If we forget who we are, we forget how to act.
And when we forget how to act, love becomes distorted, especially in marriage.
In the last post, I wrote about how living out of sync with God’s rhythm can lead to deep spiritual unrest. That same unrest also appears in our relationships, especially in marriage.
When we ignore the sacred pattern God built into human love, when we try to rewrite the design, we stop acting like man and woman. We become competitors. Roommates. Co-managers of a shared calendar.
And it breaks us.
This is why Pope John Paul II, in his Letter to Families, called marriage a “great mystery”, a sacrament so sacred it mirrors the love between Christ and the Church. That mystery isn’t meant to be solved. It’s meant to be entered into with awe and reverence.
Marriage, like the Trinity, is unity with distinction. Three Persons, one God. Two persons, one flesh. Equal in dignity, different in role.
Our modern world balks at this. We’ve been trained to believe that obedience means weakness, that following another means being less than. But this thinking is not just misguided, it’s disordered.
And disorder always breeds division.
We see this clearly in marriage. When roles become blurred or when one partner resists the natural rhythm of give and receive, something precious is lost. Love becomes transactional. Leadership becomes resented. And the dance of marriage turns into a tug-of-war.
But Scripture reminds us that Adam, when he first sees Eve, says, “At last! Bone of my bone, flesh of my flesh.” She is not beneath him—she completes him. He is vertical, toward the Father. She is horizontal, completing the design. Together, they become fruitful.
This is why homes need order, just as businesses do. Not hierarchy in the worldly sense, but structure, rooted in love. The husband leads, the wife influences, both mutually giving, both equal in dignity, yet distinct in their callings, just as in the Trinity.
To reject this order is to invite chaos, not only in households but in hearts.
And again, as Father Dominic said: Insanity is the result of disorder.
So what if your marriage isn’t broken? What if it’s just out of rhythm?
What if your role isn’t to fix your spouse, but to return to your true essence… so that your actions can flow from love, not fear?
What if order brings freedom?
What if surrender restores sanity?
Because peace isn’t passive, it’s the fruit of right relationship, with God, with each other, and with the roles we were lovingly designed to play.