There are traps in this process, the most obvious is that weakness is used as a weapon to gain ascendancy in which case the ego is again being asserted and we are back where we started. Victimhood can be very satisfying.
Those who journey into the Other do not do so on the basis of their triumphs but on the basis that we have all be cast out of the garden to fend for ourselves in a world of adversity and hence have sustained damage. This means that the thing we have in common is not our health but our disease, not our riches but our poverty, not our self-assuredness, but our self-doubt. Relationships that do not find that common ground will never become marriages. Political leaders who talk only of success and a bright future will never lead our deeper mutilated selves and will therefore lead us nowhere. Thus is the inverted rationality of the gospel.
We are all called to journey into the Other so that we might become truly human. This is the task of human life. When a relationship does not foster that journey but suffocates it we may ask whether a marriage exists. After much patient waiting and listening and searching we may come to the conclusion that to stay in the marriage means that the call of God is blocked and we can no longer continue.
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Surely, for Christians, this call overrides our vows and our social responsibilities. I speak here of grave things for grave and serious people, not the eternal and false search for the right "one" or the continuation of initial rapture, or because we have fallen out of love. The reasons for ending a marriage are to do with the most serious desire for God.
Marriages fail when this journey into the Other either ends or is never embarked upon so that the promise of becoming one flesh is abrogated. The situation of the self-confident, self-righteous, sealed over person is essentially unstable, more, it is a torment, an experience of hell. It is here that we see humanity at its lowest possible potential that may be described as the living dead. Marriage consists of mutual journeying towards the promise that we will be one flesh and ceases to exist when this journey ceases. This cessation can be likened to the cessation of our journey into God.
The median time between marriage and divorce in Australia is about twelve years. That figure represents suffering on a massive scale and families torn apart. An analysis of marital breakdown is obviously out of the scope of this article but I think it important to acknowledge our particular situation in late modernity.
Liberal culture has isolated the individual from sources of wisdom and maturity and expected him or her to find those resources within themselves. Consequently, the individual finds herself prey to forces that have a vested influence, be they national, economic or societal. Such a one whose self has been formed by these forces is ill equipped to deal with the dynamics of marriage described above. Tutored by the prevailing culture of success they will be disappointed and afraid of partners who reveal damage or weakness. The image of the Other will become tarnished, and we disappointed, as we get to know the person we have chosen as a life partner. This is the beginning of marriage not the end.
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