Some good friends of mine are recently married and they talk about this kind of stuff a lot. And I think they’re genuinely well suited to each other and their relationship seems pretty healthy. But the more I read of their blog posts, the more I’m convinced that what they’re talking about isn’t anything unique to marriage, it’s literally just… how relationships are.
Most of the things they talk about as being challenging, are just regular things that I got used to in my relationship months or years ago, because I live with my partner and we have sex. Like I remember reading a passage in a book where this guy was saying he’d never farted in front of his wife before and did the first time a week or so after he got married. And I was just like…. ??? You literally committed to spend the rest of your life with someone who you’re not even physically comfortable around enough to fart in front of?? Or another person talking about how you have this fairy-tale idea of what marriage is going to be, but it’s not glamorous like that, like there’s morning breath and you might butt heads a lot at first. And I’m just sitting there thinking… this just sounds like you’ve never had an adult relationship before.
But most Evangelical Christians don’t really have a typical romantic relationship until after they’ve got married. Like… you “date”, but that relationship isn’t sexual or really physical at all, you don’t share a living space, or really any other big commitments like finances.
In purity culture, Christian relationships are essentially a test period to decide whether or not you want a regular romantic relationship with this person, only you have to sign a legal document to say that this is for the rest of your life in order to access it at all. Which is…… not healthy.