Making Space for a New Couple
- Dr. Tom Wagner
- 3 days ago
- 4 min read
If resilient marriages are as unique as fingerprints, perhaps they need room to become what only they can become. A reflection on marriage, family, and the gift of making space.
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Creating from the Soul featuring special guest Javier Mendoza (aka Hobo Cane)—St. Louis–rooted singer-songwriter and storyteller whose soulful roots music is driven by hope, healing, and human connection.
Making Space for a New Couple
A sweet spot in my thirty-year career has been the study and promotion of resilient marriages. My research and practice put the lie to Leo Tolstoy’s famous formulation about all happy couples being cut from the same drab pattern and cloth. In my experience, happy/resilient marriages are as unique as a fingerprint. I’ve also found that resilient marriages have a way of passing through unhappiness on their way to regeneration, the way that winter can give way to spring.
And so, couples’ counseling, for me, is like the coolest novel that I get to step into and explore…alongside the main characters. Being part of a process that moves a couple in a better direction feeds my soul. Same goes for the marriage enrichment program I put together. To hear couples reporting that their good marriage just got better makes me smile even as I type those words. As you might imagine, when it comes to marriage and family life, I have a few ideas about what works and what doesn’t work.
In two weeks, my son, John Harry, and his fiancé, Sophie, are getting married. They’re both so very dear to me. So here’s the question: “What’s a fella like me do with all those ideas about what helps a couple thrive…when his own beloved child is getting married?” While on a silent retreat two weeks ago, I got in touch with the mentors that I carry around in my head. I posed that question to them. Many of those mentors are clients who’ve launched adult children, and grandparented their adult children’s…children. I’ll sum up their wisdom like this.
A Sixteenth-Century Rabbi’s Advice to the Father of a Groom
I’m told that a sixteenth-century rabbi found himself stuck on the very first sentence of the creation story in Genesis. He couldn’t get past a perplexing question. I’ll paraphrase it. If God is infinite, and everything that is…is filled up with God, then how is it possible that God was able to create the world, with all that stuff above it, below it, around it, within it, and on it? In other words, there’d be nowhere to put it, 'cause everywhere God looked would already be occupied by…God. So the answer? God must have pulled back the Divine Self to make space for creation. That “formless void” mentioned in Genesis was accomplished through a divine act of Self-emptying.
So back to my question. What wedding gift can a marriage and family therapist give to his beloved son and daughter-in-law as they launch a new life together? According to the clients I’ve learned from over the years, I can try to emulate the Creator in the story. I can give space to my son and his wife to create their own unique life together, without the unsolicited consultations of yours truly. Seems to me that my wedding gift will eventually make for a pretty good baby shower gift…once my young gander and his goose…hatch their own gosling(s). I’ve never met a young couple who were grateful for unsolicited parenting advice. I think I’ll do my best to keep my feet off of that particular land mine.
Over the years, my bellwether for determining whether or not I’m doing a couple any good has to do with whether or not I’m learning from them. Thank you to all the couples over the years who have taught me how to love my wife and children better. I hope to be a good ambassador of your wisdom. Thank you in advance to my son for the patience it will take as I attempt to live out this commitment in the real world of our relationship.
Dialogue and Discussion Questions:
Longtime SMC readers know that “the Dialogue” section of this article is set aside for a good conversation over a cup of coffee—with a friend, with a group, or just with yourself! As always, feel free to share your reaction or reflection in the “Comments” section below.
What stood out for you in this article? Is there a situation in your own life that it brought to mind?
Have you ever been on the receiving end of unsolicited advice? Get in touch with that story. How did you handle it?
Have you ever suffered from someone “being too big” in a relationship? Was that relationship repairable? If so, how’d you do that?
Can you think of a time when you had to “self-empty”? Again, how’d you do that?
Spiritual Question — return to these sentences from the article:
“God must have pulled back the Divine Self to make space for creation. That “formless void” mentioned in Genesis was accomplished through a divine act of Self-emptying.”
Reflecting on this insight, is it possible that in many of the experiences where you cannot feel God’s presence, you are actually having an experience of God making space for you? Play with this koan a little. The likes of John of the Cross and the anonymous author of The Cloud of Unknowing have spoken about the profound value of dryness in prayer. Have you had this experience?
Please share with the SMC community your thoughts and/or reflections in the comments below.
Comments