A bruised and battered woman, a celebrity male. Emotion, passion, codependency, a baby, money, fame. All on awkward public display. The sad story of NFL player Ray Rice and his wife Janay. It has played out many times in many ways as long as men and women have been uniting in love or lust or both. In the middle of all the conjecture about why his anger leads to violence and why she is so ready to defend him, something stands out to me.
Regardless of whether you see marriage as ‘fair’ or not, the majority of women end up hitching their lives to a man in a vast leap of faith. Granted, the man is taking some risk, too. But, culturally and biologically and practically, it is the woman whose identity becomes subsumed in the relationship. She becomes wife and mother. He remains identified by what he does.
One feminist response has been: Women must be independent of men if they are to thrive. Men cannot be trusted. Who am I to blame them? When we live in a culture where the first thought upon seeing a woman with a bruise is “Who hit her?”, something is dreadfully off track. But in spite of that, men and women keep trying. We still need each other in ways profound and mysterious and fundamental.
In the ‘Why I stayed’ narrative, we hear horrific tales of other women trapped in dangerous relationships. We hear about why women are afraid to leave and what may be the root cause for men’s anger. But I wonder, where are the men saying: we need to be worthy of the trust women place in us?
In the “Liturgy of Solemnization of Matrimony" from the Anglican Book of Common prayer, mostly unchanged since 1559, are these familiar words:
I _________ take thee ________ to be my wedded Wife, to have and to hold from this day forward, for better for worse, for richer for poorer, in sickness and in health, to love and to cherish, till death us do part, according to God's holy ordinance; and thereto I plight thee my troth.*
That section is followed by one that has become less popular over time:
WITH this Ring I thee wed, with my Body I thee worship, and with all my worldly Goods I thee endow: In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.
Those lines “with my Body I thee worship” call to mind even older words: Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ also loved the church and gave Himself for her.
In the middle of calls for prosecutions and resignations and “something needs to be done”, the most compelling alternative is the man who can answer with one, and only one example: his treatment of the woman who has risked her personhood by committing her life to his. The testimony that this woman has always been and will always be safe with him.
For those men I know who are walking that path, thank you for the example you are setting in your home, your extended family, your community. Thank you for teaching by example that women are to be honored, protected and cherished. Thank you for laying down your life for the sake of another. That is manhood. And that is why she will stay.
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*Here is an excellent explanation of “I plight thee my troth”. But to spare you the lengthy, delightful linguistic detail, a more modern rendering and just as meaningful is “I promise you I will be true”.
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