CHAPTER 3

THE POWER OF COMMITMENT

Scott Stanley, PhD

To have and to hold from this day forward,

for better or for worse, for richer, for poorer,

in sickness and in health, to love and to cherish;

and I promise to be faithful to you,

forsaking all others, until death do us part.

 —TRADITIONAL WEDDING VOW

THE BIG DAY FINALLY ARRIVED. The wedding had been carefully planned, and everything was going smoothly —except that Lisa didn’t feel so smooth inside. As her mother helped her straighten her veil, Lisa whispered, “What if I’m not making the right choice?”

Her parents divorced when Lisa was seven. She remembered the pain of their separation as if it were yesterday. That event and the preceding years of turmoil left her skeptical that any marriage could really work —at least over many years.

Her mother tried to comfort her: “Honey, you don’t have to worry; you can always come back home if things don’t work out with Steven.” To her mother’s surprise, Lisa burst into sobs. She didn’t want to hear that there was a lifeboat, that she could go home if she needed to.

Through her tears, Lisa said to her mother, “Mom, thank you for trying to reassure me. But I desperately want to know that it’s really possible for this to work, that it’s not a fairy tale. I’m so afraid that Steven and I don’t have what it takes, but I want our marriage to last all my life. Am I being realistic?”

Lisa’s mother gave her a reassuring hug and then told her that things could be different for her and Steven. She gave Lisa all the reassurance she was hoping for. Lisa managed a smile, but in the back of her mind, she still agonized: Do we know how to live out a commitment over many years?

Commitment may not seem like the sexiest topic when it comes to marriage. In fact, sex is the sexiest topic. But commitment is the root of what it takes to build and maintain a truly lasting, happy life together.

The Foundation for Being Deeply Connected

What do you desire most in your marriage? Consider this passage from Genesis about Adam and Eve. It’s the same core passage on marriage that both Jesus Christ and the apostle Paul referred to in their major teachings about marriage (Matthew 19 and Ephesians 5):

Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh. And the man and his wife were both naked and were not ashamed.

GENESIS 2:24–25, ESV

What does being naked and not ashamed mean to you? I think this means that Adam and Eve felt completely accepted and loved. They had a deep emotional safety. I think this reflects the desire most of us have —to be accepted at the deepest level of our being. This is the type of love you can give to each other in marriage.

Notice that the deep intimacy described in Genesis is founded on the commitment implied in the earlier phrases. For starters, when you get married, your commitment implies that you must leave some things behind. In the passage it says that “a man shall leave his father and his mother.” The full meaning of this passage is easier to appreciate if you bear in mind that the Bible promotes a very high level of respect for parents.

This passage also portrays permanence. The word for “hold fast” used in the original Hebrew is dabaq, which means “to adhere” or “to stick.” This is more than being stuck together. It’s sticking together in a deep, freely chosen commitment. Joining together in commitment is not to entrap the two of you but to free you for intimacy and connection. Only in the safety of a secure commitment is it reasonable to be naked and unashamed. The loss of freedom that comes with the boundaries of commitment in marriage actually creates new opportunities for a profound level of freedom within those boundaries.

Two Kinds of Commitment

What are the ways in which commitment is expressed in the course of a life together? Consider these two statements:

“Mary sure is committed to that project.”

“Bob committed to that project; he can’t back out now.”

The first statement reflects commitment as dedication, and the second reflects commitment as constraint. Dedication implies an internal state of devotion to a person or project. Constraint entails a sense of obligation. It refers to factors that would exact a cost or consequence if the present course were abandoned. While dedication is a force drawing you forward, constraint is a force pushing you from behind.

According to research, couples who maintain and act on dedication are happier, more connected, and more open with each other. That’s because dedicated partners show their commitment in these very specific ways:

Those who lose dedication and have only constraints will either be together but miserable or come apart. Maintaining the type of dedication that keeps a marriage strong and growing means consistently making choices that protect your marriage. That means consistently doing the things in the previous list.

Making a Choice to Give Up Other Choices

Every aspect of commitment revolves around the issue of choice. Commitment fundamentally requires making a choice to give up other choices. That’s stating it simply, but couples who thrive rather than merely survive are those who consistently make the right choices throughout life. Those choices confirm your commitment, protect what you have built so far, and allow you to build toward the future.

It’s choice that really makes commitment so powerful, giving you the ability to do things, daily and weekly, that go a long way toward creating a happy future in your marriage. But beware. You can’t make and keep commitments if you’re unwilling to make choices. Meditate for a moment on this simple verse from the wise King Solomon: “He who observes the wind will not sow, and he who regards the clouds will not reap” (Ecclesiastes 11:4, ESV).

To use Solomon’s expression, we’ve become a society of wind watchers. Wind watchers never plant, because the conditions just don’t seem right. They never bring in the crop, because it looks like it might rain. Wind watchers enter marriage with a “maybe I do” commitment, not a fully expressed commitment that clearly says “I do.” Our “maybe I do” culture encourages us to hedge our bets and protect ourselves rather than take any risks. But “maybe I do” won’t get you where your soul longs to be.

Jason and Laura: Working It Out

Jason and Laura each learned some of the most crucial lessons about commitment before they even met. Those lessons came back to being important in their marriage.

“I Signed Up for Adventure!”

Jason was eighteen and fresh out of high school. His life was ahead of him. Up late one night surfing the TV channels, not certain where he wanted his life to take him, he found the answer in a US Marine Corps commercial: “Be one of the few and the proud.” He thought to himself, Those guys look strong. They look proud. I bet they have an exciting life.

After a few weeks, Jason finally got up his nerve and talked to the recruiter, who, as recruiters do, painted a pretty positive picture of service in the Marine Corps. Jason signed up on the spot. Though basic training turned out to be pretty tedious, combat training proved to be more exciting. Jason thought he had found what he was looking for.

When he completed his training, Jason got his orders and shipped out to an island in the Indian Ocean that he had never heard of. No big deal, he thought. This is an adventure. Six weeks later, he was doing guard duty on a wharf for navy supply ships. It was not exciting work. It was not an adventure. It was pure, hot drudgery. I may be one of the few, he thought, but I’m not so proud at the moment. I did not sign up for this!

Most of us don’t talk to a recruiter before we get married. However, like Jason entering the Marine Corps, many of us start out in marriage with unrealistic expectations, or we pay attention only to the really wonderful-sounding stuff. When Jason signed up for the Marines, he was filled with a sense of dedication. I say a “sense” because his dedication was really more like potential dedication. But his initial dedication carried him happily through the commitment of signing up, basic training, and combat training.

However, what had been enough to see Jason through the early stages of joining the Marines wasn’t enough to see him through the hard duties that carried no particular prospects for glory and adventure. His dedication began to drain away. He was still committed, but he was no longer a free man. He couldn’t go to the staff sergeant and say, “Sir, this has been an interesting time so far, but I don’t think I’m really into being a marine anymore.” That would not be a good move.

Jason came to feel the full force of constraint. Though he did talk with the chaplain about his dilemma, he couldn’t simply get up and walk away. Actually, he could, but the Marine Corps takes a rather dim view of doing so.

Jason started his commitment in the Marines with the force of dedication. It was his choice. Despite that, when he was faced with unmet and unrealistic expectations, deep disappointment set in. While he was no less constrained before his dedication left him, he wasn’t very aware of his constraint until that moment. Once he became aware of it, he realized, I can’t leave, or I’ll go to federal prison. He felt trapped. And trapped he was. What was he to do?

In the end, Jason made it through his three-year commitment to the Marines. The awareness of his constraint led him to make the wise choice to embrace a more informed and more mature dedication. He realized that he had made the choice to join the Marines, so he would give it his best. It was a good attitude, and with that attitude, Jason’s ability to handle assignments he didn’t like got better —as did his future assignments. As he discovered, sometimes all of life hinges on a positive shift in perspective. To put it in terms a marine would love, when you hit the beach, you can sit there and get pinned down and shot up, or you can take the hill. Go for the hill. Go for the higher ground. Jason learned that the essence of commitment was about what you do when it’s not so easy.

Committing to a Choice

When Laura graduated from high school, like Jason, she had no idea what she wanted to do for a career. But she did want to go to college. After agonizing over the choice, she picked a university in another state. As it turned out, she loved the school she had chosen.

Close to the end of her sophomore year, Laura still had no idea what career she wanted to pursue. She had always enjoyed photography, but her parents had told her it would be hard to make a living as a photographer. So she decided to major in business, and perhaps become an accountant like her father. He seemed to like his work and was always very busy. The decision was hard, and Laura worried that she was always going to have trouble making decisions. But accounting it was.

At the start of her senior year, she met a classmate who had just done a wonderful summer internship as a photographer for a local magazine. Suddenly Laura was filled with doubts. When she dedicated herself to a career in accounting, she put aside her interest in photography. Now that interest was back. But being close to graduation, she couldn’t just start over. Laura took some time to think it through. The more she thought, the more she realized that she had made a choice she needed to stick with. It was the right thing to do on several levels.

Still, she felt a sense of loss. I could have become a magazine or newspaper photographer, she thought. I won’t be able to do that now. But she also realized that being a photographer might not be the right career for the kind of life she wanted. For instance, she might have to travel a lot rather than be close to her family, and there might not be many magazines to work for where she wanted to live.

She also realized that she could still pursue her interest in photography. It just wouldn’t be her career. She realized that all of life was a series of choices, and from time to time, she might feel grief about the “road not taken.” Laura learned pretty early on that this was part of what it means to be truly committed to anything in life. Our culture encourages us to hang on to every option, but the committed life means making some choices among our options.

This fundamental essence of commitment —about choosing —is why it’s crucial for two people who are marrying to each be clear about the choice they’re making. Each should be freely and fully making the choice to give up other choices.

Déjà Vu

Jason did great in the Marine Corps but decided that it wasn’t his life’s work. After leaving the Marines at the age of twenty-two, he decided to go to college, where he studied computer science. It was there, in a computer lab, that Jason met Laura. He thought she was beautiful.

They fell deeply in love, and after they had dated for nine months, Jason asked Laura the question. She said yes. Seven months later, they walked down the aisle with a wealth of approving friends and family in attendance. It was a wonderful day.

Fast-forward six years after their wedding day. Laura was working for a large accounting firm and enjoyed her work. Jason was likewise doing fine, working on computer networks at a local company that took good care of its employees. All his colleagues liked him, and he was in line for a promotion.

Jason and Laura had a child named Kristi. She grew into an adorable three-year-old. Both Jason and Laura loved being parents. However, around this time, things weren’t so great between Jason and Laura. Even before Kristi was born, it had grown harder to deal with their relationship than either Jason or Laura had imagined. Neither had very good skills for handling conflict, so many of their arguments ended up with her yelling and him pulling back into himself. The arguments could be about anything. They rarely went out or did anything fun, and their sexual relationship had cooled. They lost the sense of being friends, and neither was trying very hard any longer to meet the needs of the other.

Déjà vu struck them both. Laura remembered the day when it hit her that life was going to be a series of choices, with occasional grief attached. Now she realized that her choice of Jason was one that had grief attached. Similarly, it struck Jason that once again he was feeling a lot of constraint with waning dedication. He felt discouraged, thinking once again, This isn’t what I signed up for.

How can Laura and Jason recapture and protect their dedication? How could they have prevented losing it? The answer is the same: To keep a marriage on track, or to recover what one has lost, both partners have to act on dedication. Laura and Jason had each learned this lesson before they ever met, but it was time to put it in action in their marriage. At times you have to remind yourself of what you have committed to, dig deeper, and act. Dedication is action.

Let’s look at a few of the powerful ways you can act on dedication to make your marriage all it can be.

Yes and No: Living Out Your Commitment

You can understand a lot of the essence of dedication by thinking about the words yes and no. Yes and no have a lot to do with how we live out our priorities in life.

Knowing Rather Than “No-ing” Each Other

Rick and Margo met when he was twenty-seven and she was twenty-five. Both worked for the same software firm, he in development and she in sales. Margo was drawn to Rick’s intelligence and drive, and he was very drawn to her outgoing personality, her way of approaching issues in life, her humor, and how comfortable he felt talking to her. While they dated, he made plenty of time to see her, even though the projects he was working on demanded tremendous amounts of time and energy. They married after a year.

Ten years and two kids later, Rick was indeed the star of the software-development team. But Margo never saw him. He came home late every night, rarely before eight. Margo had begun working part-time for the software company years earlier to spend more time with their children, but she felt as if she was raising them by herself.

Occasionally Margo confronted Rick about his absence. Each time he convinced her that his real priorities were her and the kids. She wanted to believe him.

When she asked him if he could attend their older child’s school program, he answered, “No, honey, sorry. I have to finish my project, or I’ll be in a real bind.” When she asked him to sit down and talk with her before they went to sleep, he said, “No, I can’t tonight. I’d love to, but I have this big presentation in the morning.” He was “no-ing” her and not “knowing” her.

Margo understood the pressure Rick was under, but they’d gotten married to have a life together —that’s what they both had wanted when they said “I do.”

What Margo and Rick were experiencing in their marriage is common. These patterns don’t doom a marriage. The key is doing something when you start to feel this happening to you.

Why do couples put their spouses last on their priority list? It may be because their partners have committed to them for life. If a couple believes that their spouse will be there for them, no matter what, then they may also feel that at times they don’t have to try as hard.

In marriage we sometimes take advantage of the very commitment that forms the foundation of life together. You should resist letting this happen to you, but if (or when) it does, put your effort back in a lower gear and get the power of commitment working for you again. Later in the chapter, I’ll list some practical tools to help you accomplish this.

“Yes Takes Too Much Time!”

Before my son Luke turned six, he uttered these profound words: “Yes takes too much time!” Luke arrived from the factory tuned to use the word no. I cite the following:

Dad: “Luke, you need to go brush your teeth, now.”

Luke: “No.”

Dad: “Luke, time for bed. Hop to it.”

Luke: “No.”

Dad: “Luke, how about if we go and throw the football? You haven’t been outside all day.”

Luke: “No.”

You get the idea. One day I asked him to stop playing something and get ready for dinner. Surprise! He said, “No.” I was in a pretty good mood and felt like kidding around some. This is like verbal tickling, and it went on a lot longer than what I capture here:

Dad: “Luke, let me hear you say yes. You can do it. It sounds like this: Yeesssss.”

Luke (giggling): “No.”

Dad (playfully): “Oh, come on. You can do it. Let me hear you say yes.”

Luke: “No.”

Dad: “You are such a no boy. Let’s try being a yes boy. It would be fun!”

Luke (laughing): “No.”

Dad: “Yes, yes, yes!”

Luke (on the ground in hysterics): “No, no, no!”

Dad (not looking for a serious reply): “Luke, how come you say no all the time?”

Luke: “Because yes takes too much time.”

I instantly knew that Luke had just uttered something profound. He had the secret to preserving priorities in life: saying no more than saying yes.

Luke knows both his mind and his priorities, so when someone asks him to do something that’s not on his list, he says no. He understood before age six this powerful idea that most of us spend our lives working out.

What are you saying yes to that means you’re saying no more often to those you love most? Maybe you need to say no more often to requests that compete with the most important parts of your life —your future spouse and your families. Those are the people to whom you should be saying yes more than anyone else.

Think about Rick and Margo from earlier in the chapter. When they talked about priorities, Rick would sound reassuring because he really believed it when he said that things would get better. Rick’s intended priorities were Margo and the kids. The problem was that his actual priorities were different.

In our fast-paced world, many people struggle with the difference between their intended priorities and their actual priorities. If this is you —or gets to be —you are far from alone. Spouses and children can handle the discrepancy for periods of time. Spouses can understand in part because of their faith in the future. But when what’s on the back burner is rarely stirred or moved to the front, problems develop. You must move the stuff that matters most to the front burner.

Relationship Capital and Trust

My wife, Nancy, and I have had rough spots in our marriage over the years, but I trust her and her instincts deeply.

Nancy once confronted me in a way that highlights the intersection between trust and the long-term view of commitment. I had been in yet another period of working too much. Nancy thought I was looking particularly ragged (departing, no doubt, from my natural good looks and youthfulness!), and she was concerned. She found me in front of my computer one day (where else?) and took the opportunity to voice her concern. She said, and I quote, “You have to slow down because I’m the one that’s going to be changing your diapers when you’re old.”

The way she expressed her concern was unusual, even kind of funny. I got my reaction right and didn’t become defensive. One of the reasons for that is because she said what she said gently. I cannot tell you strongly enough how important that is when you confront your mate about something. I know gentleness doesn’t always work, but it can be powerful, especially when you can clearly see the love and commitment in what’s being said.

Here’s what I heard: “Dear, I love you, and I’m going to be here for you all the way —until you or I fall apart —but I’m worried about how much you work. I’ll be here for you when you’re old and gray, but I want you to leave something for me!”

This is one of those moments in marriage where two mates fully realize that the whole deal is meant to be a long-term investment. That’s the essence of the really good stuff.

Being Disciplined in Your Investing

Most people who develop true wealth have a strategy. Clearly I’m focused on marital wealth here. People who do best with their investments understand the long-term view and make commitments based on it. They invest regularly. If you talk to a financial adviser about how to do well in the stock market over time, he or she is likely to tell you about a strategy called dollar cost averaging, or DCA. With DCA, you decide how much you’re going to invest in the market and invest that amount at regular intervals, whether the market is up or down, soaring or crashing. You invest no matter what.

Having a long-term view and a plan to accompany it keeps you from bailing out during short-term dips and losing what you invested.

What does DCA look like in marriage? Only you know the best investments for your marriage, but following are some of the more powerful investments for most marriages. If you don’t carve out time for them, the investment can’t be made and the benefit won’t take place. Nothing will happen without the investment. Thriving couples proactively invest in each other and in their marriages. Here are some great ways to invest relationally:

Do you want a relationally rich and full life together? Regular investments like these will keep your marriage alive and thriving. Commitment requires action. You can’t just sit back and reflect on it or wish you had it. Acting purposefully on your commitment from deep within your heart will accomplish the most in your marriage. It’s your choice today and every day for the rest of your lives.

Exercise Your Commitment

Think about areas in your lives where you’ll need to say no more often to something that will detract from your marriage so that you can say yes more fully to your future spouse. Come up with a way to remind yourselves of the importance of making your marriage a high priority.

Sit down together as a couple and identify types of investments that matter to your relationship. Start by listing, separately, things that are important to each of you. Put down whatever is important to you and whatever you think is important to your fiancé(e). Next, talk. You may discover some things that matter to one of you but not to the other. Take the time to talk through the kinds of investments you both believe are most important to keep making in your marriage, and commit to doing what it takes to have a marriage that thrives.

SCOTT STANLEY, PhD, has authored a number of popular books on marriage, including A Lasting Promise and The Power of Commitment. Portions of this chapter were excerpted from The Power of Commitment. He also writes a popular blog, Sliding vs Deciding, at SlidingvsDeciding.com. Scott is a research professor and codirector of the Center for Marital and Family Studies at the University of Denver. His research is internationally recognized, and he has published extensively in scientific journals on marriage and family. Core research interests include marital commitment, couple development, and the prevention of marital distress.

Ready to Talk

  1. Remember Lisa from the start of the chapter? Which of the following statements comes closest to what you’d tell her? Why?
    • “You don’t have to follow in your parents’ footsteps.”
    • “Just do the best you can.”
    • “God won’t let your marriage fail.”
    • “Good point. Let’s tell everybody to go home.”
    • “If you have real commitment, you have what it takes.”
    • Other ____________________________
  2. How are the statements in each of the following pairs different? How might the differences make a difference in your marriage?
    • “We’re sticking together” versus “We’re stuck with each other.”
    • “I’m committed to this marriage” versus “I committed to this marriage, so I can’t back out.”
    • “Divorce is not an option” versus “I don’t have any options.”

    Why is it important to choose your words carefully when you talk about your commitment to each other?

  3. How could having the viewpoint of a long-term investor help you see the following scenarios as temporary dips in the “stock market” of your marriage?
    • One year after the wedding, you lose your job —which means you can’t afford the “honeymoon” trip you never got to take.
    • You feel a growing distance between you and your spouse that has been increasing for several years.
    • Your spouse begins experiencing serious depression and isn’t able to fully engage with you as in the past.
    • Your spouse drops out of school prior to finishing his or her degree.
    • As a couple you decide you are ready to start a family, and nothing happens for a year. After visiting the doctor, you learn that fertility is going to be an issue in your marriage.
    • Your spouse develops a close relationship with an attractive colleague at work.

    Which of these situations might be the hardest for you to cope with? How would you desire to respond? How would you want your spouse to respond? What would you do to show continued investment in the marriage?

Ready to Try

Take turns reading 1 Corinthians 13:4–8, 13. Pretend you’ve decided to write your own wedding vows and base them on this passage. How would you do it? Try writing your own individual versions. Then compare your vows with your spouse-to-be’s version. See whether you can harmonize the two into a description of your commitment to each other.