We do not own each other

On the bus this morning, I was doing the overhearing thing again.

A woman beside me was telling her friend that she was going off this weekend on a Thousand Islands cruise this weekend, with her parents (or something like that – when you're listening in, you do not catch all the details.) She'd booked it a month ago, and told her boyfriend about it.

Just last night, he began to whine about this. "But it is the weekend, and we should be together," He said. The woman went on to further say that he is such a control freak that, one time, on a trip to Niagara Falls, she hid a thousand dollars on herself so that if he became particularly jerk-like, she could take off on him, and just come home on her own.

The friend sitting beside her, looking for a way to empathize, told her about a new guy who started at work a couple of months ago. Apparently, this guy is permitted by his wife to belong to a gym, but he can only work out between one and two – lunchtime at work. And he is not allowed to go every day. He is not permitted to go out with people from work after work, he is required to rush right home. If she has a hair appointment, he must go home early. The woman said that he does not have any friends, and his wife likes it that way. “We have each other, you don't need friends,” She tells him.

The marriage license is not an ownership certificate. It is a commitment to many things – partnership, teamwork, and above all, intimate friendship. And it does come with obligations, too – to love, honour, and cherish. But there is a reason we've dropped "obey" from the wedding vows. A wife is not a servant, nor is a husband a vassal. Partners are willing cooperators in an endeavor, and not people who have been bullied into doing what the other wants.

What is the big deal if one person, with a month's notice, takes a weekend to do something on their own? And where does anyone get the idea that your spouse does not need friends?

Here's a revelation, and nobody should be insulted by this: not one of us - not one - is so interesting, as a person, that we can deny our mate friends of their own. I know I'm not! My wife beads crafts. My idea of a craft is Kraft (dinner.) I like to play endlessly on my electric guitar, sometimes. I do not expect my wife to sit there and watch rapturously like I am Jimi Hendrix (she wouldn't do that for him, even.)

But I think all of us know this, even the woman in my story. Reading between the lines, she is worried he will grow away from her, perhaps, or even have an affair. Who knows?

We have to open our hearts, and trust. And I know – that is taking a terrible risk. When we place trust in our spouses, we have taken our most precious and fragile treasure, and perched it where anyone can try and take it from us. We risk having our very spirit crushed, and it takes a lot of courage to do this.

But that is what intimacy really is. It means, with that one special person, making ourselves as vulnerable as we know how to be, and risking everything. But this also is what makes it special; if our trust is borne out, and if it is returned, a couple truly are two made one; man and woman made one flesh.