Is a Platonic Marriage Best for the Children’s Sake?
They are beginning to realize the impact that divorce is having upon children. In fact, this one article encourages parents to stay married for the children’s sake. However, have the relationship platonic, sleeping in different bedrooms but at least, the children’s lives won’t be disrupted.
The article goes on to say, “The experience of the last forty years has shown that whereas marriage may be freely dissoluble, parenthood is not. Which has made some of us as miserable divorced as we were in our marriage…When you think about it, what is more loving than two parents who show respect and kindness to each other, and aren’t fighting all the time, while expressing love to the people who matter most — their kids? Kids don’t need their parents to love each other — they need their parents to love them. And as some have noted, compared with conventional parenting, where parents have to constantly be in love in front of their children, co-parenting doesn’t include the strain of marriage.”
Tell me, why can’t people who are married show respect and kindness to each other and not fight all the time? It’s because we want our way. We would rather control and criticize our husbands and lose the opportunity of having an intimate marriage. If you accept him as he is and appreciate all the good about him, there will be little cause to fight.
Children need parents to love each other more than they need parents to love them, in disagreement with the article quoted above. The most loving thing parents can do for their children is to love their spouses. Do you see how wise worldly wisdom seems until compared to Truth, God’s Truth? NO, children need you loving your husband! You have a very slim chance of losing your husband to affairs and divorce if you truly love, serve and please him. Why would a husband want to leave a wife like this? {Yes, it may have happened, but I am sure it is rare.}
The assumption that having to love each other in front of children puts a strain on marriage is completely warped! First of all, the world doesn’t know that love is a commitment. True love calls for denying ourselves and thinking more highly of our spouse than ourselves. It is giving ourselves away so that we can gain something eternal and precious. It isn’t about getting what we want, the way we want it and when we want it. It’s giving up criticism, fighting, control and thinking the best of our spouses.
MORE Marriage Advice:
- How Arrogance Destroys Marriage
- Not Happy in Your Marriage?
- Stop Arguing and Start Smiling
- How to Stop Arguing
- Becoming a Joyful Wife
- Are You a Vow Keeper?
- Staying in a Miserable Marriage
- Creating a Peaceful Marriage
- Loving Through Imperfection in Marriage
- How Expectations Kill Marriages
- The Line Between Being his Mother and Being His Wife
- Staying Faithful to Her Vows
This article has some truth to it. Children NEED a mother and a father. God knows this and now studies prove this. {It’s amazing how often people have to wait for studies to prove the obvious.} However, they need parents who love each other and model strong and healthy marriages to them WAY more than they need a mother and father living as roommates in the same house. {It sure doesn’t sound like a home to me.}
I think you might have missed the point of the article. Based on the parts of the article you quoted (which I will readily admit I did not read completely) and based on my personal situation, I read the info with a different perspective.
I’m my situation, our marriage was dissolving…I had every reason to divorce my husband if I chose based on Jesus’s allowance for divorce based on a spouse’s adultery. I honestly WANTED to not see him anymore. It was painful. It made me angry. But he WAS a good father to our children. While he didn’t love me the way he should (which IS the most important thing), he was otherwise a great father.
I wanted to leave. But I realized that it wasn’t fair for my children to take this man who loved them dearly out of their daily lives. At their ages, I could not provide an explanation to them that would justify why we would no longer be married. I was not going to air my husband’s dirty laundry to my children. It wasn’t fair to put that in them or do that to him. Because I could not give them this, I didn’t want them to see it as is giving up on our marriage.
So was a platonic marriage ideal? Absolutely not. Was it the example of a marriage that I wanted to give to my children? No…it wasn’t. But it was the better of the options that I had, as I saw it. It was also the least selfish. While it wasn’t perfect and not had God designed marriage to look, it was in my opinion the best picture I could give my children.
The kids did pick up on the tension. But they didn’t go through a divorce, which I thought would have even more lasting effects.
It has been 3 years. Finally healing is happening and our marriage is slowly coming back together. We should come out of this okay after all, because we were both willing to work through it. If I had left him, although even Jesus gave me permission to do if I had chosen to, this would probably not be happening.
So…not all situations are like mine. Not all heal. Not everyone is willing to repent and work hard to make it better. So would I tell anyone that what we did would work for them? No…I would tell them it is possible, but not guaranteed.
But to the point of this article, while it isn’t perfect, sometimes it is the best option you have.
Wow, Kaye! What an ending to your story. It proved the point of my post actually. “Love” you say is the most important key in a marriage. Love is commitment. Period. I have mentored many women whose husbands were having or had an affair and watched their marriages heal as the wives won back their husbands by being kind and loving towards them.
I don’t believe Jesus was giving an out for adultery when He said those words. He made it clear that Moses said this and then replied, “What God has joined together, let NO man put asunder.” Marriage is a model of Christ and His church. He is sure faithful to the church when it is unfaithful to Him. Yes, it’s difficult but our lives on earth aren’t supposed to be comfortable and happy but reflect Christ, His faithfulness and love to a very dark and lost world.
I am SO happy your marriage is being restored and you stayed with your husband even through he was unfaithful. Your children will rise up and call you blessed and so will your husband!
Certainly not arguing with you, but what do you think Jesus meant then? I don’t mean to cheapen marriage by saying he “gave an out” to it, but just for brevity, let’s go with that.
Remember that Jesus was speaking to those were still living under the Law. Moses allowed divorce due to the “hardness of their heart” but Jesus said that from the beginning this was not so. Christian marriages are to be examples of Christ and the church and Christ is always faithful to us. The only exception Paul wrote was when an unbeliever leaves a believer, they should let them go but never said they should divorce. Paul was writing to the church which we are so we live under the New Covenant, not the Law. John Piper has an excellent paper about this topic. Google “Divorce and Remarriage by John Piper” and it will be the first link listed.
I’d also like to hear more on this. My husband has had repeated affairs and I just found out he’s started back with someone. I thought our marriage was recently at the best it’s ever been. I’ve been fulfilling my wifely duties, and not as a mere chore, in addition to supporting our family after he got laid off and having a baby. Why is it also my sole responsibility to “win back my husband”?
Not trying to be argumentative, just very flustered by my situation.
I’m sorry you are going through this, Jennifer. God’s Word tells wives to win disobedient husbands without the word by their godly behavior. He never gives this exhortation to men. When I mentor women whose husband is having an affair, unless he is an evil man {which none of them have ever been}, I support and encourage them to work on themselves since they can’t control or change their husbands. I teach them to begin being kind and warm to their husband for we are told to “overcome evil with good.” I encourage them to have a godly, older woman in their lives if I am mentoring them through the Internet and not in person. I work on helping them to fight for their marriage, not only for their sake, but for their children’s. Not one of them has gotten divorced and their marriages are so much better today. Usually, the husbands are so thankful their wives fought for their marriage when they were being so foolish.
The book I always recommend is “Created to Be His Help Meet.” What most men need from their wives is respect and too few get it. Most wives are constantly angry with their husbands and their husbands know it. This is terribly destructive to a marriage. Therefore, examine your own heart and see if there is anything you are doing to push him away. This is the first thing you need to do in trying to mend your marriage.
What about wives who cheat? Attention is usually on men who cheat, but what about wives in marriages where they are put aside for business (workaholic husbands). Years of financial struggles. Years of fighting. I know women (3 close friends of mine) who have lost the plot in these circumstances and had affairs out of sheer desperation to be with someone different/a stable non-workaholic relationship/to be noticed. Men need respect, and men roam, but wives need to be noticed, need stability. What do you suggest to wives who cheat to escape? I usually encourage them to stick it out regardless, but one by one women I know are getting divorced because they can’t cope, what on earth??!
You are right to encourage them to stick it out and be vow keepers. They are only thinking about themselves and not about their children’s future. They are in direct disobedience to the Lord and will suffer unless they repent and go to their husbands and ask for forgiveness. Then they need to find a godly older women to mentor them in becoming godly, submissive wives, making a peaceful home for their husbands instead of a discontent and quarreling home which will drive any man into becoming a workaholic.
Most men try hard to provide for their families so this is what they are doing. It may mean they are gone a lot and instead of feeling sorry for themselves and seeking affection in a stranger’s arms, these women need to appreciate how hard their husbands work for them and respect them for it.
But isn’t the point (of the article) that if you are planning to divorce, (perhaps one or both partners is unwilling to work on improving themselves / the marriage) staying together in a peaceful (platonic) situation would be a better option? Maybe not the best option, but a better one?
No, since a woman has a lot of power to make the marriage better for the Bible states that a wise woman builds her home and a foolish one tears it down. She was created to be her husband’s help meet and the Bible states that a wife may win her husband without the word by the way she lives her life. Many men will be won to their wives when their wives become warm, loving and serving their husbands. When they begin smiling at their husbands, stop being continually angry and critical towards them and learn what pleases them. I have seen this happen with almost every marriage where I have mentored a wife in a troubled marriage.