CS Lewis on Marriage

 
CS Lewis

The Christian idea of marriage is based on Christ's words that a man & wife are to be regarded as a single organism—for that is what the words ‘one flesh’ would be in modern English. And the Christians believe that when He said this He was not expressing a sentiment but stating a fact—just as one is stating a fact when one says that a lock & its key are one mechanism, or that a violin & a bow are one musical instrument. The inventor of the human machine was telling us that its 2 halves, the male & the female, were made to be combined together in pairs, not simply on the sexual level, but totally combined. The monstrosity of sexual intercourse outside marriage is that those who indulge in it are trying to isolate one kind of union (the sexual) from all the other kinds of union which were intended to go along with it & make up the total union. The Christian attitude does not mean that there is anything wrong about sexual pleasure, any more than about the pleasure of eating. It means that you must not isolate that pleasure & try to get it by itself, any more than you ought to try to get the pleasures of taste by just chewing things & then spitting them out without swallowing.

As a consequence, Christianity teaches that marriage is for life. There is, of course, a difference here between different churches: some do not admit divorce at all; some allow it reluctantly in very special cases. They all regard divorce as something like cutting up a living body, as a kind of surgical operation. Some of them think the operation so violent that it cannot be done at all; others admit it as a desperate remedy in extreme cases. They are all agreed that it is more like having both your legs cut off than it is like dissolving a business partnership. What they all disagree with is the modern view that it is a simple readjustment of partners, to be made whenever people feel they are no longer in love with one another.

We must not forget to consider faithfulness in relation to another virtue, namely justice. Justice includes the keeping of promises. Now, everyone who has been married by a church has made a public, solemn vow to stick to their partner till death. To this someone may reply that it was regarded as a mere formality. Whom, then, was he trying to deceive when he made it? God? That was really very unwise. Himself? That was not very much wiser. The spouse, or the in-laws? That was treacherous. Most often, I think, it was hoped to deceive the public. They wanted the respectability that is attached to marriage without intending to pay the price: that is, they were impostors & cheaters. If they are still contented cheats, there is nothing to say to them: who would urge the high & hard duty of faithfulness on people who have not even wished to be honest? If they have now come to their senses & want to be honest, their promise, already made, constrains them. If people do not believe in permanent marriage, it is perhaps better that they should live together unmarried than that they should make vows they do not keep. The idea that ‘being in love’ is the only reason for remaining married really leaves no room for marriage as a vow at all. If love is the whole thing, then the promise can add nothing; & if it adds nothing, then it should not be made. The curious thing is that lovers themselves, while they remain really in love, know this better than those who talk about love. Those who are in love have a natural inclination to bind themselves by promises. Love songs all over the world are full of vows of eternal constancy.

And, of course, the promise, made when I am in love & because I am in love, to be true to the beloved as long as I live, commits me to being true even if I cease to be in love. A promise must be about things that I can do, about actions: no-one can promise to go on feeling in a certain way. He might as well promise never to have a headache or always to feel hungry. But what, it may be asked, is the use of keeping 2 people together if they are no longer in love? There are several sound, social reasons. What we call ‘being in love’ is a glorious state, and, in several ways, good for us. It helps to make us generous & courageous, it opens our eyes not only to the beauty of the beloved but to all beauty, & it subordinates our merely animal sexuality; in that sense, love is the great conqueror of lust. No-one would deny that being in love is far better than either mere sensuality or cold self-centeredness. But the most dangerous thing you can do is to take any one impulse of our nature & set it up as the thing you ought to follow at all costs. Being in love is a good thing, but it is not the best thing. You cannot make it the basis of a whole life. It is a noble feeling, but it is still a feeling. No feeling can be relied on to last at its full intensity, or even to last at all. Knowledge can last, principles can last, habits can last; but feelings come & go. And in fact, whatever people say, the state called ‘being in love’ usually does not last. If the old fairy-tale ending “They lived happily ever after” is taken to mean “They felt for the next 50 years exactly as they felt the day they were married,” then that probably never was nor ever could be true, & would be highly undesirable if it were. Who could bear to live in that excitement for even a few years? What would become of your work, your appetite, your sleep, your friendships? But, of course, ceasing to be ‘in love’ need not mean ceasing to love. Love in this second sense—love as distinct from ‘being in love’—is not merely a feeling. It is a deep unity, maintained by the will & deliberately strengthened by habit; reinforced by (in Christian marriages) the grace which both partners ask & receive from God. They can have this love for each other even at those moments when they do not like each other.

If you disagree with me, of course, you will say, “He knows nothing about it.” You may quite possibly be right. But before you say that, make quite sure that you are judging me by what you really know from your own experience & from watching the lives of your friends, & not by ideas you have derived from novels & films. This is not so easy to do as people think. Our experience is colored through-&-through by books & TV & the cinema, & it takes patience & skill to disentangle the things we have really learned from life for ourselves.

People get from books the idea that if you have married the right person you may expect to go on ‘being in love’ forever. As a result, when they find they are not, they think this proves they have made a mistake & are entitled to a change—not realizing that, when they have changed, the glamour will presently go out of the new love just as it went out of the old one. In this part of life, as in every other, thrills come at the beginning & do not last.

There we have the Christian doctrine about the permanence of marriage. Something else, even more unpopular, remains to be dealt with. Christian wives promise to obey their husbands. In Christian marriage the man is said by God to be the ‘head.’ Two questions obviously arise here. (1) Why should there be a head at all—why not equality? (2) Why should it be the man?

(1) The need for some head follows from the idea that marriage is permanent. Of course, as long as the spouses are agreed, no question need arise; & we may hope that this will be the normal state of affairs most of the time. But when there is a real disagreement, what is to happen? Assuming they have talked it over & still failed to reach agreement, what do they do next? They cannot decide by a majority vote, for in a council of 2 there is no majority. One of 2 things can happen: either they must separate & go their own ways, or else one or other of them must have the deciding vote. If marriage is permanent, one or other party must, in the last resort, have the power of setting the family policy. You cannot have a permanent association without a constitution.

(2) If there must be a head, why the man? It is easily seen that a woman who wants to be the head of her own house does not usually admire the same state of things when she finds it going on next door. She is much more likely to say, “Poor Mr. X! Why he allows that woman to boss him about the way she does is beyond me.” I do not think she is even very flattered if anyone mentions the fact of her own ‘headship.’ There must be something unnatural about the rule of wives over husbands, because the wives themselves are half ashamed of it, & despise the husbands whom they rule.

The relations of the family to the outer world—what might be called its foreign policy—must depend, in the last resort, upon the man, because he usually is much more just to outsiders. A woman is primarily fighting for her own children against the rest of the world. Naturally, rightly, for her their claims override all others. She is the special trustee of their interests. The function of the husband is to see that this natural preference of hers is not given its head. He has the last word in order to protect other people from the intense family patriotism of the wife.