Your Spouse Is Not The Ball and Chain

Mike Hosey, Elder

One of the staples of American humor is the cliche of "The Ball and Chain."  You can see this cliche bandied about in t.v. sitcoms, books, plays, or in many creative works that reference marriage.

Usually the cliche - perhaps unfairly - is aimed at the wife in a relationship.  It might look something like this: the husband tells his buddies that he can't go bowling with them without dragging his ball and chain behind him.  The message is quite clear. What he means is that his wife is (#1) a drag on his ability to move about as freely as he chooses, and/or (#2) that she is a drag on his fun.  Like most humor, it illuminates our cultural perception of the world around us.  We recognize easily the truth in #1 - that ties to another individual act as a leash on our freedom. But unfortunately the humor does not illuminate the lie in #2 - that such a person is by necessity a dead weight.

By Anni Tamminen
(http://49999.org/sampsa/archive/)
[CC-BY-3.0], via Wikimedia Commons

The failure to recognize the lie of #2 comes from our inability to see that the ball and chain is not truly a person at all.  The ball and chain is really the covenant that one enters into with that person before God.  It is not the person to whom we are married that puts a leash on our freedom, rather it is the promise we made to that person and to God to stick it out until death ends the relationship.  If there were no covenant, or no internal moral obligation compelling us to honor that person, we'd wrongly exercise freedom and leave that person on a whim -  especially if some transient desire for pleasure overwhelmed our immediate affection for that person. And what kind of world would that be? In answering that question, consider what God seeks in Malachi 2:15.

People who have healthy marriages recognize all of this before they bind themselves together. They make a conscious decision to chain themselves to another person.  They make a commitment to that person.  They cement their commitment - their love - with the ball and chain of a covenant. They recognize that they must learn to be selfless and enjoy the world with the person to whom they are now bound.  It is no longer a world of their own but a world they share - a world full of both better and worse. And if they will only choose to love one another, there will be more better than worse.  And each period of "worse" that they choose to see each other through will strengthen their love in those periods of "better."