Destructive to marriage is the self-fulfilling prophecy that assumes marriage and family are primary institutions of personal fulfillment. The assumption today is that there is someone just right for you to marry and if you look close enough you will find that right person. This fails to appreciate a simple fact: that you always marry the wrong person. We may never know whom we marry, we just think we do. Or, if you do marry the right person, just give it time and they will change. For marriage, being the enormous thing that it is, means that we are not the same person ourselves, even after we have entered into it. That means the primary challenge of marriage is learning how to love and care for the stranger to whom you often find yourself married.
- Stanley Hauerwas
