Bound in Heaven: Marriage As Covenant, Not Contract

"I really respect my wife. She's one of the best people I know. I'm just no longer in love with her." Seth told Dawna. "That's why I wanted an annulment."

Seth had separated from his wife, and filed for divorce, while also petitioning for an an annulment of his marriage. But the Tribunal reviewing the case said that there was “overwhelming evidence” that he had a valid marriage. He and his wife had been together for 15 years, and had two children.

Now they were starting counseling in an effort to reconcile. Dawna began by meeting with each of them individually. She had already met with Seth's wife, who was wrestling with whether to fight for the marriage or start protecting herself.

Seth, on the other hand, was hurt and angry that his petition for an annulment had been turned down by the Church. "Why would they want me to stay with her if I don't love her anymore?" he asked.

Why indeed?

Seth's biggest obstacle was treating an annulment as a kind of Catholic divorce. In fact, a “declaration of nullity” (the official term for what is popularly called an “annulment”) doesn't end a marriage. It's a formal declaration by the church that some serious problem had prevented a true marriage from ever being contracted in the first place.

Seth viewed his marriage as a contract, and believed that one of the terms, mutual affection, wasn't being met, so the deal was void. But the Church understands marriage as a covenant in which the promises to love and cherish were made by Seth not only to his wife but to God. Under this view, an absence of romantic feeling is a problem to solve inside the marriage, not a reason to leave it.

Bound in Heaven

Many people believe, like Seth, that a wedding vow is a promise between two people. And legally, that's exactly what it is. Two adults sign a contract, exchange promises of fidelity and love, and the state records it.

But our marriages are meant to be something more than that.

In this Sunday's Gospel, Christ tells Peter, "whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven." The Church has always understood marriage between two baptized persons in this light. A sacramental marriage is not simply an agreement we make with each other. It is a covenant we enter with God. Each spouse promises God that they will remain faithful and loving to one another.

The distinction between contract and covenant should totally shape how we live inside our marriages.

A contract can be renegotiated when one party feels shortchanged. A covenant asks something different of us: fidelity that does not depend on our spouse earning it every day, and a bond we trust God to hold even when we cannot feel it ourselves.

On hard days, that trust in God carries us when our own inclinations might be to give up, or even to cut and run. But we are not simply keeping a promise to another flawed person. We are living inside a promise God is keeping too.

Sacrament = Success

The theological distinction between contract and covenant has practical consequences for marital success. Psychologists who study religion and marriage have found that couples who view their marriage as sacred tend to fare better than couples who see it purely as a private arrangement.

Frank Fincham, Nathaniel Lambert, and Steven Beach ran a study asking whether the simple act of praying for one's spouse could change how faithful a person felt toward that spouse. Participants who prayed daily for their partner's wellbeing, for several weeks, reported greater commitment to the relationship and behaved in ways that were more protective of it.

But here's the most interesting thing: people who prayed for their spouses were not only more faithful than those who didn't pray. They were also more faithful than those assigned to think positive thoughts about their spouse.

That finding fits the covenant model closely. When we ask God to care for our spouse, we are reminded that our marriage is not just our project. We are inviting a third party into the relationship, and that party is not neutral. God has an interest in our relationship, because he bound the covenant himself.

Praying For Your Spouse

This week, take a lesson from that research. Spend two or three minutes every night praying by name for your spouse, out loud or silently, before you fall asleep.

Do not pray about your marriage, or for God to address your grievances. Pray for your spouse as a person: for their health, their work, their fears, their growth. Ask God to bless them specifically, using their name.

Couples who try this often notice a shift within a few weeks. Irritations that once loomed large start to feel smaller, because prayer trains our attention on our spouse's good rather than on our own complaints. It also puts words to something the Catholic understanding of marriage teaches directly: your spouse belongs to God before they belong to you, and loving them well is part of how you love God.

Love Is Not Just a Feeling

Seth felt unloving, and he wanted out of the obligation to act in love. Like Seth, most of our marriages will have seasons that feel more like contracts than covenants, seasons where love feels transactional and effort goes unmatched. But those seasons do not mean the covenant has failed. They mean it is being tested.

The promise your spouse made was not only to you. It was to God. And God doesn't tell us how to feel, he tells us how to act. He tells us to be patient, and kind. He asks us not to envy our spouse, or to be prideful. He asks us not to dishonor them, or to put ourselves first. He asks us not to be easily angered, or to keep track of all the things they've done to hurt us. He calls us to treat our spouses with honesty, and justice. We should protect them, trust them, and hope for the best for them, and for our relationships.

Above all, God calls on us to persevere. Even--maybe especially--when we've lost that loving feeling.