MY GOOD FRIENDS, today, Susan and Danny will renew the promises they made twenty-five years ago in 1982, their vows to bond with one another “till death do us part.” They have come here to courageously pronounce once again their eternal vows, as they continue to be determined and happily represent the hope, the witness, and the sacramental sign of a Christian marriage.

     What words can we share with Danny and Susan during their silver wedding anniversary? I thought it would be enlightening to present the research findings of new social scientists who no longer focus on why marriages fail, but who are now turning their attention to why they succeed. These positive findings are what I really want to share with Susan and Danny on their special day. Perhaps we can reflect together on how valid these findings are based on the life they have shared together these past twenty-five years.

     So what has research taught us besides the fact that married people live longer and are physically and emotionally healthier than single people (which makes single people like me nervous)? Research has uncovered five basic roles of married couples that make marriage succeed. So, in a kind of checklist for Danny and Susan – and for all of the other married couples here present – I will enumerate them. The roles are: chemist, mathematician, humorist, realist and pray-er.

     The first, chemist, refers to the “chemistry” between two people, over which, in spite of silly songs to the contrary, we have much control. Yes, we can make chemistry happen, which is why the expression, “The chemistry just isn’t there anymore,” should be banished from married vocabulary. For if the chemistry has gone wrong – and all chemicals decompose in time – you mix up new chemicals by doing things such as:

• plant a tree together
• give a gift in honor of your marriage
• renew your marriage vows
• buy a big wedding cake and invite friends over
• exchange gifts of jewelry
• make a Marriage Encounter
• travel together to a new place.

     After all, the effort is worth it, even from a selfish point of view. Surveys show that people in bad marriages are twenty-five times more likely to be depressed than people in good marriages, and that a woman dissatisfied with her marriage has a fifty percent chance of being clinically depressed. So being a good chemist – working at mixing it up – is the first role married people in good marriages play.

     But if it is important to become a good chemist to make the marriage work, it is equally important to become a bad mathematician. First, you don’t keep score, because scorekeeping leads to balancing out rights which leads to victims instead of partners. Second, in marriage each partner must be willing to put in more than they take out, a hard truth for those raised only on rights and victim-hood. Marriage is not a fifty/fifty proposition. Each person has to do a little more than what he thinks his share is.

     Lasting marriages, it is obvious, are not fifty/fifty, tit-for-tat propositions. In another survey of 351 couples married for over fifteen years, the ones who were happiest claimed, “You have to be willing to put in more than you take out.” Sometimes one member of the couple needs to give ninety percent while the other gives only ten percent, as in a serious illness, job loss, death in the family. A lasting marriage is one in which each partner looks out for number two, not where each one is looking out for number one.

     On the other hand, mathematics has its place in a marriage, because you have to be careful of withdrawals and deposits. That is to say, every argument, every instance of uncaring is a withdrawal from the common love account. To be happy, a couple must frequently make deposits of daily gestures of kindness and caring to balance the account.

     The great Jewish Rabbi Abraham Heschel was once asked by a reporter: “What message do you have for young people?” Heschel replied, “Let them remember that there is a meaning beyond absurdity. Let them be sure that every deed counts, that every word has power, and that we, all can do our share to redeem the world in spite of all absurdities and all frustrations and all disappointments. And above all, let them remember … to build a life as if it were a work of art.” That goes for marriage, too.

     The third role is that of humorist. Healthy couples do not take themselves too seriously. They can laugh at what the comedian Rodney Dangerfield says: “We sleep in separate rooms, we have dinner apart, we take separate vacations – we’re doing everything we can to keep our marriage together.” He’s the same guy who said that when at his wedding the minister asked if there were anyone against this marriage, her family formed a double line.

     Or there’s the woman who accompanied her husband to the doctor for his physical. The doctor asked her for a private conversation before they left the office. “Your husband,” the doctor said, “is under great stress and you must devote your life to sheltering him. Don’t argue or disagree with him. Get up early each morning and fix his favorite breakfast. Spend the morning cleaning the house, but have a nice lunch ready at noon if he happens to come home. The afternoon you can spend on outside work, but make sure there is a special dinner waiting for him when he returns. The evening hours may be spent watching a game with him on TV, followed by romance, should he be interested. This must be your schedule to help him through this.”

     The wife left the office, picked up her husband and drove him home. “Well,” said the husband, “what did the doctor say?” “He said,” replied the wife, “that you’re going to die.”

     Laughter puts marriage in perspective – and humor heals. Think of all the physical and emotional hurts that have been lightened by laughter.

     The fourth role is that of realist. A writer once said, “Infatuation is when you think he’s as gorgeous as Brad Pitt, as pure as Solzhenitsyn, as funny as Woody Allen, as athletic as Manny Pacquiao, and as smart as Albert Einstein. Love is when you realize he’s as gorgeous as Woody Allen, as smart as Manny Pacquiao, as funny as Solzhenitsyn, as athletic as Albert Einstein, and nothing like Brad Pitt in any category – but you’ll take him anyway.”

     In marriage, you are wedded to an “other,” someone equal but different. Which is why marriage takes work. It’s hard work to take two independent, strong-minded persons to become the biblical “one flesh.” After all, here are two people from differing environments, differing expectations, differing dreams for the future – and to make matters worse, one is male and the other is female!

     It is no accident that one of the bestselling books a few years ago was Men are From Mars, Women are From Venus. Men and woman are different. They are different physically, of course, but they are also different mentally and emotionally. For instance, studies show that boy babies sleep less and are more active than girl babies. Women, overall, have a better memory for names and faces than men. If a woman is stuck behind an unmoving car, she is less likely to blow her horn than a man is, but she is more likely to ask for directions (which is why, as everyone knows, the Israelites wandered forty years in an area the size of Cebu City: Moses wouldn’t ask for directions).

     Realism says that the road will never be always smooth, but patience and trust will reap great rewards. It’s a commentary that famed author Madeline L’Engle wrote about her forty-three-year marriage. Speaking of her relationship with her husband, now dead, she pens these wise words: “Our love has been anything but perfect and anything but static. Inevitably there have been times when one of us has outrun the other, and has had to wait patiently for the other to catch up. There have been times when we have misunderstood each other, demanded too much of each other, been insensitive to the other’s needs. I do not believe there is any marriage in which this does not happen. The growth of love is not a straight line, but a series of hills and valleys. I suspect that in every good marriage there are times when love seems to be over. Sometimes those desert lines are simply the only way to the next oasis, which is far more lush and beautiful after the desert crossing than it could possibly have been without.” My friends, that’s realism.

     Finally, the fifth role added to that of chemist, mathematician, humorist and realist is pray-er, someone who prays. As one social scientist reports, “It’s one of those statistics that catches your eye and makes you say, ‘No, it can’t be!’ But according to a groundbreaking survey, happiness in a marriage in better predicted by how often a couple prays together than by how often they make love.”

     There’s more. Research shows that couples who pray together, compared to couples who don’t, report having greater respect for their mate, agree on how to raise children, are more playful, and believe their mate is a skilled lover. Individual prayer correlates with marital happiness, too, but joint prayer correlates at a level twice as high.

     For couples where at least one partner seriously considered divorce but who since have reconciled, eighty-five percent engaged in joint prayer. Religion and spirituality play a more important role in marital happiness than most people realize. According to a 1990 university survey, decades of research have demonstrated that people highly involved in their faith have the happiest marriages.

     So, dear Susan and Danny, I remind you of a fivefold role to keep your marriage happy and fulfilling and lasting another twenty-five years, a formula, a wish list:

• Be a chemist who is inventive in keeping the relationship going,
• A mathematician who keeps the love account in balance,
• A humorist who can laugh at both what is funny and what is tragic,
• A realist who settles for what is and not for what can never be,
• And a pray-er who knows that unless you have God as a Third Party in the marriage, it will surely fail.

     Then you will continue to be a witness, a very sacrament showing us, in your forbearance and patience and forgiveness and love, what God is really like. It’s a great and noble calling which you have been living these past twenty-five years. And we ask our God who is Love to continue to shower the graces and blessings that you will need for the next twenty-five.

--Fr. Bobby Yap, S.J.