from Martin Seligman. See Peterson, C., Park, N., & Seligman, M.E.P. (2005) Journal of Happiness Studies, 6, 25-41.

[ii] Achor, Shawn. The Happiness Advantage (New York: Crown Publishing, 2010), p. 40.

[iii] Ibid. p. 41.

[iv] Dan Wile, After the Honeymoon How Conflict Can Save Your Marriage but the ideas for this sermon come from John Gottman's & Nan Silver Seven Principles for Making Marriage Work (New York: Three Rivers, 2002), chs. 7 and 8.

[v] Ibid. p. 132.

[vi] Ibid. p. 149.

[vii] Ibid. p. 154.