This morning, while my wife was cooking eggs, I looked over her shoulder. 

Yep, you see where this is going.  I waited for her to move toward the sink, and then I stepped in.  Turned down the heat.  Made sure the eggs wouldn’t dry out or stick to the pan.

My wife loves when I do this.

And by “loves”, I mean “hates”.

And so once a week she spends some of her free time escaping my over-the-shoulder-breathing-down-her-neck-offering-her-suggestions-that-only-I-find-helpful presence.

Weird, right?

Now, we were one of those couples that did that whole “unity candle” thing at our wedding.  For those who aren’t familiar, during some wedding ceremonies, couples take two lighted candles, light a third candle between them, and then blow out their individual candles.

The messaging is pretty clear and trying to be helpfully biblical: two have become one.  But sometimes with this oneness comes pressure to have all things, do all things, be all things together.  My wife and I came away from our wedding day believing, in large part, that we had to be everything for each other.  There may have been an undercurrent of guilt even, a feeling of being unfaithful, if we didn’t do all things together.

All of which we found to be incredibly unhealthy.

Let me apologize ahead of time for picking on low hanging (and old) fruit, but Tom Cruise’s impassioned line to Renée Zellweger in “Jerry Maguire” seems to still resonate with some people:

“You complete me.”

I think it is wrong on a couple of fronts.  One, the idea that one must get married to be “complete” is incredibly misguided.  Christians seem to be the group that promote this most frequently, even though for hundreds of years the very first Christians saw celibacy and being unmarried as the highest devotion to God, not marriage.

Second, one human being can’t “complete” anyone.

To position one person in our lives to be everything for us puts a level of pressure on a person they were never meant to carry.  Of course our spouses are meant to love us in ways that no one else can or should.  There are multiple levels of intimacy that can only be fulfilled in a relationship that is fully committed to and protected.

But one person can’t fulfill everything.  We weren’t made for marriage as much as we were made for community.  (More on this next week.) We need other people in our lives to foster who God has created and redeemed us to be.  And as much as we need to intentionally create space to grow our relationship with our partner, we need space apart from them as well.

Again, there is a rhyme and season to shaping a relationship that also values the health of each individual.

We have worked at this by making intentional space to be apart, and to be together.  We try to have two (planned!) dates a month.  We make an effort to get away together once a year.  We make space to be at home together a certain number of evenings, whether we are doing the same things or not. 

Because there is no such thing as quality time without quantity time.

And we make space for each other to escape to our own hobbies, or, more importantly, to our own thoughts.

At first, I used to resent my wife’s time away.  Did I get that much time?  Did she time her moment away so that I would have to both make dinner and put the kiddos to bed?

(Well, “used to” is a little strong.  I’ve still got a lot of growing to do…)

But I finally got it through my self-infested head that my wife getting away not only benefitted her, it also had the effect of benefitting me.

Of benefitting us.

The good work is to pay attention to these different needs, and to schedule them.  

• To work at a rhyme and season of being together.  Our intentionality toward time with our partner communicates love to our partner.  
• To work at making space for community, giving each other time and opportunity to build appropriate friendships that each person also requires. 
• To work at making sure sometimes the only voice that we can hear is the one in our heads.

And the One in our hearts. 

And that Voice can sometimes only be heard when someone isn’t looking over our shoulder, ready to make a suggestion about whether we’re cooking our eggs right or not.