Marriage exposes us, good and bad

She says she doesn’t like that part of me. Her critique annoys me. Spoils my fun. Inside, I say, “Whatever.” But I’m smart enough not to say that out loud.

Later, I’m watching a television documentary about icebergs. Yeah, I dig nature shows.

Everybody knows that, when it comes to icebergs, there is more beneath the surface of the water than above. About 90 percent more. So, if you ever see an iceberg, you know that you’re not seeing much at all. Said another way, no matter how beautiful and compelling what your eyes behold, you still largely have no idea what you are beholding.

Until the iceberg rolls over.

Yep, you can see myriad examples of this on YouTube. Large ’bergs and small ones. The Arctic and the Antarctic. It’s breathtaking, really. The power of it. The mystery of it.

The ice roars. Shudders. It rolls over, exposing ice that, until now, has hidden beneath the waves. Lurked in the dark and the silence. It was always there. But now it’s visible, glistening in the sunshine.

And I say to myself, “Oh my. This is marriage.”

You marriage veterans — think back to the exact moment you first laid eyes on your spouse. Where are you? Is it day or night? What are you wearing? What is the occasion of this first meeting? That is, how does it happen? What do you remembering seeing? Hearing? Smelling?

Feeling?

You were looking at the tip of an iceberg.

Researchers (see Harville Hendrix, et al) have long speculated that courtship attraction and attachment contain many layers beyond the apparent, visible and obvious. You might say you are very attracted to a person with attributes A, B, C, etc., yet you don’t exchange phone numbers with just anyone wielding those attributes.

Researchers believe you are also responding, albeit unconsciously, to psychic content “beneath the surface.”

Ask any veteran couples counselor: When spouse A complains about spouse B, it’s astonishing how A’s pain, fear and heartache is comparable, similar or sometimes identical to a pain, fear and heartache from the past. How spouse B reminds spouse A of his or her mother or father.

Marriage researchers speculate that we choose our mate both consciously and unconsciously. Consciously, we fall in love with noticeable attributes (e.g., smart, funny, shared values, butt looks good in jeans, you smell good, etc.). But unconsciously, we “pick” exactly the right person to provoke, to stir up, to replay old wounds and promote healing. Exactly the right person to call us out on our psychological immaturities and challenge us to grow up.

In marriage, this happens without either party intending for it to happen. All you have to do is exchange marriage vows, move in together, and sooner or later that which is beneath the surface will start to shudder and roar. The whole of you and your mate rolls over into the light.

This is the very nature of marriage. It is the very design of marriage. It is why I will die saying that the core of marriage is not, in fact, romance, sentiment and eroticism. The core of marriage is vocation. “Marriage is a people growing machine” (see David Schnarch).

Don’t get married unless you think it’s a good thing to be totally, radically exposed.

Because you will be. Love grows intimacy. And intimacy exposes us.

My beloved knows — and has experienced — everything about me that is lovely and virtuous. And my beloved knows — and has experienced — everything about me that is unlovely and lacking virtue.

Ironic, yes? We focus the best of ourselves to win our mate’s heart. Then, later, on the strength of that loving, committed platform, we share our worst.

There can be no other way.

It’s an odd compliment really. The reason our beloved receives the “privilege” of seeing our dark, small, selfish, irritable and icky qualities and the clerk at Walgreens does not is because we trust our beloved in ways we don’t trust the clerk at Walgreens.

Love melts us. Then the whole of us — good and bad — rolls over into the daylight.

Marriage exposes everything about you that requires healing, development and redemption. Because these things must be exposed before healing, development and redemption are possible.

The experience will regularly be uncomfortable. But the discomfort is not, in fact, evidence you have married the wrong person.

Rather, it is chief evidence that you have married exactly the right person.

Steven Kalas is a behavioral health consultant and counselor at Las Vegas Psychiatry and the author of “Human Matters: Wise and Witty Counsel on Relationships, Parenting, Grief and Doing the Right Thing” (Stephens Press). His columns appear on Mondays. Contact him at 702-227-4165 or skalas@reviewjournal.com.