Interview with Author Frank Wade

FM: In a sentence, describe a healthy marriage.
Wade: A healthy marriage is one in which people talk when they don't want to talk and listen when they don't want to listen. Unhealthy marriages can include having a good time, good sex, and lots of other good things. But the mark of a healthy marriage is talking and listening, caring enough to say what it's hard to say and to listen to what you don't want to hear.

FM: What's the hardest thing for married people to talk to one another about?
Wade: I think it's the mistakes we make, what we've done wrong, what our spouse has done wrong. It's very hard to name and own a mistake honestly so that it can be addressed. It's easier either to criticize everything about your spouse when something goes wrong or to pretend that everything is rosy when it isn't. Both of those behaviors eliminate the ability to adjust, to move back and forth; they're shallow, not real, because nobody confronts anything. Talking out mistakes requires that both parties become vulnerable to the other, which is scary and the reason so many couples don't do it.

FM: What poses the greatest threat to healthy marriages today?
Wade: There's a misconception that marriage is a natural thing. It isn't. Many things---the mating of animals, the planets in their courses---are natural in that they run on God's energy alone. They don't require effort on our part. But marriage doesn't run entirely on God's energy and if we don't put effort into it, it breaks down. I see many good-hearted people who genuinely care about each other but who just don't do the work of marriage. Marriage is like a child. You can't say, "I'll pick up the baby on Saturday" or "I'll feed the baby at Thanksgiving." Marriage won't run by itself and to put off caring for it is to risk its demise.

FM: Are there any circumstances in which you feel divorce is advisable?
Wade: Our society is so disposable that some people declare marriage over because their spouse hogs the remote control. People aren't willing to work at healing. I said marriage is like a child. It needs to be nurtured, played with. If it gets sick, it takes time, effort, and often money to restore its health. But sometimes marriages die, and when that happens, I believe divorce is the most loving thing to do. Divorce is the funeral for a dead marriage. Funerals don't kill people and divorce doesn't kill a marriage. If it comes to divorce, then the marriage was dead long before. The words "until we are parted by death" in the marriage service can refer not only to the two parties, but to the marriage itself.

FM: Say something about the most difficult issues you and your wife had had to come to terms with in your marriage.
Wade: Mary and I have talked about this and we agree the hardest thing for us has been giving priority to each other and making the other feel like a priority in midst of other demands on our time. As a parish priest, I was accountable to thousands of other people. Sometimes Mary was last on the list and I talked with her only after I'd talked with all the others, when I didn't have much energy left. Since I retired, it's been a different playing field, but that was our most consistent challenge.

FM: Would you call your approach "religious?"
Wade: Everything I do and say is "religious"---and Christian---because that's how I make sense out of things. But religious principles apply to everyone, even those professing no religion. Most of what I say in this book is obvious to anyone observing the world in which we live---principles don't need to be signed with a cross to make them true. I hope readers of this book who are not religious will benefit from it.

FM: What difference does religious faith make in a marriage?
Wade: God calls people into self-giving relationships. This is at the heart of most of the great religions. Marriage is such a relationship. Having a lively relationship with God helps a married couple keep focused on self-giving. Church involvement can do that, but people who merely say they believe in God have the same divorce rate as those who don't. It's for those who regularly pray with and for each other that the divorce rate drops dramatically. And I don't mean the "God please help Mary get her head screwed on right" kind of prayer. That attitude will allow anger and frustration to metastasize and kill a marriage.

FM: Explain how you hope your book will be used.
Wade: I hope this book will lead to great conversations in relationships and families. If people read it and underline it and say, "This proves that you are a jerk," the book will be useless. I hope it creates the beginning of conversations with people who might not have known they needed to talk about something. And I hope it will be useful in groups as well.

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