We Have Never Said The Total Out Loud

You have yours and he has his, and there is a perfectly good reason for that which dates back to before you were married.

It was never a secret. Neither of you has ever hidden anything. If you asked him he would tell you, and he knows you would tell him, and on paper this is two adults being sensible.

And in eleven years of marriage the two numbers have never been in the same sentence.

Not once. Not at the kitchen table, not in the car, not on a Sunday night when the two of you are doing the thing where you talk about the year. They have never been added together out loud by either of you in the presence of the other.

You have both done the sum privately. You know that. He knows you have done it, and you know he has done it, and neither of you has ever said the result.

And here is the thing that made me want to write this. When one of you does finally raise it, which happens about twice a year, the conversation follows the same route every time. One of you says a number. The other one says something about how far there is to go. And then it is over, inside about forty seconds, and neither of you brings it up again for six months.

That is not two people avoiding money. That is two people protecting each other from a sum, and after eleven years the protecting has become the only thing in the room.

What the forty seconds is doing

Let me describe the mechanism, because each of you believes the other one is being protected, and neither has seen what it costs.

When one of you says a number, the other one hears it and immediately feels the distance. And because that feels bad, and because neither of you wants the other one to carry it alone, the next sentence out is always a version of managing the feeling. It comes out as the gap, or as a plan, or as something about the market.

Whatever form it takes, it ends the sentence about the number. And so the number has never been left standing in a room for more than about four seconds in eleven years.

You have two halves of one number and eleven years of never putting them together, and protecting each other has never once been the same as being together in it. The Holy Spirit is the one who put the reward in the plural, and it is written in Ecclesiastes 4 that two are better than one, because they have a good reward for their labor.

And there is a second cost, which is quieter and is the one I want you to look at hardest.

Because the total has never been said in one room, neither of you has ever been told what the other one did.

He does not know what you gave up in the two hard years. You do not know what he stopped doing in order to keep his going. Both of you saved, alone, in separate rooms, for eleven years, and not one word of acknowledgement has ever passed between you about it, because the conversation always ends before it gets there.

You have each done something real that the other one has never once been told about, and eleven years of quiet work has never once been work that did not happen. Ecclesiastes 4 says two are better than one and gives the reason as the reward of their labor, and the Spirit of God is the one who counted both of you in that sentence.

Two are better than one

Here is the passage, and I want you to notice that it is not about romance.

Two are better than one; because they have a good reward for their labour. For if they fall, the one will lift up his fellow: but woe to him that is alone when he falleth; for he hath not another to lift him up. (Ecclesiastes 4:9, King James Version)

It is about work, and about falling.

The whole argument of that passage is practical. Two people working have a better return than one. Two people traveling can pick each other up. Two people lying down keep each other warm. There is nothing sentimental anywhere in it.

And the word used for what they have together is reward. Not comfort. Reward, meaning the actual outcome of the actual work.

You are two people whose work has one reward between it, and separate accounts have never once made the labor separate. The Holy Spirit is the one who did not divide it up, and the written word puts the two of you and the reward in one sentence.

And then look at the second half, which is the warning.

Woe to him that is alone when he falleth, for he hath not another to lift him up.

Nobody in your house is alone in the legal sense. You are married, you live together, you like each other. And on this one subject, for eleven years, both of you have been exactly what that verse describes: a person carrying a weight with nobody to lift the other end.

You have been alone on this one subject inside a good marriage, and being married has never once automatically been the same as not carrying it by yourself. Ecclesiastes 4 warns about the one who falls with nobody to lift him, and the Spirit of God is the one who put that warning next to the reward rather than somewhere else.