CHAPTER 2

LEAVING YOUR PARENTS AND CLEAVING TO YOUR SPOUSE

Ted Cunningham

THE GIVING OF THE BRIDE is my favorite part of the wedding ceremony. Everyone is in position, and all eyes are on the bride as she gracefully strolls down the aisle with her dad. After a brief welcome, I ask, “Who gives this woman to be married to this man?”

“Her mother and I” is the usual answer.

I then ask Dad to turn, face his daughter, and speak a blessing over her. At the rehearsal the night before, I prep Dad by encouraging him to take his time at this moment, “We are not in a hurry, and you will not have a microphone. This is a special moment between you and your daughter.”

Without exception, every dad whimpers and cries his way through the entire blessing. Gathered guests hear every sniffle. Family and friends who hadn’t planned to cry reach for tissues.

After Dad blesses his daughter with spoken words of high value, he turns and speaks a blessing over the groom. Then Dad gives his daughter’s hand to the groom, steps back, and takes a seat. This is called “cutting the strings.” This intentional and strategic separation of parent and child is the key to initiating the bond between husband and wife.

I love when a mom comes up to me at a wedding and says, “I don’t feel like I’m losing a daughter today; I feel like I’m gaining a son.”

My rebuttal is always the same: “Nope, you’re losing a daughter.” My use of hyperbole is necessary to drive home the point that Mom and Dad need to back off and allow the new marriage to flourish. Meddling and enmeshment will erode the forever bond.

My daughter, Corynn, is convinced that she’s never leaving home. At seven years of age, she made up her mind that Mom and Dad take such good care of her, she’ll just stay with us forever. But she knows I’ll have none of that. Parenting with the end in mind means I’m daily preparing her to leave home.

One of the hardest questions Corynn has ever asked me is, “Dad, who do you love more, me or Mom?”

Ouch! Naturally my first response to a question like that is to act as if I didn’t hear the question, or I squint my eyes as though I didn’t understand it. She has me wrapped around her little finger.

“I love your mommy and you both,” I then say gently, “but God wants me to love Mommy in a different way. Your mommy and I are together for life. We will be together until one of us goes to heaven or Jesus returns. But you, Corynn, will not be with us forever. You will one day leave our home and start a family of your own.”

Corynn is quick to reply, “I want to be with you and Mommy forever.”

“You can’t be with us forever, Corynn,” I say.

As tears form in her eyes, she glares at me and says, “I am going to college online and staying home forever. You can’t make me leave.”

While I must admit I like the sound of that from a tuition standpoint, I need her to know that separation from Mom and Dad is actually a sign of health and maturity. Leaving home as an adult should be a top goal for every parent and child!

Part of me wants her to stay home, but my assignment is to prepare Corynn for adulthood. I won’t be with her for three-quarters of her life, but God gave me this time on the front end to invest in her and help form the beliefs of her heart.

Genesis 2:24 says, “For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and they will become one flesh.” These words were first written about a couple in the garden of Eden who had no biological parents. One must wonder if God was instructing Adam and Eve on how to raise their children rather than teaching them about their own marriage. We have no record of the conversation, but I wonder when Adam and Eve first taught the “leave and cleave” of marriage to Cain and Abel. I’m thinking earlier rather than later.

Marriage is a priority relationship that trumps your relationship with your parents. When you see the word leave, you may think you need to move a thousand miles away from Mom and Dad. While there are some cases where that is beneficial, it isn’t necessary. The focus of this text is not geographical. Most couples live in close proximity to their parents and move away later in life. The focus of this text is relational and emotional leaving.

“Leaving” is the idea that no relationship, apart from your relationship with God, is more important than your marriage. Your spouse, not your parent, is your new priority relationship. To leave Mom and Dad means to forsake, depart from, leave behind, and abandon your family of origin.

The emphasis of Genesis 2:24 is a young man or woman leaving his or her family of origin and immediately entering into marriage. However, today that isn’t always the case. Young people are leaving home and living single for longer periods of time. There is now a gap between leaving and cleaving.

Scripturally and historically, there are two life phases: child and adult. The apostle Paul explained this transition when he wrote, “When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put childish ways behind me” (1 Corinthians 13:11).

Traditionally, going from child to adult meant

In generations past, these five adulthood milestones happened quickly, if not simultaneously. There was no prolonged track for entering adulthood. You left home prepared for the responsibility of work, spouse, and the world. Parents sent children out as adults, not on a journey to become adults.

I love sharing the story of my wife’s grandparents Lloyd and Lorraine Freitag. Lloyd came home from World War II and met a sweet redhead working in a diner. They dated for an entire week before Lloyd asked her, “Are we going to get serious about this relationship, or what?” He knew he wanted to spend the rest of his life with Lorraine. In September of 2011, they celebrated their sixty-fifth wedding anniversary before Lloyd went home to be with the Lord in June of 2012. Lloyd and Lorraine were part of what Tom Brokaw called “the greatest generation.” World wars and the Great Depression forced them to embrace responsibility more than privilege.

Leave Your Adolescence Behind

Marriage and adolescence don’t mix well. Adolescence starts in the early teen years and, for some people, continues on into their thirties and forties. Prolonged adolescence is defined as “too much privilege, not enough responsibility.” The truth is that marriages struggle when husband, wife, or both live with too much privilege and not enough responsibility.

Leaving home and cleaving to your spouse means prioritizing your spouse above nights out with friends, hours in front of the television or video games, and excessive participation in hobbies or sporting activities. As a pastor I’ve seen this play out one of two ways: (1) A spouse is never able to break free from the single lifestyle from the get-go, or (2) the marriage starts out with oneness, but later, one or both spouses feel as if they missed out on something, and they revert to the single lifestyle. In either case, prolonged adolescence fosters the single lifestyle over oneness in marriage.

Becoming an adult means leaving home, making wise adult decisions, and taking responsibility for the outcome of those decisions. In my opinion, parents often wait too long to teach their kids to be adults, and as a result, intentionally or unintentionally, they’re prolonging their children’s journeys into adulthood.

Is some of this making you nervous? If so, don’t stress out. There’s hope! Even if you grew up in a home where Mom and Dad handed you privilege and withheld responsibility, you can still do something about it. You can choose to prioritize responsibility over privilege. You can begin to see privilege as something you gain after a season of responsibility. This is a choice you can and must make. Your marriage depends on it.

I want my children to learn maturity at an early age. My wife, Amy, and I define maturity in our home as “knowing I will not be with Mom and Dad forever and planning accordingly.” We believe that separation from parents is good and healthy. Good parenting recognizes the blessing that every child needs to one day be released into a new journey with Christ and his or her mate. Our children need to be encouraged and filled with confidence that they will one day make capable adult decisions on their own.

For you, that time is now. You’re about to embark on a new journey together. Marriage is exciting, fun, wonderful, and, at times, challenging. Leaving and cleaving is part of your new journey, and deciding now to do it well will only make your marriage stronger.

Leave Home Financially

Leaving your family of origin requires severing your dependence on what your parents can provide. Let’s get really honest for a moment. If you make thirty or forty thousand dollars a year and you’re married with children, you cannot afford to keep up with the latest trends in technology. It’s too expensive. Your parents may have paid for your iPhone, iPad, and Mac while you were in college, but those days are over.

Modern entitlement makes us want in a few years what our parents spent a lifetime accumulating. Leaving home financially is tough. When your parents have always handed you all of your vacations, food, school, cars, insurance, and spending money, it makes it quite difficult to lower your expectations and tastes to match your current income.

Because of the lavish lifestyles many children enjoy today, young couples have a tendency to become slaves to debt early in marriage, and it follows them throughout their entire married lives. Avoid borrowing and asking your parents for money. Scripture says, “The rich rule over the poor, and the borrower is servant to the lender” (Proverbs 22:7). Borrowing money from your parents is expensive. The relational and emotional interest is high. You will pay on it for years.

Years ago, a young married man in his twenties sat in my office and told me, “I’m sick and tired of my parents treating me like a little kid. They’re always telling me what to do and meddling in my business.”

I could tell by his clothes, technology, and the Starbucks cup in his hand that he was living large, so I asked him, “Have you ever asked your parents for money since you’ve been married?”

He looked at me with disdain as though I had asked a ridiculous question. Come to find out, his mom still purchased his clothes, and his cell phone was still on his parents’ plan!

“How many hours a week are you working?” I asked.

“They cut my hours at work, and I’m down to twenty hours a week,” he said.

My response? “In your twenties, you should be working as many jobs as necessary to get forty hours a week, and if that doesn’t pay the bills, you’ll need to work more than forty hours a week. You have the energy and the time. Make it happen.”

Here is the simplest equation I know for leaving home financially: Hard work plus moderate spending equals a content new marriage. In other words, produce more than you consume (see chapter 12 on finances). You may be cringing right about now, or maybe you’ve been taking care of yourself for years. Let me encourage you that together, you can do this! The two of you are in love and have decided to begin your lives as a married couple. Making it on your own might take some sacrifices and adjustments to your lifestyle expectations, but it’s worth it. You can do this!

Leave Home Relationally and Emotionally

A few years ago, a loving mom confronted me at her son’s wedding. “How dare you tell my boy he can’t call me,” she shouted during the preceremony photo session. The photographer stood ready for an action shot.

“I think you misunderstood what I told your son,” I gently responded. “I told your son to limit his calls to you and definitely do not call every day.”

This infuriated the mother. “What’s wrong with a son loving his mom?” she asked. Did you catch that? She used extreme exaggeration to make a point. That’s called hyperbole. Her equation was love equals a phone call every day.

This brief conversation forced me to adjust the wedding message. I usually spend half the message on leaving and the other half on cleaving. Not this time. I went 75 percent on leaving and 25 percent on cleaving. We walked on eggshells for a few moments, but Mom eventually came around. To this day, the bride still thanks me for that message.

While parents can be a source of support and encouragement, you must not allow them to be a controlling factor in your marriage. When your relationship with your parents becomes enmeshed, you begin to take responsibility for their feelings and actions. You begin making decisions, scheduling activities, raising your children, joining a certain denominational church, and choosing a lifelong career path based on your parents’ desires and expectations. Leaving your parents relationally and emotionally means you leave and abandon their expectations for your life. You begin making decisions with your spouse in mind, not your parents.

Whether you’re young and this is your first marriage, or you’re remarrying, a healthy relationship with clear boundaries is possible with your parents. Part of my premarital counseling with couples always includes the following six keys for promoting oneness in marriage while fostering healthy relationships with parents.

1. Prioritize your future spouse over your parents. Leaving your family of origin starts with understanding the proper bond between parent and child. The bond between a husband and a wife is stronger than the bond between a parent and a child. Your mom and dad love you and want to be involved in your life. The question becomes, “How much should they be involved?” Your spouse-to-be needs to be the first go-to person for all decision making, parenting plans, personal struggles, and conflict resolution.

2. When in conflict, don’t seek your parents as allies. When you fight with your future spouse, give yourself a time-out and be alone with the Lord. You don’t need to call your mom or dad. Healthy parents know how to advocate for the marriage, not just their son or daughter. However, some parents may choose to side with their child and make statements like these:

These are not helpful responses.

3. Never compare your future spouse to a parent. She’s not your mom. He’s not your dad. This seems obvious, but couples often overlook that fact. Unspoken expectations over meal preparations, car maintenance, and household chores can grate on a spouse over time. Never compare the strengths of your parents to the weaknesses of your spouse.

4. Don’t take responsibility for your parents’ emotions, words, or actions. The bond you have with your parents becomes unhealthy when you start making decisions and moving forward in your marriage with these questions in the back of your mind: How will Mom and Dad feel about this? What will Dad say if he knows we plan to buy this car? How will Mom react if we decide to relocate with your company? You can love, honor, and bless your parents without taking responsibility for their hearts.

Identify and take responsibility for the messages in your mind and heart. Your parents contributed to those messages, but you are 100 percent responsible for your own heart, not theirs. You did not choose your family of origin. They influenced who you are today, but they do not define you, and you are not responsible for them.

5. Forgive your parents. Leave home with an open and free heart. If you leave home with unresolved anger in your heart toward a parent, it will resurface in your marriage. The question is not if but when.

You cannot change your parents, but you can forgive them. You cannot relive your childhood and change your mom and dad. You have zero responsibility for the way you were raised. But you can choose to take 100 percent responsibility for your own heart and decide what to do with the hurt and the past.

Release the hurt caused by your parents. Turn the past over to the Lord; you will then be able to live at peace with everyone. You will no longer be held hostage or powerless in life. You will change once you begin to resolve your anger. You can choose to live the rest of your days as a victim of your past, or you can choose to embrace personal responsibility and be an example for generations to come. “Forgive as the Lord forgave you” (Colossians 3:13).

6. Stop obeying your parents, but never stop honoring them. When we’re young and living at home, we’re commanded to obey our parents. Ephesians 6:1–3 says,

Children, obey your parents in the Lord, for this is right. “Honor your father and mother” —which is the first commandment with a promise —“that it may go well with you and that you may enjoy long life on the earth.”

As adults, we don’t obey our parents. We no longer call them to find out what our next move in life should be. We no longer ask them for permission to take a vacation or a trip. Obedience ends, but honor never does.

God takes honor so seriously that He gives strong words to those who would dishonor their parents:

Children who mistreat their father or chase away their mother

are an embarrassment and a public disgrace.

PROVERBS 19:26, NLT

The eye that mocks a father,

that scorns obedience to a mother,

will be pecked out by the ravens of the valley,

will be eaten by the vultures.

PROVERBS 30:17

Honor your parents by calling home and thanking them for a life lesson they taught you as a kid. Since you have left home financially, pay for their meal the next time you eat out with them. I know what you’re thinking, They have way more money than I do, so it makes more sense that they pay! That’s not the point. Pay to show honor. Instead of buying your mom another sweater or your dad another ratchet set for a birthday, write them a blessing and share it with family and friends at the next family holiday.

The Blessing and Separation

Solomon didn’t wear a royal crown to his wedding, even though he was king. Instead, he wore a crown his mother gave him as a sign of her blessing:

Come out, you daughters of Zion,

and look at King Solomon wearing the crown,

the crown with which his mother crowned him

on the day of his wedding,

the day his heart rejoiced.

SONG OF SONGS 3:11

At your wedding and in your marriage, you want the crown of your parents’ blessing because it recognizes and honors their role in your life. They raised you, fed you, schooled you, and clothed you, and you must honor their hard work. While they need to acknowledge your rite of passage into adulthood and marriage, you need to praise them for their investment in you. You left home and are now starting your own.

However, the crown of blessing isn’t always possible. If your parents don’t bless your marriage, you still need to esteem them as highly valuable. Hear me on this: You can honor them without agreeing with them. Your skill in doing so will help you as a spouse. You’ll spend much of your married life honoring your spouse even though you don’t always agree with him or her. Loving and honoring a difficult parent or spouse models the way Jesus loves and forgives us.

I’ve seen my share of difficult parents. In my seventeen years as a pastor, only one dad has rebelled against giving away the bride at a wedding. We were on schedule, and everyone was in place. Dad walked his daughter down the aisle and stopped at the front, and the groom stepped beside him. I welcomed family and friends, prayed, and then asked, “Who gives this woman to be married to this man?” Dad was silent.

Thinking he didn’t hear me, I repeated the question, “Who gives this woman to be married to this man?” Dad remained silent.

With a deeper voice and greater strength, I asked a third and final time, “Who gives this woman to be married to this man?”

Dad answered, “I will not give her, but I will share her.” With that I declared the wedding over.

A startled groom looked at me with eyes that said, “This has to happen!”

I told him, “We can’t go on until Dad gives you his daughter.”

Finally Dad submitted to the authority of the church and relinquished his daughter.

Your parents can’t share you with your spouse. Things have to change. But let me reassure you that leaving your parents and cleaving to your spouse does not mean abandoning your relationship with your parents or isolating yourself with your new spouse! It simply means that you’ve made the wise decision to put your marriage right under your relationship with God —where it belongs. When you and your parents choose to separate, your marriage will thrive!

TED CUNNINGHAM is the founding pastor of Woodland Hills Family Church. He enjoys being married to his wife, Amy. They live in Branson, Missouri, with their two children, Corynn and Carson. He is the author of The Power of Home, Fun Loving You, Trophy Child, and Young and in Love, and coauthor of four books with Dr. Gary Smalley, including The Language of Sex and From Anger to Intimacy. Ted is a regular guest on Focus on the Family, Life Today, and Moody Radio. He is a graduate of Liberty University and Dallas Theological Seminary.

Ready to Talk

  1. Discuss the following statements based on the chapter. Do the two of you agree with them? Do you agree with each other about them? If not, what kind of conversation —with a mentor, pastor, or counselor, perhaps —would help you work through your differences?
  2. Where are you in the leaving-and-cleaving process? Do you feel your family ties weakening? In what ways are you and your spouse-to-be starting to cleave to each other? Are you going too far in one direction? How can you help each other find the right balance?
  3. Discuss how you can intentionally bless your parents as you prepare to “leave” the season of childhood and enter into adulthood with your marriage. Will you do something at the wedding ceremony or reception? Or will you do something prior to your actual wedding day? Discuss what you will do and say. Remember, this will be done in order to thank them and bless them for all they have done for you as you leave one season and begin another.

Ready to Try

Think about all of your most important relationships, and find pictures representing those relationships. Plan a time where you and your fiancé(e) can discuss taking a leave of absence. Discuss what this will look like practically. How will you communicate to your parents, siblings, and friends that you need time to cleave to your spouse? How long will your leave of absence be? What boundaries will need to be placed? What will this uniquely look like for you and your new spouse?