Ugly, Beautiful, Messy Relationships: Why I Have No Desire to Marry Again

Paul said I would be better off if I remained unmarried (1 Corinthians 7). I’m starting to believe him.

For most of my life, I have lived with other people. There were maybe three years total with just me and my dog and then with just me and my kid. But otherwise, than that, there was family, college roommates, friends, a husband, and Christian brothers and sisters who shared space with me. I don’t know about you, but relationships are messy. And they are even harder under the same roof.

I’m constantly asking the Lord to put me out to pasture. Just give me my ranch, a few acres, my garden boxes, my kid, a horse, and a dog, and with such things, I’ll be content. But as for me and my house, that’s not what things look like right now. I call 2020 the year of The Great Purge, where the Lord called me to release a lot. There were other things he told me to hold onto. One was a relationship with a young lady I met through ministry work. He told me to get to know her more, so I intentionally did.

Fast forward to the end of 2021, the Lord put it on both of our hearts to move in together. I was used to the Lord setting me where I needed to be for a season by now, so even with some hesitancy, I was like whatever you think and say, God. My little sister, on the other hand, had much internal conflict due to her past experiences. By the grace of God, on February 4, 2022, we both finally said yes to a home we could make our own and for our boys.

Living under the same roof has been a challenge to our souls. It’s easy to hide your flaws and sins when there is no one close enough to see them. It’s also possible for you to be blind to them because everything is as you want it and when you want it, and there’s no one there to stretch you to do and be otherwise. I know I have gotten on her nerves, and she’s gotten on mine. We have been sandpaper and screeching forks across glass plates to one another on many days.

The honeymoon phase did not last for long, and there has been a constant ebb and flow of we’re good, we’re not good. Relationships simply take work. They take death too. The death of you, your desires, and your preferences. It takes emotional energy and conversations you dread. As we have wrestled with one another and ourselves, we’ve repeatedly come out on the other side saying, I’d still choose you and this.

But why!?! Why would anyone want to still choose hard when easier is possible? Because though we have found that this often has not felt good to us, it has been good for us. One of the first reasons we could see the need to be together is for protection and accountability. As young women without firmness in boundaries, we’ve needed one another to be a watch and guard when our bodies and hearts raged against such margins. Setting house rules for male company, along with having a person who would notice our coming and going was necessary. It didn’t mean that we still wouldn’t do what we wanted to do, but now we had someone who wouldn’t allow us to go so far. The Spirit of God that rests in us would provide conviction and warning as our rebellious minds needed them.

Similarly, as in marriage, the people you live with hold up a mirror for you to see yourself. Now that mirror will likely have some finger smudges and toothpaste residue on it, which makes it easy to focus on those spots while ignoring the big glaring image staring back at you. But if you allow yourself to look, you’ll see a beautiful, ugly mess. Beautiful because you’re a creation of God, and there’s evidence of His work coming to completion. An ugly mess because, well, you’re still being completed. Without this mirror, it would be easy to lie to ourselves, proclaiming our patience when in fact, we’re easily irritable, demanding, and controlling. Without the mirror, we’d see ourselves as selfless, when we’re often self-interested, stingy, and unthoughtful.

"What causes fights and quarrels among you? Don’t they come from your desires that battle within you? You desire but do not have, so you kill. You covet but you cannot get what you want, so you quarrel and fight. You do not have because you do not ask God. When you ask, you do not receive, because you ask with wrong motives, that you may spend what you get on your pleasures." James 4:1-3

This mirror has been good for my soul. It’s allowed me to see myself. So much so that I’ve had to call several people and apologize because now I have a picture of how they must have felt being in relationship with me. There are ways I’m being pruned that I pray will take root for the new and rekindled relationships the Lord brings into my life. One of my coworkers stated that when he counsels married couples, he often talks to them about the four T’s: tongue, tone, temper, and timing. I got a taste of this tutelage as a wife for a season, and I’m learning it from a husband’s perspective by living with my sister now.

I’m reminded that my tongue is a fire that can either set things ablaze for destruction or growth. I’m understanding more that how I perceive tone and speak tone exacerbates or extinguishes flames. I recognize how greatly temper sets the temperature of a home, making it bearable or unbearable for another to be comfortable and breathe. And even though I now cringe at the words, “Can we talk,” I know that communication needs carved space that should be intentional, timely, and considerate of one another.

Just as with our faith, if we are not actively pursuing our relationships then we’re actively regressing in them. We think because we see each other every day that we’ve seen each other each day. But we’re more likely to look past the person and focus on their faults and failures instead. My sister and I had to get back to being intentional about our relationship as we had when we lived apart. Scheduling fun and togetherness would need to be a priority if we were going to grow in love and friendship under this roof.

As I think about all this work though, I recoil at the thought of marriage again. Will I be better suited? I should be. But am I ready to die and yield so that another person and God’s institution can thrive? I’m not so sure. I recognize I still have much more growth to attain. And there are some things I need to and now want to do on my own. I’m not at a place where I can allow a man to be. I could make a laundry list of things he must be, and he still not be satisfactory to me.

Even as I was making my list of things I’ll be content with if the Lord puts me out to pasture, I quickly had to acknowledge my fallacy of belief. Immediately I thought about how I’d need to be within driving distance of trails and a body of water. I’d want wooden beams and columns, a covered porch, and a swing to make my farmhouse-ish dream come true. You see, my desires are unending. They never cease. I will always want something more. Though I see the good in remaining in this garden with my sister, I still have days I’m just ready to be bloomed and set in new ground. But I’m stretching myself to stay. To be tilled and tended to until I can say in whatever circumstances, God give me you, and with you, I shall be content.

P.S. Not long after I wrote this blog, I came across an episode of The Makhs where they shared how married people often paint such a dreadful picture of what God designed to be a beautiful, albeit messy, canvas. I agree that marriage has the potential to be something wonderful and life-producing while stretching capacities and uprooting cavities of things unfruitful. Just recently, I sat down and interviewed two couples, both of whom have been married for decades now, and what I heard and saw was something worth striving for. It is my desire that should I ever marry again, God’s work in me in the season will yield a more beautiful bride to the one who finds me. And though my mind is made up, maybe one day God will change my heart about this marriage thing again.

P.S.S. I promise this is my final close. Since the beginning of the year, I’ve been making my way through a book called Relationships: A Mess Worth Making by Tim Lane and Paul Tripp. It has been convicting-ly good. Check it out.