What Others Need to See in Our Marriages

At least three times a week, weather permitting, we walk a mile and a quarter into work together. It's healthy. It's companionable. And it's a great time to connect. Sometimes we talk about work, or the kids, or upcoming projects around the house. But we also share dreams, thoughts about books or movies, or politics.

But here's the interesting thing: it's not just about us. We are surprised at how often colleagues or neighbors will tell us they saw us from their car as they drove past us, and they comment on how affectionate and committed our simple act of walking together appears to them.

In this Sunday's Gospel we hear of another couple walking together. Two disciples walk the road to Emmaus with a stranger. He speaks to them with such depth that their hearts burn within them. And yet they do not know him. Recognition comes at table, in the breaking of the bread.

Words were not enough. It took an act.

Marriage faces a similar crisis of recognition. According to Pew Research Center, the U.S. marriage rate hit a 140-year low in 2019. As of 2023, approximately 111 million American adults are single, a sizable increase from 70 million in 1990. Researchers now say marriage is not merely being delayed. For many, it is being dismissed. People are not simply busy. They are unconvinced that marriage has value.

Arguments for marriage will not change this. People are disappointed in the marriages that they see around them.

What do people see when they look at your marriage?

What Research Tells Us

Psychologist Yuthika Girme and her colleagues at the University of Auckland found that shared relationship activities, the things couples do together beyond the routines of their everyday domestic life, sustain relationship quality over time.

Critically, the benefit depended on one condition: both partners had to be genuinely dedicated to the activity. When only one partner was invested, the shared activity produced no gain. The positive effect on closeness and satisfaction came from mutual engagement, from both people being present and committed to what they were doing together.

This finding has a visible face. When both of you are at the pool with your grandchildren, when you walk into church together and sit together and leave together, when your neighbors see you side by side at the same events week after week, they are not simply noticing proximity. They are reading mutual investment. They are seeing what a marriage looks like when both people still want to be there.

That is the breaking of the bread. That is a moment of recognition.

A Practice to Try: The One Regular Thing

Identify one activity you do together, outside your home, where both of you are genuinely present. It does not need to be dramatic. It could be a Sunday Mass you attend together without negotiation. A child's game you both go to. A walk through the neighborhood you take most mornings. A volunteer commitment you share.

Now ask honestly: are both of you invested in this, or is one of you simply along? If the answer gives you pause, talk about it. Find a version of this activity where neither of you is performing presence while the other carries it. Or add some different activities you both want to do together.

Then protect that activity. Guard it from the calendar pressures that erode shared life. Show up together, with attention, with warmth, with the kind of ease that comes from a marriage that has chosen to remain a partnership in public, not just in private.

People are watching. Not with judgment, but often with longing. They want to know whether what you have is real, and whether it lasts. Show them.

Closing Thoughts

The disciples on the road to Emmaus did not lack intelligence or faith. They lacked a moment of recognition. Many people today who are turning away from marriage are in the same position. They have not seen enough breaking of the bread.

Our marriages are not private arrangements. They are visible to a world that is watching, and in many cases, hoping to be persuaded.

What we do with and for each other in full view of others is a form of witness. It is the gesture that makes love legible, to our spouses and to everyone else at the table.

Image by EddieKphoto from Pixabay