UNDERSTANDING Relationships
The four marriages within a marriage their sight. In marriage number four they are riding By Gary Moore a bicycle built for two. There is a natural tension in healthy marriages: we This joint journey requires a lot of personal as well continue to grow as individuals, and the marriage as marital growth. Such growth entails four revisions relationship also grows. This natural tension, which of self-understanding; four kinds of self-esteem; four if recognized and dealt with, is healthy. However, stages of handling differences and difficulties. a long view of marriage is necessary to be able to Included is a lot of letting go of old habits that understand and deal with this reality. don’t work any longer. There is also a good deal of In 1988, Dr. David Augsburger published a book letting be on issues that one comes to realize are not titled, Sustaining Love – Healing & Growth in the all that important, and a surprising amount of letPassages of Marriage. The thesis of the book is that ting come what will as the new relationship unfolds. there are four marriages within a marriage. I teach a The experience of oneself, of one’s partner and of class titled Sustaining Love Through the Passages the relationship that connects us is so different that of Marriage that is based, in part, on this book. I’m one looks back with surprise that we stayed so long currently hoping to release an online version of this in that old way of being. One looks at the other with course sometime this fall. wider eyes, seeing new sides, feeling new feelings, We all change over time. And, as persons change, understanding new insights about this well-accusthe marriage changes. It has to. So be aware, be preGary Moore tomed yet provocatively unfamiliar person. pared and embrace it. As the marriage is renegotiLife and growth should be redundant words, but ated, the persons grow. Each becomes more of what observation of others and reflection on oneself reveals embarrassshe always was, yet never has been; more of what he wanted to be, ing periods of being stuck in routine. Growth and marriage should yet never could be. also be repetitive, but most marriages alternate quiet periods of I use a bicycle metaphor to explain the four marriages within a stability with brief passages of change and maturation. Growth and marriage. In marriage number one, the strongest personality of the change are not ends in themselves. In fact, growth for growth’s sake two is pedaling and steering the bike and the other person is sitting is the philosophy of a cancer cell. The goal of growth is wholeness, on the handlebars. In marriage number two, they are “fighting” to completeness and maturity. The real failure in life is to fail to grow see who is going to pedal and steer and who is going to sit on the handlebars. In marriage number three, they each have their own bike toward such goals. Continued on page 7 and ride at their own speed. But, they never let each other out of
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Christian Living | September / October 2020 5
