The Fruits of your Marriage Don't Only Belong to You
"It was really interesting to hear you and your friend sharing stories about your lives," our daughter Sophie told Dawna as they drove home. after a walk in the park with Dawna's good friend Lori.
"How so?" Dawna asked.
"I thought it was cute all the things you said about dad."
Dawna smiled. "I make it a point to talk good about my husband behind his back."
Marriage is intended to be a visible sign of Christ's love for his church. That means the fruits of our marriage aren't meant to be kept secret for just us to enjoy; they are intended to be shared. We like to share the good things about our marriage with others. As for the challenges and issues we're working through -- those can remain ours until they are resolved.
Whose Harvest Is This?
We don't want to be like the tenants in this Sunday's Gospel. In Jesus's parable, the vineyard's owner expects a harvest. The tenants treat the vineyard as theirs alone to enjoy rather than something on loan and meant to produce fruit. As a result, they lose everything.
Our marriages works the same way. A sacramental marriage isn't only ours to live inside of and enjoy. It's entrusted to us, and something is supposed to grow from it.
Most days, marriage doesn't feel like a vineyard. It feels like dishes and calendars and "who's picking up the kids?" It can be hard to step back far enough to see the "garden-like qualities of our marriage.
Fruits of Research
What is our marriage actually producing? Who is watching it, and what are they learning from what they see?
Research gives a concrete answer here. In a longitudinal study of 297 parents and their married adult children, Paul Amato and Alan Booth found that parents’ marital discord predicted lower harmony and greater conflict in their children’s later marriages. This association was not simply explained by whether the parents divorced: the emotional climate and interaction patterns of the parents’ marriage mattered just as much if the parents stayed together.
Children do not merely experience whether a family stays together or separates. They also observe how adults handle strain, disagreement, anger, criticism, control, and communication.
That does not mean anyone is doomed to repeat what they saw at home. But it does suggest that the patterns children witness can become an important reference point—one they may later reproduce, reject, or consciously work to change.
Your spouse sees those patterns. So do your children and the other young people who look to adult relationships for clues about what partnership looks like. The research does not say that every observer will follow the same script, but; it does suggest that the daily relational climate of a home can have a long afterlife.
This reframes a lot of ordinary friction. The apology you actually finish instead of walking away from. The way you speak about your spouse when they're not in the room. The Tuesday night where you choose the hard conversation over the easy silence. None of it stays contained to your living room. It's the fruit the vineyard was supposed to produce.
Taking Control of the Vineyard
Here is one practice that can help you take control of the fruits you pass on.
Once a year, ideally near your anniversary, sit down with your spouse for what you might call a legacy conversation.
Set aside thirty uninterrupted minutes. Ask each other two questions:
What is one thing about how we treat each other that we'd want our kids, or the people who watch us, to copy exactly?
And what is one pattern we'd want to make sure stops with us?
Write both answers down. Read last year's answers first, if you have them, and notice what changed.
This isn't meant to be a performance review. It's a way for a couple to look honestly at what they're handing forward, together, so that they can do it on purpose, instead of by accident.
Tend Your Vineyard, Give Away The Fruits
Couples who do this kind of intentional reflection report a stronger sense of shared purpose, and that sense of purpose is itself protective. Marriages that feel like they're building toward something tend to outlast marriages that are just being endured.
The tenants in the parable forgot who the vineyard belonged to and stopped producing fruit for the owner. We don't have to make that mistake. Our marriages were given to us, and something real is meant to come from them: children who know what steady love looks like, younger couples who see a marriage worth wanting, and people who aren't sure marriage means anything in contemporary society.
Tend the vineyard. The harvest is not only yours to keep. It was always meant to be shared.
And don't forget to talk nice about your spouse behind their back.
Comments