Marriage Should Be Kind, Not Polite

From time to time, Chad and I meet with couples who are struggling. It’s a daunting task, I can tell you, to be living an imperfect marriage and then to try to help guide and support another imperfect marriage. If anyone ever claims that their marriage is actually perfect, I can tell you that either they just got married two days ago or they’re lying. Marriage will never be perfect because husbands and wives will never be perfect. I suppose in many ways, that’s a comfort, especially when you recognize some of the weaknesses of your own partnership.

One thing that Chad and I have often advised and tried to abide by ourselves is pretty simple: be kind. Be kind to the person you promised to love for the rest of your life. Do the kind thing. Extend grace. Display patience. Just be nice as much as possible.

But there’s a difference in being kind and being polite. Politeness is often a disguise for real feelings. A couple can very easily polite themselves all the way to divorce, choosing not to talk about things that are difficult to discuss. When two people decide to just smile and nod and bury truths about where their marriage is going wrong, anything just to avoid conflict, then they lose a chance to built intimacy and trust in their marriage. Politeness leads to silence, and silence is the death of heart connection in marriage.

True intimacy is built on respectful conflict resolution, on emotional vulnerablility, on conversations that are messy and difficult. Husbands and wives must fight for a closeness that defies all other relationships, and no one ever became closely intertwined with someone they were simply polite to. Politeness is reserved for people we don’t know well. There’s a distance there. Politeness keeps someone at arm’s length. On the contrary, kindness in conflict, grace in disagreement, patience in misunderstanding, and a willingness to leave no stone unturned in trying to love each other well–that’s the opposite of keeping someone at a distance. It’s the kind of love that says, I can handle all of you. And I will give you all of me, for better or for worse, just like we promised.

This is one way God uses marriage to sanctify us. Politeness won’t lead to a thriving marriage. We have to be true friends, the kind that lay down their lives for each other. We have to be friends who show kindness when it’s least deserved, who forgive when it still hurts, who rely on the goodness of God and the power of the Holy Spirit to build something so much deeper than a conflict-free relationship.