Unveiling the Sacred Threads of Marriage, Family, and our Common Home
And the Lord God said: It is not good for man to be alone: let us make him a helper like unto himself.
(Genesis 2:18)
We are a mystery unto ourselves.
But if this is true, how much more is the mystery of the other? Unlike God, who, as the psalmist says, discerns our thoughts from afar (Psalm 139:2), it is beyond our ability to unveil the full depths of another's subjectivity. It is only in what she chooses to reveal—her words, her acts, her fleeting expressions—that we gain a glimpse and trace the contours of the hidden parts of the other’s inner life.1
The Mystery of Marriage
In many ways, marriage pierces the veil of mystery. In the early stages, it becomes clear that marriage is not a static state but a process of shared becoming. Over time, the married couple undergoes the most intimate uncovering of subjectivity—layers revealed gradually through the manifold acts, responses, and trials of shared matrimonial life. What begins in attraction deepens in intimacy. As intimacy grows, each spouse reveals new facets of his or her subjectivity to the other. But here lies its beauty: spousal subjectivity does not merely exist naked and uncovered—it blooms and transforms, shaped in response to the revelation itself.
Marriage, at its best, reveals the beauty and ecstasy of mutual joy. Take a wife, for example, who knows her husband’s favorite song or the thrill he feels when his team wins. It is a joy that she has learned to rejoice in, not because it was hers initially, but because it became hers through love. In shared participation, her subjectivity expands to encompass his, just as his joy is deepened by her willingness to enter it.
Of course, shared spousal subjectivity is not all sunshine and rainbows. On the contrary, in marriages soured by resentment, a wife might savor the schadenfreude she feels at her husband’s suffering and failures.2 In these cases, marriage uncovers not joy but the darker, hidden depths of the human heart, exposing pain and brokenness that otherwise remain dormant. Consider cases of infidelity or abuse: when infidelity is exposed, it unveils secrecy, a lack of trust, and unfulfilled desires that have festered within. Even in the absence of infidelity, insecurity may linger, revealing itself in habits of jealousy and suspicion and surfacing vulnerabilities that might have otherwise remained hidden. And in cases of domestic violence, we see rage and hidden frustration laid bare. Whether rooted in trauma or other causes, what are often known colloquially as “red flags” may have simmered and stewed—perhaps suppressed or overlooked—during the courting phase. Yet even in these moments of all-too-human brokenness, there are instances of redemption and reconciliation where authentic change takes root, offering a glimpse of what grace accomplishes when our weaknesses are admitted.
In any case, all these instances show us that different layers are uncovered, and how one navigates them is a cause for transformation. Thus, marriage is both a continuous revealing and a simultaneous becoming.
Close friendships also unveil this to some degree as it reveals dimensions of one’s subjectivity that remain hidden even from one’s spouse due to their shared gendered experience. For instance, consider the close friendship between two women. Through their bond, they may come to know and understand different layers of each other’s inner life—insights drawn from their shared biological and experiential basis as women that elude the husband’s grasp.
In contrast, marriage is unique in its transformation and unveiling of spousal subjectivity through the conjugal act itself, with all its attendant vulnerabilities, and in the creation of life giving rise to a new and distinct subjectivity. Indeed, the transformation and unveiling that occurs in the subjectivity of each spouse accelerates further as they confront and respond to the ever-unfolding demands of parenthood. As newly-minted parents observe one another—perhaps through the tired eyes of sleep deprivation—new dimensions of subjectivity are uncovered in their shared sacrifices as they raise and nurture not merely a newly-formed subjectivity, but their child’s very being: a life so intimately intertwined with their own. Thus, at its best, it is in marriage and parenthood that one can approximate what He knows only in divine love.
The Mystery of Family
So there is further transformation that takes place with the birth of children, both in what it demands of parents and what it reveals in their ongoing process of becoming as they navigate parenthood. Likewise, as children mature, grow, and multiply, they are known in different ways by their parents. Yet, although parents have insights into their children that others lack, their children nevertheless remain, to some degree, an enigma to them—just as parents, in turn, remain an enigma to their children. The unknown that eludes parents might be known by the child’s siblings who share a common upbringing, and are shaped by their shared responses to and experiences of their parents from the outside.
For instance, a brother and sister might be keenly attuned to the furrow in their father’s brow and the subtle twitch of his shoulders whenever their mother nags him for help around the house. Or consider a sister who sees, with painful clarity, how their father’s callous inattention affects her brother. The boy’s face falls after gleefully showing his father a painting from school, only to be met with a distracted and limp “That’s nice,” as their father quickly returns his attention to the TV. Such moments press deeply upon the boy’s heart—unnoticed by the father, but sharply felt and recognized by his sister, for she too had borne the sting of that same paternal neglect.
What is seen here is that different facets of the family are revealed uniquely to each member. Some aspects remain hidden and elude certain members while it is unveiled for others. Taken as a whole, the family all uniquely share an interplay of understanding, with some shades revealed here and there by each member. No other family can plumb its depths, though other families may find relatable moments to some degree. Nevertheless, the full range of quirks and movements of each member’s subjectivity are revealed only to themselves.
The beauty of this is that it reveals a profound truth: we are so deeply transformed by our relationships with others, especially in our formative years. We act and respond to the dynamism within the family. The bigger the family, the more that is revealed to each member, granting greater insight into the subjectivity of the familial other. To borrow the language of Jean-Louis Chrétien, there is a call and response between each member, where one’s unique being presses upon the others, and their response, in turn, transforms and grows the individual in a continual process of becoming over time.
Of course, not all families are perfect. Far too often, families fracture into resentment, rejection, isolation, abuse, and violence. Even these fractures leave an indelible mark on one’s subjectivity as life unfolds over time, their lingering effects stretching well into adulthood. This is the risk of family and the sacrificial responsibility it demands. It takes courage, restraint, and a strong moral foundation, for when one member fails, all are affected. What is revealed, then, is the enduring truth that no man is an island unto himself.
Questions Raised
But this raises further implications. Given the immense gravity of family life (or its absence) and its inextricable influence on who we are and who we become, what are the factors that promote harmony or sow division? Are there religious foundations that uphold or challenge familial bonds? What broader philosophical and cultural forces lurk beneath the surface and shape the socio-economic context in which families live and grow? And what of political arrangements—the legal structures to which families are subject and must respond to?
I will not attempt to answer these questions here; perhaps another time. But I pose them for the reader to consider: what are the external forces that are “family-affirming,” and what are those that deny it? What do these forces ultimately do to us? This is something that we must engage with seriously. After all, whether one grows up in a religious household—holding to a vision of each person formed in the imago Dei—or in a thoroughly secular household—holding to a vision of persons merely as a tornadic bundle of atoms—will have undeniable effects on who he or she becomes. Indeed, what is shaped is not only our sense of self but our mode of engagement with the very relationships through which we navigate the mystery of being.
In any event, I write this as an only child raised by a single mother, and who I am is so deeply and inextricably tied to this upbringing. Had I been raised with both parents and grown up alongside siblings, my life would be radically different than it is now. But whatever personal family arrangement we find ourselves in, it is thrust upon us—yet it is a gift thrown—a web of relationships woven with love and hate, joy and despair, anger and peace, suffering and pleasure. How we live and act shapes this web. By loving the web as our home and gift, we transform it into a common good—a common good that is neither utilitarian nor zero-sum, but one shared and non-competitive, where the good of the other is also the good of self.
This web, this common home, is given to us to navigate and grow before the unchanging eternity of God summons us to our final and fixed state at the end of time. In this web, even the smallest acts of love ripple outward across time—unfurling first in family, then to friends, and finally in our neighbor, transforming the world. As George Eliot writes:
…for the growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistoric acts; and that things are not so ill with you and me as they might have been, is half owing to the number who lived faithfully a hidden life, and rest in unvisited tombs.
In the small and faithful acts that begin in family, we see threads of eternity woven into the ordinary.
This essay is largely inspired by the philosopher Steven DeLay and the third chapter, “What Is the Problem of Intersubjectivity?”, from Before God: Exercises in Subjectivity, which can be purchased here.
Of course, what is mysterious are those inner movements of the mind that remain hidden and unconcealed in the other, the privacy of interiority not seen from the outside.
Certainly, this is often the case with exes.