Marriage in Real Life: Shaking Free From the Bonds of Expectation

I recently started watching Friday Night Lights, a show about the inner workings of a small Texas town and its obsession with football. The show centers on the high school football coach, Eric Taylor and his wife, Tami, as they--sometimes unknowingly--disciple the inhabitants of this small town in football and in life.

I'm only on the first season, but I'm already struck by Eric and Tami's marriage. In fact, it might be the healthiest portrayal of marriage I've seen on TV . . . ever. In a sitcom world of oblivious, lazy husbands and manipulative wives, it's refreshing to see a marriage in which husband and wife are equally supportive and kind toward each other.

I also appreciate that this fictional couple isn't romanticized, but they're healthy. Eric and Tami grapple through issues together. They unpack these worries at the end of the day, giving each other advice and grace as they go. And even in the thick drama of a television show, their lives aren't flashy. In fact, sometimes the occasional mundane doldrums of marriage are so realistic that I wonder if I'm watching a real couple.

Sometimes a real, working marriage seems boring to an outsider, or even to us. And so many weeks in my own marriage, I find myself saying, "Wow, this is harder than I expected." The tedious ins-and-outs and the difficulties of life together can be grating unless we realize this truth: It's not all about us.

This stark concept, so utterly simple, is one of the hardest for us to grasp as individuals and as a culture. For example, I just finished reading Eat, Pray, Love, in which the author, Elizabeth Gilbert, becomes unhappy in her marriage . . . and leaves her husband. Wait, I must have missed something. When has marriage only been about personal fulfillment?