The foundational passage for the process of becoming married is Genesis 2. After God brings Eve to Adam, the process of becoming married is detailed in the verses that follow. There are three steps in arriving at the place where you function as a married couple. Walter Trobish, a Christian marriage counselor, described the process as
1) LEAVING (a man shall leave his Father and mother);
2) CLEAVING (KJV language for being joined to his wife); and
3) WEAVING (Trobish’s word picture of the two becoming one flesh).
The wisdom of the text says that each subsequent step cannot be successfully done until the prior step has been successfully completed. In other words, you can’t WEAVE until you CLEAVE; And you can’t CLEAVE until you LEAVE.
Let me take a moment and describe all three steps.
LEAVING: This involves the work of putting to rest the past. It is the hard and sometimes painful work of identifying those people and events and patterns in your past, especially in our family of origin, that constitute unfinished business. Until identified, these factors still control our attitudes, thoughts, actions and choices in the present, and can mess up current relationships. Once identified, we can decide what we want to or need to do with them. Often it takes the insight and support of another person to help us work these through so they no longer damage our present. The chosen actions to take might include:
- letting go of past hurts, forgiving past offenses and offenders (including most importantly ourselves),
- confronting people who contributed to a problem seeking resolution and release,
- recognizing patterns of behaviors that are unhelpful and establishing new patterns where, when we find ourselves beginning to act in an old way, we catch ourselves and consciously choose the new pattern.
We walk past old barriers on to the next right path we know we should take, even if it’s scary initially. Our goal is to bring no old baggage into the new relationship, to have no old ghosts haunting our present.
CLEAVING: Once freed up from the past, we can unhinderedly do the work of building the sturdy structure an intimate relationship requires. Cleaving is the hard work of building an unshakeable commitment:
- It involves making decisions and setting into place procedures that make for a well functioning partnership.
- It asks questions regarding hopes, dreams and goals for life and seeing if and how they line up with the same aspirations of the other person.
- It asks all the values questions and looks for congruence between both parties.
- It makes the decision to give exclusive priority to the beloved.
- Finally, it expresses and lives out an only you – forever commitment.
We see the other person give themselves wholeheartedly and seriously to these tasks. This grows trust and the belief that the other person appropriately values us and the relationship, and will do whatever it takes for the relationship. At the heart of this is two persons who will give him or her self up for the other (Ephesians 5: 25-27).
This process takes on a “we and us” rather than an “I or me” perspective in dealing with life. When successfully done, cleaving creates high, strong walls around the garden of the relationship. To use another word picture, we create a structure sturdy enough to handle the powerful intimacies of a love relationship.
To use the word of Scott Stanley and Howard Markman of PREP, you create together a “safe” relationship. A safe relationship has three distinguishing safeties:
- The first is emotional safety. It is safe for us to share our deepest feelings and thoughts, and we will be heard and respected and validated, with appropriate actions taken on the needs and desires we express.
- The second is personal safety. Our partner will never, in any way, abuse us.
- The third is commitment safety. We are in this together for the long haul. We will work through problems until they are resolved. Leaving is never an option. This is the, “till death do us part,” commitment.
WEAVING: Once cleaving is accomplished, once the walls are up, the structure in place, the safeties assured, weaving can joyously and unreservedly happen. Weaving is the reason we get married.
- It is all the rich and varied intimacies that make a marriage a never ending delight.
- It is the deep knowing and being known.
- To go back to Genesis, it is being naked and unashamed. Weaving is a poetic image of a couple making love, their limbs entwined.
- It is becoming one flesh. It looks like two threads weaving one beautiful tapestry that is more that either partner can be by themselves.
- It is sharing the beauties and joys of life together. It is being best friends. It’s knowing that he still thinks I’m the most beautiful girl in the world on a bad hair day.
Weaving is very powerful, especially sexual intimacy. Such high octane fuel needs a container strong enough to handle the power. Cleaving builds that container. Being willing to share the deepest parts of us is scary. We will only do that when we are in a “safe” relationship. Like a flower in that garden, we will only dare to open our petals and blossom when we know there are strong walls around the garden of our marriage. Cleaving erects those unshakeable walls. Unfettered intimacy can only come once cleaving is done; the weaker the cleaving, the more unstable the weaving.
Anyone can work on leaving by themselves, before a relationship develops. If we are in a relationship and seem to be spinning your wheels or finding ourselves relating in unhealthy or unhelpful ways, there may be some leaving work that needs to be worked through. Seek whatever is helpful to put to rest the past.
As a relationship develops, assuming leaving has been accomplished by both parties, we begin to work on cleaving and weaving concurrently. The wisdom of the paradigm is that the weaving not get ahead of the cleaving. As commitments and the resulting trust and safety grow, so does the sharing of our hearts.
It requires real wisdom and discipline not to get ahead in the area of physical intimacies. Becoming too intimate too soon sends all kinds of mixed messages that confuse cleaving. A couple behaves as if the walls are in place, the forever commitments nailed down; when in fact they are not. On one level they are acting as if the safeties of the relationship are more than they really are. This increases insecurity and trust issues crop up.
This also works (or doesn’t work) regarding the depth of sharing both express. Deeper sharing of who you are and where you’ve come from, by design, deepens a relationship. This is usually a good thing. It becomes problematic when the safety nets are not yet constructed to handle the level of intimacy shared. So the wisdom is to let the level of cleaving reached set the bar for the level of weaving shared. It goes without saying that full sexual intimacy (and anything close to it) is only safe on the other side of a marriage ceremony.
As I have worked with young couples, the most prevalent problem I encounter is young people with leaving issues who naively rush to weaving, thinking that will fill the holes in their hearts. They are building a relationship house on the sand that will not withstand the storms of life (sometimes not even a stiff breeze). My counsel is to step back and start over. Do the work of leaving first and then enjoy the dance of weaving in tune with the current level of cleaving.
Patiently working this process step by step will move any couple to the place where they think, feel and act married. They are a well functioning team that enjoys a championship season. The victory won is worth the careful effort expended and conscientious work accomplished.
Copyright 2007 G. Brenton Mock