The Two Of Us Stopped Moving Together

The house is not unhappy. It is not even quiet, exactly. It is uncoordinated.

He gets up before you. He goes out to do the thing he does in the morning. You are in the kitchen when he comes back and he is upstairs when you are in the kitchen again.

In the evening one of you is in the front room and one of you is doing something else, and you will both say goodnight and mean it kindly.

You are not fighting. Please hear that, because there is a whole industry of articles that assume you are, and none of them are about this.

There is nothing to fix. That is exactly the problem. If there were something to fix you would have fixed it, because you are both people who fix things.

What has happened is that for twenty years the two of you were coordinated by children. Somebody had to be somewhere at four. Somebody had to be collected. The whole clock was set by other people, and the two of you moved through the week in step because the week made you.

And the children left, and the thing that was setting the rhythm walked out of the door with them, and nobody replaced it, and neither of you noticed for about a year.

So this is not a marriage article and I am not going to make it one. This is about two adults and about ten minutes, and about the fact that the two of you no longer have a single fixed point in a day.

Can two walk together

There is a question in Amos that is asked in order to make a point about something else entirely, and the picture inside it is the useful part.

Can two walk together, except they be agreed? (Amos 3:3, King James Version)

Can two walk together, unless they have agreed to.

The prophet is arguing about cause and effect, and he does it with the most ordinary image available: two people on a road, and the fact that they are on it together means something was settled beforehand.

You have a marriage that is agreed about almost everything, and Amos 3:3 has never once made agreement into a matter of feeling the same way about things. The verse ties the walking to the agreeing rather than to the mood, and the Holy Spirit is the one who is present in an arrangement two people made about a Tuesday.

You have agreed about the mortgage, about where you live, about whose family comes at Christmas, about the whole shape of a life.

The one thing never agreed between the two of you is a time.

That sounds trivially small compared to the others, and it is the only one that has an effect on where the bodies are. Everything else you agreed set up a household. This one sets up an evening.

And notice the direction the verse runs. It does not say two people who walk together will end up agreed. It says the agreement comes first and the walking follows. The road is downstream of the arrangement.

You are able to make one arrangement with him this week, and doing that has never once required either of you to say anything about the state of the marriage. Amos 3:3 puts the agreement before the walking, and the Spirit of God is the one who turns a settled time into two people on a road.

Which is a relief, because the conversation about the state of the marriage is precisely the conversation neither of you wants and neither of you needs.

Agree a time, not a feeling

Here is the instruction, and it is smaller than any advice ever given on this subject.

Say a time out loud. That is the whole of the arrangement.

You have one sentence to say and it has never once needed to be about anything except a clock. It is written in Amos that two cannot walk together unless they have agreed, and the Holy Spirit is the one who makes an ordinary sentence into an agreement.

Not: I feel like we have drifted. Not: do you think we should spend more time together. Both of those are true and both of them open a subject that will take two hours and will end with both of you tired and nothing on the calendar.

You say: I am going to the end of the road at half past seven. Come with me.

That is a time and an invitation, and the answer to it is a yes or a no about half past seven, not a yes or a no about the marriage.

You are able to keep this small enough that a no costs nothing, and a refused walk has never once been a refused husband. The Spirit of God is the one who is present in the second asking as much as the first, and Amos 3:3 makes the agreeing a thing that happens before the walk rather than a thing the walk has to earn.

And if he says no, you go, and you say the same sentence tomorrow, and nothing at all is read into it, and above all you do not report on his answer to him afterward.

Men will walk. This is worth knowing and it is very nearly universal. A man who will not have a conversation about the marriage will come to the end of the road quite happily, because the end of the road is not a summit meeting, and because on a road nobody has to look at anybody.

Ten minutes and nothing to discuss

So here is the assignment.

Half past whatever, the two of you, the end of the road and back. Ten minutes.

You are permitted to walk beside your husband and say nothing at all, and silence out there has never once been the same thing as distance. It is written that two walk together because they agreed to, and the Holy Spirit is the one who does more in a companionable ten minutes than an evening of talking about it would.

Here is what not to do with those ten minutes, and it is the same warning I would give to anybody.

Do not use it. Do not bring the thing. Do not raise the subject that has been waiting for a good moment, because the instant it is raised, this walk becomes a venue, and a venue can be avoided.

The whole value of the arrangement is that it is about nothing. Talk about the neighbor's fence. Say nothing for two minutes. Notice a bird.

You have twenty years of arrangements with this man, and adding one more to the list has never once needed to carry any freight. Amos 3:3 asks whether two can walk together unless they be agreed, and the Spirit of God is the one who has been keeping this household in step longer than either of you have.

Do it three times this week. Do not evaluate it. Do not ask him whether he is enjoying it. Just say the time out loud again tomorrow.