Loss and Marriage: go together like a horse and carriage?

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I’ve recently had a couple conversations which have prompted me to consider marriage and its various collaterals, especially those less often considered.

An acquaintance of mine expressed to me her frustration with the social impediments that she feels obstructs people from expressing feelings of loss at weddings. She seemed to feel that there ought to be room for people to express the feeling of loss that they feel when a close friend, or perhaps sibling, gets married.

I think it’s true that marriage is predominantly viewed from the perspective of the bond that is being formed between the two persons. Less often is marriage understood as the rupture (or at least drastic change) of other previous relational bonds. The dynamic of friendships will indeed change greatly when one of the friends gets married. Even sibling or child/parent relationships greatly change when this new bond is formed. Ought we to recognize this and grieve for a loss? Is this a loss? I would argue (sorry LvD) that this is not a loss to be grieved. Sure, the ‘good old times’ will never come back – those carefree days as single friends with (supposedly) limitless potential and infinite time – things will never be the same, but that is how life works. Ought we to mourn with each new day the loss of the day before? No, we cherish the memories from yesterday and face the new day set before us confident in all that yesterday has equipped us with. Relationships are not static; friendships change and grow (and sometimes unfortunately end, but that’s another topic). Ought I to mourn the loss of my child when he/she grows into adulthood… no I celebrate it as the natural course of life and growth and cherish the memories of his/her childhood. I will concede that we cannot deny the change that comes when a good friend gets married. Sometimes it is difficult to let go of that person we have known, loved, and cherished. But we have to learn to let that person of yesteryear grow into the person of today that he/she is becoming.

The other topic of loss and marriage centers around the mixing of cultures in marriage. My wife and I, in a very real sense, come from different cultures. I realized very early on that our marriage would necessarily involve a sort of cultural loss for her. The most obvious instance of this, from my perspective, was when she decided to leave her church and join me in another one. I don’t know what it is like to grow up in a church, to know everyone there and their history (and have them know yours), to have such a focused location of community, family, and relationships. I’ll never fully know what kind of loss she felt when she decided to leave her church. When she told me of her decision, I… well, words cannot describe the love that I felt, both for and from her. I’m seldom as moved as I was at that moment; but I knew she was (and is) feeling a great loss because of it. More than just the loss of her religious community, she also chose, when she chose to marry me, to create another degree of separation between herself and the Dutch-Canadian community. I’m a good guy, but I’m not Dutch. No matter how much I try to honour and preserve her Dutch-Canadian roots, and pass them on to our children, she has lost something in gaining someone. Her marriage to me has come at a price. It is a price she willingly paid, but it is still a price.

So the question remains: are loss and marriage intrinsically connected? In some ways, yes. But insofar as life is dynamic and change is inevitable, growth requires a certain balance of continuity and discontinuity to be real growth. Sometimes the discontinuity is more keenly felt than others, but it is always there whether or not we recognize it. Some of my detractors might feel that I am airbrushing the emotions involved, or denying their validity, when I say this but I’m not at all: it is a good thing to miss someone, it means there is something of value to miss.

[p.s. if you’re not a Frank Sinatra fan (or even an Al Bundy fan), then I apologize for the confusing title]

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