Sermon Illustrations on Romantic Relationships
Background
Cohabitation and the Definitely Maybe Relationship
The tension between autonomy and intimacy is most clearly evidenced in the trend toward cohabitation. Today, between 50 and 70 percent of American couples are cohabiting before or instead of marrying. Living together is now seen as the only mature way to begin an intimate relationship while preserving one’s personal integrity. This is the “definitely maybe” approach, whereby covenant is replaced with “wait and see” and “try before you buy.”
If intimate relationships were mortgages, we might call these sub-prime commitments. They are high-risk projects with little or no collateral security. Unfortunately, just like sub-prime mortgages, these relationships are designed to fail.
What is most startling about the trend of living together outside of marriage is that it is becoming increasingly popular, even though research shows overwhelmingly that cohabiting ultimately undermines relationships. Indeed, the evidence completely contradicts the popular belief that “testing” a relationship first is the best way to secure its future.
As a path to marriage, cohabitation is extremely unreliable, with only one in five cohabiting relationships ending in marriage, and these figures are getting worse over time. Even in those cases where living together does subsequently lead to marriage, cohabiting significantly increases the likelihood of an eventual divorce. Not surprisingly, serial cohabiters show radically higher rates of divorce in their subsequent marriages; women who cohabit multiple times before marrying divorce more than twice as frequently as those who live only with their future husband.
Discipleship Should Fuel Fascination
Beholding beauty produces fascination, and fascination is the best way to transform a person. Consider a young man in love. Parents, professors, mentors, and friends can plead with a young man to change certain habits and embrace certain disciplines for years with little effect. However, when a young man is captured by the beauty of a young woman, suddenly everything changes. He becomes focused on his future. He eagerly embraces certain disciplines. His lifestyle radically shifts. His entire life takes on a new intentionality. In a moment, he makes changes his parents and mentors asked him to make for years. Fascination produces transformation.
Fascination also produces imitation. A young man in love suddenly becomes interested in things he never considered before. He begins attending new events and having new conversations. Fascination with a woman produces imitation in him because part of loving a person is enjoying what the person enjoys. His delight in her changes his appetites and his lifestyle. If love continues, he will willingly and joyfully make the ultimate sacrifice of marriage.
Marriage will require him to eliminate many options, cut off certain relationships, and reorient his entire lifestyle. He will not have the free time he used to. He will probably lose several friends. He will take on new responsibilities and lose his freedom. Why would a young man willingly and gladly surrender his liberty and take on a narrow life of commitment that will make permanent demands on his schedule, his money, and his strength? One word describes it: fascination.
Fascination is the key to willing and lasting sacrifice, and this is not limited to romance. When people take up a new hobby or activity, they respond in a similar way. They spend money intentionally. They find friends who share their interest. They spend hours investing into their new pastime. Others find their fascination odd, but they do not mind because their heart is captivated. The same thing happens when someone is engrossed in sports or any other thing.
This is the way the human heart is made, and it is the model for biblical discipleship. We “see” Someone who is beautiful. We become fascinated by Him. And then we joyfully and gladly reorient our lives to behold more of that Person and desire to be a part of His people.
Samuel Whitefield, Discipleship Begins with Beholding, OneKing Publishing, 2021.
A Lovely Disarray
There is a lovely disarray that comes with attraction. When you find yourself deeply attracted to someone, you gradually begin to lose your grip on the frames that order your life. Indeed, much of your life becomes blurred as that countenance comes into clearer focus. A relentless magnet draws all your thoughts toward it. Wherever you are, you find yourself thinking about the one who has become the horizon of your longing.
When you are together, time becomes unmercifully swift. It always ends too soon. No sooner have you parted than you are already imagining your next meeting, counting the hours. The magnetic draw of that presence renders you delightfully helpless. A stranger you never knew until recently has invaded your mind; every fibre of your being longs to be closer.
John O’Donohue, Beauty: The Invisible Embrace, Harper Prerennial, 2005, p.150.
Searching for a Sanctuary that Does Not Exist
One of the most influential myths nourished by the culture of authenticity is that we will be “saved” or made complete when we meet the right-shaped soul, that perfectly complementary person who can fulfill all of our needs and desires. Like Morpheus in The Matrix we find ourselves asking, Is he or she “the one”?
Within the church we have tended to supercharge this fantasy by spiritualizing it, so that “the one” becomes the single human being that God has fashioned into perfect compatibility with all of our needs and longings. God is just waiting for the perfect moment to release this person into our lives, along with an associated relational epiphany just to make sure we don’t miss the moment.
The problem is that we are likely to experience a keen sense of frustration and despair as this paragon fails to materialize. Some personality trait or quirk always mars our idealized image. Despite this reality, modern authenticity encourages us to search for Dante’s Beatrice: the perfect soul who can lead us into the beatific vision of the heavenly realm. This search…locks us into a quest for a sanctuary that does not exist. Rather than focusing on the potential relationships standing in front of us, we keep our eyes focused on the elusive possibilities on the road ahead.
The (Seeming) End of the Line
A few years ago Christian friends of ours, after several years of marriage, came to see Esther and me to explain that their relationship had reached an impasse and that they could see no alternative but to end it. After a downward spiral of conflict and loss of trust, they struggled to have a civil conversation with each other and had begun to form romantic attachments with other people. They were surprised when we said that they had simply reached a normal stage in every marriage, the stage where going on together seems impossible and unthinkable, where you wonder what you saw in each other in the first place.
This was a stage that we had reached early on in our own marriage and had repeated several times since. If happiness or emotional resonance had been our main interpretive dials for navigating our relationship, we would have split up many times. Over the following weeks, we worked through some practical ways in which our friends could turn around the destructive dynamics that had taken hold in their relationship and, in their place, foster trust, intimacy, and commitment to each other. Many years later, their marriage is on a solid footing, and they are thriving with a family.
The tragedy is that so many Christian marriages never recover from the same downward spiral. We in the church have not spoken and ministered effectively into our culture’s prioritization of authenticity above all else in matters of sexuality and relationships. When a marriage ceases to make us happy or the traveling becomes heavy going, we have no other master story to navigate us through the storm. So we take this as a sign that it simply “wasn’t meant to be”—that we are not among the lucky ones when it comes to marriage.
Stories
Donne, Undone
While movies and novels often present stories of a budding love interest willing to give up everything for “true love” (Romeo and Juliet, for example), the renowned poet, and later clergyman, John Donne really, actually did risk everything when he chose to secretly marry Ann Moore, daughter of Sir George Moore, at the time against the wishes of his father-in-law.
Donne lost his position working in the office of the Great Seal, and the young couple had to flee their place in Sir Geroge’s home, taking refuge in a house in Pyrford, near his father-in-law. Upon arriving at his new home, the first thing the poet did was write on a pane of glass:
John Donne
An Donne
Undone.
Apparently, it stuck, for prior to this episode, Donne’s last name was actually spelled “Dun.”
Stuart Strachan Jr., Source Material from James Prior, Life of Edmon Malone, 1860.
The Meaning of “What Did You Wear?”
My Great-Aunt May had a love affair when she was in her 70’s. Obese, balding, her hands and legs mishappen by arthritis, she did not fit the stereotype of a woman romatically loved. But she was — by a man, also in his seventies, who lived in a nursing home but occasionally spent weekends with her in her apartment. In trying to tell me what this relationship meant to her, my aunt told me of a conversation. One evening she had dinner at the home of friends. When she returned to her home that evening, her man friend called. In the course of their conversation, he asked her, “What did you wear?” When she told me this, she began to cry: “Do you know how many years it’s been since anyone asked me what I wore?”
Deborah Tannen, Talking Voices: Repetition, Dialogue, and Imagery in Conversational Discourse (Cambridge, 2007)
Insulting My Intelligence
Arnold “Red” Auerbach was one of the winningest coaches in NBA history. He won 9 championships as coach of the Boston Celtics and was named NBA Coach of the Year in 1965 and NBA Executive Coach of the Year in 1980. One night while on the road with the Celtics, Auerbach ran into 3 of his players, each traveling with a beautiful woman in tow.
This was against team rules, and so one of the players, trying to get out of trouble, introduced one of the women as his “cousin.” Not wanting to cause a stir, Auerbach nodded without raising a fuss. But then the player decided to double-down on his deceit saying, “We were just on our way to church.” Sharing the story on a later occasion, Auerbach commented, ““I couldn’t take that. I fined him twenty-five dollars for insulting my intelligence.”
Stuart Strachan Jr.
Mrs. Louis Calhern
Ilka Chase (1903-1978) was a celebrated American Actress who performed on stage, in television and radio, and several films, including Fast and Loose (1930) and Oceans 11 (the original, in 1960). In her twenties, Chase married her summer-stock co-performer, Louis Calhern in 1926. It didn’t last long.
Just six months later they were divorced. Soon thereafter Calhern remarried another actress, Julia Hoyt, described by many at the time as a “great beauty.”
Shortly after this, Chase was looking through some boxes and found a box of fine stationery with the name, “Mrs. Louis Calhern.” Deciding it would be a pity to let them go to waste, she mailed them to her successor with a short note: “Dear Julia, I hope these reach you in time.” (In reality, they lasted about five years before they too were divorced)
Stuart Strachan Jr.
One-in-a-Million Talk
One of the most quotable movies of all time was released in 1994. It featured a rising comedic genius from Canada, paired with another highly successful actor, as well as a considerable ensemble cast that helped raise the work to one of the greatest films in comedy ever produced.
You know what movie I’m referring to right? Dumb and Dumber, which was at its heart a love story, but unfortunately for its protagonist, Loyd Christmas, an unrequited love story. Lloyd Christmas, played by Jim Carrey, and Harry Dunne, played by Jeff Daniels, go on an epic road-trip to try and win over Mary Swanson (Lauren Holly) as his romantic interest; they finally arrive in Aspen, where Mary is currently on a ski vacation.
Loyd finally works up the courage and asks her the question on every lovestruck person’s mind: “what are the chances of a girl like me and a guy like you getting together?” Her response would have been seen as an outright rejection by most, but not the serial optimist Lloyd: “I don’t know, one in a million.” Cue the long pause, and then the punch-line… “So you’re saying there’s a chance!!!!!” Later, when Mary rejects Loyd more finally, his response is classic, “What was all that one-in-a-million talk?”
Stuart Strachan Jr., Source content from Farrelly, Bobby, and Peter Farrelly. Dumb and Dumber. New Line Cinema, 1994.
The (Seeming) End of the Line
A few years ago Christian friends of ours, after several years of marriage, came to see Esther and me to explain that their relationship had reached an impasse and that they could see no alternative but to end it. After a downward spiral of conflict and loss of trust, they struggled to have a civil conversation with each other and had begun to form romantic attachments with other people. They were surprised when we said that they had simply reached a normal stage in every marriage, the stage where going on together seems impossible and unthinkable, where you wonder what you saw in each other in the first place.
This was a stage that we had reached early on in our own marriage and had repeated several times since. If happiness or emotional resonance had been our main interpretive dials for navigating our relationship, we would have split up many times. Over the following weeks, we worked through some practical ways in which our friends could turn around the destructive dynamics that had taken hold in their relationship and, in their place, foster trust, intimacy, and commitment to each other. Many years later, their marriage is on a solid footing, and they are thriving with a family.
The tragedy is that so many Christian marriages never recover from the same downward spiral. We in the church have not spoken and ministered effectively into our culture’s prioritization of authenticity above all else in matters of sexuality and relationships. When a marriage ceases to make us happy or the traveling becomes heavy going, we have no other master story to navigate us through the storm. So we take this as a sign that it simply “wasn’t meant to be”—that we are not among the lucky ones when it comes to marriage.
When Infinite Choices Become Destructive
During my years working in corporate finance in London, a friend and colleague used to have vivid and often comic dreams, which he would recount over lunch at the office. One of the most poignant involved him cycling through central London on his daily commute. As he stopped at a red light, the crosswalk became a parade of every woman in the city.
The premise, he explained to us, was that he could choose any one of four million women for a relationship. The bind, of course, was that having so many options made any choice impossible. Sadly, this dream summed up my friend’s real-life vision of relationships. Although he had been in a long-term relationship and was already a father, his imagination was captured by that parade of infinite choice. The idea that there might be someone “better” out there, perhaps just around the next corner, put an impossible strain on his relationship. It eventually crumbled.
Kissing and Telling
George Augustus Moore was an aristocratic writer, art critic, and dramatist. Influenced by the realist school in France, Moore was particularly influenced by Emile Zola. Ultimately, his writing would influence James Joyce, and many consider him the “first great modern Irish novelist.” Apparently, Moore wasn’t simply fond of writing stories, but also spreading them in the form of gossip about his various love affairs. One woman complained, “Some men kiss and do not tell; some kiss and tell; but George Moore told and did not kiss.”
Stuart Strachan Jr.
Was I Supposed to Agonize Over Commitment?
Too many young guys are waiting for writing in the sky before they make a relational commitment. It doesn’t have to be that complicated. My grandpa DeYoung met my grandma on his paper route. Then they worked at the bowling alley together and started hanging out at the soda fountain. Eventually my grandpa proposed and they got married in 1948. When I asked him if he agonized over the decision to get married, he paused for a moment and said, “Uh … no. Was I supposed to?”
Studies
Cohabitation and the Definitely Maybe Relationship
The tension between autonomy and intimacy is most clearly evidenced in the trend toward cohabitation. Today, between 50 and 70 percent of American couples are cohabiting before or instead of marrying. Living together is now seen as the only mature way to begin an intimate relationship while preserving one’s personal integrity. This is the “definitely maybe” approach, whereby covenant is replaced with “wait and see” and “try before you buy.”
If intimate relationships were mortgages, we might call these sub-prime commitments. They are high-risk projects with little or no collateral security. Unfortunately, just like sub-prime mortgages, these relationships are designed to fail.
What is most startling about the trend of living together outside of marriage is that it is becoming increasingly popular, even though research shows overwhelmingly that cohabiting ultimately undermines relationships. Indeed, the evidence completely contradicts the popular belief that “testing” a relationship first is the best way to secure its future.
As a path to marriage, cohabitation is extremely unreliable, with only one in five cohabiting relationships ending in marriage, and these figures are getting worse over time. Even in those cases where living together does subsequently lead to marriage, cohabiting significantly increases the likelihood of an eventual divorce. Not surprisingly, serial cohabiters show radically higher rates of divorce in their subsequent marriages; women who cohabit multiple times before marrying divorce more than twice as frequently as those who live only with their future husband.
Analogies
Crystallizing Each Other
Combustion is also the phase of peak idealization. In his great book On Love, Stendhal once described a salt mine near Salzburg, Austria. The miners would stick small, leafless branches down into the salt mines and leave them there for a time. When they would retrieve them, the branches would be covered with a shining layer of diamond-like crystals that shimmered in the light. Stendhal said that enchanted lovers crystallize each other in this way, their adoring eyes scattering diamonds on every virtue of the beloved.
Discipleship Should Fuel Fascination
Beholding beauty produces fascination, and fascination is the best way to transform a person. Consider a young man in love. Parents, professors, mentors, and friends can plead with a young man to change certain habits and embrace certain disciplines for years with little effect. However, when a young man is captured by the beauty of a young woman, suddenly everything changes. He becomes focused on his future. He eagerly embraces certain disciplines. His lifestyle radically shifts. His entire life takes on a new intentionality. In a moment, he makes changes his parents and mentors asked him to make for years. Fascination produces transformation.
Fascination also produces imitation. A young man in love suddenly becomes interested in things he never considered before. He begins attending new events and having new conversations. Fascination with a woman produces imitation in him because part of loving a person is enjoying what the person enjoys. His delight in her changes his appetites and his lifestyle. If love continues, he will willingly and joyfully make the ultimate sacrifice of marriage.
Marriage will require him to eliminate many options, cut off certain relationships, and reorient his entire lifestyle. He will not have the free time he used to. He will probably lose several friends. He will take on new responsibilities and lose his freedom. Why would a young man willingly and gladly surrender his liberty and take on a narrow life of commitment that will make permanent demands on his schedule, his money, and his strength? One word describes it: fascination.
Fascination is the key to willing and lasting sacrifice, and this is not limited to romance. When people take up a new hobby or activity, they respond in a similar way. They spend money intentionally. They find friends who share their interest. They spend hours investing into their new pastime. Others find their fascination odd, but they do not mind because their heart is captivated. The same thing happens when someone is engrossed in sports or any other thing.
This is the way the human heart is made, and it is the model for biblical discipleship. We “see” Someone who is beautiful. We become fascinated by Him. And then we joyfully and gladly reorient our lives to behold more of that Person and desire to be a part of His people.
Samuel Whitefield, Discipleship Begins with Beholding, OneKing Publishing, 2021.
Mrs. Louis Calhern
Ilka Chase (1903-1978) was a celebrated American Actress who performed on stage, in television and radio, and several films, including Fast and Loose (1930) and Oceans 11 (the original, in 1960). In her twenties, Chase married her summer-stock co-performer, Louis Calhern in 1926. It didn’t last long.
Just six months later they were divorced. Soon thereafter Calhern remarried another actress, Julia Hoyt, described by many at the time as a “great beauty.”
Shortly after this, Chase was looking through some boxes and found a box of fine stationery with the name, “Mrs. Louis Calhern.” Deciding it would be a pity to let them go to waste, she mailed them to her successor with a short note: “Dear Julia, I hope these reach you in time.” (In reality, they lasted about five years before they too were divorced)
Stuart Strachan Jr.
Humor
Donne, Undone
While movies and novels often present stories of a budding love interest willing to give up everything for “true love” (Romeo and Juliet , for example), the renowned poet, and later clergyman, John Donne really, actually did risk everything when he chose to secretly marry Ann Moore, daughter of Sir George Moore, at the time against the wishes of his father-in-law.
Donne lost his position working in the office of the Great Seal, and the young couple had to flee their place in Sir Geroge’s home, taking refuge in a house in Pyrford, near his father-in-law. Upon arriving at his new home, the first thing the poet did was write on a pane of glass:
John Donne
An Donne
Undone.
Apparently it stuck, for prior to this episode, Donne’s last name was actually spelled “Dun.”
Stuart Strachan Jr., Source Material from James Prior, Life of Edmon Malone, 1860.
Insulting My Intelligence
Arnold “Red” Auerbach was one of the winningest coaches in NBA history. He won 9 championships as coach of the Boston Celtics and was named NBA Coach of the Year in 1965 and NBA Executive Coach of the Year in 1980. One night while on the road with the Celtics, Auerbach ran into 3 of his players, each traveling with a beautiful woman in tow.
This was against team rules, and so one of the players, trying to get out of trouble, introduced one of the women as his “cousin.” Not wanting to cause a stir, Auerbach nodded without raising a fuss. But then the player decided to double-down on his deceit saying, “We were just on our way to church.” Sharing the story on a later occasion, Auerbach commented, ““I couldn’t take that. I fined him twenty-five dollars for insulting my intelligence.”
Stuart Strachan Jr.
One-in-a-Million Talk
One of the most quotable movies of all time was released in 1994. It featured a rising comedic genius from Canada, paired with another highly successful actor, as well as a considerable ensemble cast that helped raise the work to one of the greatest films in comedy ever produced.
You know what movie I’m referring to right? Dumb and Dumber, which was at its heart a love story, but unfortunately for its protagonist, Loyd Christmas, an unrequited love story. Lloyd Christmas, played by Jim Carrey, and Harry Dunne, played by Jeff Daniels, go on an epic road-trip to try and win over Mary Swanson (Lauren Holly) as his romantic interest; they finally arrive in Aspen, where Mary is currently on a ski vacation.
Loyd finally works up the courage and asks her the question on every lovestruck person’s mind: “what are the chances of a girl like me and a guy like you getting together?” Her response would have been seen as an outright rejection by most, but not the serial optimist Lloyd: “I don’t know, one in a million.” Cue the long pause, and then the punch-line… “So you’re saying there’s a chance!!!!!” Later, when Mary rejects Loyd more finally, his response is classic, “What was all that one-in-a-million talk?”
Stuart Strachan Jr., Source content from Farrelly, Bobby, and Peter Farrelly. Dumb and Dumber. New Line Cinema, 1994.
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