Open Marriage

I have chosen the way of faithfulness.

Psalm 119:30

“GARY, DO YOU HAVE ANYTHING YOU WANT TO TELL ME ABOUT?”

“No.”

“Nothing about where you went between getting your haircut and picking up Allison at the bus stop?”

“No, not that I can think of.”

“I found the evidence. Graham [our son] saw it in your car.”

“You know,” I said, rising to my own defense, “some wives expect to find other women’s phone numbers or maybe magazines lying around. But an empty Starbucks cup?”

Lisa laughed, but in truth, I do spend more money than I should at Starbucks. We had just bought our own espresso machine, hoping to cut down on the expense, but I was out and about on a winter day, had an extra ten minutes, and could taste the relief even before I bought it.

This episode provided just another reminder that everything I do, I do in front of my spouse.

To have or build secrets is to reject the spirit of marriage. The call to become one, the journey toward intimacy, requires an open marriage of honesty and truth. I talked with a man once whose wife suspected he was viewing pornography. He denied it but admitted to keeping a post office box he had never told his wife about. “I can’t think of a single good reason to have a secret post office box,” I confessed, “but I can think of several bad ones.”

The post office box amounted to a giant sinkhole sucking the intimacy out of his marriage. Not surprisingly, he and his wife got divorced several months later. When you start to build a separate life, you pave the way to the ultimate separation—divorce.

Lisa and I laughed one time as we listened to a talk radio host speaking with a woman who felt terrible because her husband had caught her going through his wallet. “What’s so bad about that?” Lisa wanted to know. Lisa considers my wallet her personal ATM machine. She likes it because it doesn’t require a PIN.

Much to our surprise, the host called the woman’s actions despicable. The caller fell completely in line, admitting her husband was appalled, confessing she felt ashamed of herself. She proceeded to ask how they could ever get over this “sordid mistake.”

Maybe Lisa and I are just weird, but she can go through my wallet anytime she wants to. She knows my e-mail passwords, and I know hers. She has a key for our business post office box. I don’t have a single relationship she doesn’t know about, and she doesn’t have any I don’t know about.

It all comes down to this: Are we going to be married, or not? Are we going to be 60 percent married, 75 percent married, 90 percent married, or are we committed to living life together 100 percent as a unit?

The irony is that most of us truly desire to be fully known. That’s what creates a sense of belonging and intimacy and fulfillment. But then we create static in our marriage by lying, covering up, or carrying on secret activities. In doing so, we sabotage the very fulfillment we seek. We may lie out of shame, regret, embarrassment, or selfishness, but whenever we do, we strangle the intimacy that comes from knowing and being fully known.

Make the courageous choice to be fully married. When you lie to your spouse, you reject the very spiritual benefits marriage provides: the chance to repent, the motivation to change, the opportunity to be spiritually transformed, the exciting journey of loving and being loved. As soon as you lose the spiritual benefits of marriage, the structure of marriage will start to feel like a restriction instead of an intimate relationship, and the marriage will start to die. You’ll lose sight of the purpose and feel overwhelmed by the seemingly negative limitations, and before long, you’ll want out. In relationships, deception is the threshold that leads to destruction.

Make the courageous choice to be fully married.

How about if this week you decide to create a new beginning in your relationship—a new honesty and openness, a commitment to truly walk in the light and to choose “faithfulness to the truth” (3 John v. 3)? If you’ve been keeping secrets, this will feel like a new marriage, an entirely new journey. God didn’t design a relationship as intense as marriage to be fulfilling when it’s done halfway.