Support the Marriage, Not Just the Wedding

My best friend got married two weeks ago, and I couldn't be happier for her. In every wedding photo I've seen, I'm doing some variety of ugly cry. The wedding was emotional. The food was delicious. And the dancing was reminiscent of our carefree high school days spent dancing on bars and cars.



But some time in the future, my friend will want to kill her new husband. It could be a brief moment after he says something stupid, or she could experienced a more sustained rage caused by serious problems. This isn't because there's anything wrong with her marriage or her husband. It's because this is what marriage is like. Commit to live with and love someone forever, and it's inevitable that that person will make you irate, and perhaps even leave you questioning whether someone drugged you on the fateful day in which you signed away your life to your spouse.

And this is the real reason we have weddings. A wedding isn't just a party or an opportunity to ostentatiously display wealth. It's a community coming together to make a commitment. Brides and grooms choose a wedding party to stand with them while they take their vows, and this is not an accident. Those people standing beside you as you commit your life to someone are supposed to support you in that commitment, not tell you your husband is a giant, steaming asshole the first time he utters a cross word to you. No marriage is an island, and the people you have in your life can affect the happiness of your marriage. Indeed, they can help keep you together when the going gets tough.

So my commitment to my beloved friend is that I will support her marriage even when she's not sure she can. I stood next to her when she took those vows, and to be a person with integrity, I have to take those vows as seriously as she does. If she calls me and tells me she is angry with her husband, I will tell her to work it out. If she tells me marriage is too hard, I'll tell her divorce is much harder. I encourage everyone else to do the same thing. If you were there at the wedding, you have to support the marriage, not just the party.

Till death do us part" does not have an asterisk next to it. Marriage with the right person is lovely and wonderful, and it is possible for most days to feel like a perpetual honeymoon. But people are people, and just as your parents, your siblings, and your dog make you crazy, so too will your spouse. And so will your friends' spouses. In a world ravaged by divorce, we -- friends, family, members of the wedding party -- all have an obligation to support marriage when our married friends may have run out of the energy and motivation they need to do it on their own. A commitment to stand by someone on his or her wedding day is a commitment to stand by him or her for the entirety of the marriage. Take that commitment seriously.