Conversation on our life together

by Rita Polatin with contributions from Val and Mark Unger

Recently, VAL and MARK UNGER from Ashland, Massachusetts, sat down with Rita Polatin of the Christian Science Sentinel to talk about their marriage.

CLICK HERE to listen to the program or read the transcript that follows:

Rita Polatin: I know you two have been married for a long time.

Val Unger: 31 years!

Rita: What were you thinking about when you first got married, and how has your marriage evolved?

Val: It’s interesting you ask that question, because even now I go back to why we originally got married, and it has been a real rock for me. Because when we met, we were both very independent.

Mark Unger: We still are. (Laughter.)

Val: When we started talking about getting married and joining households, I went to God. Apart from Mark, I just went to God and said: “You know I love You, Father. I need to hear from You that this is the right thing.” Because I felt so clearly that my life was about learning more about God. And that needed to be part of this marriage.

And the answer that I got was wonderful. It was that I would be able to do more for God, and more for others, married to this man, than I would by myself. And that was an answer that I understood. I didn’t know the full implications of that at the time, but what occurred to me was that we would be able to support each other in our spiritual progress; that we would nurture each other, care for each other, strengthen each other, and that we would be able to move forward in that way.

Rita: Did you feel the same way, Mark?

Mark: Well, yeah, you know, in order for people to get married, they usually find something they have in common. And actually, for Val and me, what we found in common mostly was our love for God, our spirituality. We said we were independent, I mean, we were independent to the point where I don’t think either one of us was even planning on getting married! So when this idea came to us, we both had to ask God: “What’s this all about? How is this going to help my spiritual growth?” I’d been in Christian Science all my life, and I’d introduced it to Val. She was reading Science and Health, and so was I.
This sentence from the chapter “Marriage” really stood out to me: “Consider its obligations, its responsibilities, its relations to your growth and to your influence on other lives” ( p. 68). I thought: “Yeah, that makes sense, based on our relationship so far; I feel this relationship will bring a stability to my life. We will be able to support each other in our spiritual growth. We will be able to do more for the world.” Here we are 31 years later, and I will say that has definitely been the case.

Rita: But growing isn’t always easy.

Val: No, it’s not.

Rita: And it takes some work sometimes.

Val: Yes, I think when you have two real independent thinkers, one of the things that probably needs smoothing are the bents toward selfishness, or self-interest, self-indulgence, all those “selfs.” And in the early years, we bumped up against the same kind of problems every young married couple bumps up against. You have to think through and talk through things like money issues, how you deal with the in-laws, divvying up chores.

Rita: They affect everyday life.

Mark: In our marriage, we’ve always turned to God, to what I feel is an infinite, loving Presence, to find out how we need to be thinking about whatever the issue is. I listen for answers. I try to humble myself. I try to find out what I can learn, and how I can do better. So it’s prayer, basically.

Rita: So you approach every problem with prayer.

Val: Well, eventually. (Laughter.) That comes with experience. Rather than stewing about something a long time, you get right to it, because you realize that if you’re feeling annoyed, that’s an imposition on your thought. It doesn’t make you feel good. And it certainly isn’t God-expressed, which is what we are as God’s reflection, as the reflection of Love. So if I’m feeling annoyed, where’s God in that? I want to make sure that I’m rejecting that thought as an intrusion into my experience, and then getting to what life is about, which is love—and in this case loving my husband.

Mark: I will ditto that you get to prayer eventually. In the first years of marriage, resolving problems for me was really about changing my wife to the way I think. Finally, you go to God in prayer. And it took me years to figure this out, that it’s not about changing the other person to your methods and your ways of thinking; it’s about hearing from God, how is God directing you to think? What’s the loving approach? You’ve got to actually come together with somebody who thinks differently from you. And that’s where I think I’ve found there are no solutions without God.

Rita: When we’re talking about being unselfish and more loving and all those things, a lot of people say, “It takes sacrifice.” Now sacrifice can feel like, “OK, well, you have to give up all your hopes, dreams, and wants for somebody else.”

Val: You know, I’m going to give you an even more powerful word: surrender. And not to Mark, not to a husband, but to God. And I can tell you about a pretty rough experience that we worked through.

Mark: In the beginning of our marriage, we dealt with mainly small problems. Even though there were big issues, we just couldn’t deal with them. How we thought about finances was one of those big issues that we never really completely dealt with. I mean, we kind of tried to compromise here and there.
And later into our marriage, we had to face a serious financial issue. It came to the point where Val’s overspending was getting to me. And I had come to a place where I was a lot more patient, I was a lot more willing to sort of see her side of things and go along with it and trust God. But it had been a few years, and we were getting into debt. And I was really praying about this.

It occurred to me that what she was doing was really unfair, it was dishonest, and I realized I had to take a serious step. I actually went to Val, and I said: “If this is the way you’re going to spend money, I can’t live like this. As much as I love you, I cannot continue in this marriage.” I even said that we needed to figure out a plan together to pay it back. So I was putting our whole marriage “on the altar.” I knew that she wouldn’t take this very well.

Val: And I didn’t take it well at first. I was furious; very, very angry and defensive. But I knew that I had built up a substantial debt. And I also had a million and one ways to justify this. I thought: “Well, if I could talk to him and communicate with him, this wouldn’t be a problem. If he loved me enough, this wouldn’t be a problem.” And quite frankly, one of my initial reactions was, Fine! I started mentally divvying up the household. Like, “OK, I’m ready to go my own way so I can live the way I want to live.” But the thing is, I really loved Mark, and I went back to that “rock” I talked about earlier.

When I calmed down, what I realized was that I really wasn’t proud of the way I’d been spending money. Especially not discussing the big-ticket purchases with Mark. One thing that occurred to me was, as the Bible says, “What therefore God hath joined together, let not man put asunder,” meaning me putting us asunder in this particular case ( Matt. 19:6).

I felt like I needed help, so I called a Christian Science practitioner. Now when I was talking to this practitioner, it was pretty much a rant for a while—very tearful, lots of self-justification—but I did get this story out to her. And I also did communicate to her my desire to work this through. She was very quiet during the call. And when I finally wound down, she said, “Well, you know what the Bible says, that’a wife cares how she may please her husband'” (see I Cor. 7:34). This was so not what I wanted to hear!

I think I was angrier when I got off the phone with the practitioner than I was after I’d talked to Mark. But I realized, too, that this must have touched something in me for me to react that strongly. So I really went on my mental knees, and my prayer was very simple: “God, help. I need help to figure this out.” And I just immediately got such a rush of wonderful, comforting thoughts.

The one thing that really stands out to me today, as I think back on it, was the need for humility. That I needed to humble myself enough to be willing to see that those qualities [associated with overspending] were not qualities I wanted to bring to a marriage, and that they were standing in my way. And that I needed to be willing to let them go. I needed to surrender to God; to listen to God for how I needed to move forward in life in a way that was consistent with morality, honesty. So I could walk in humility with my husband, hand in hand.

My prayer was very simple: “God, help. I need help to figure this out.” And I just immediately got such a rush of wonderful, comforting thoughts.

Rita: And, you know, God does want good for us. Sometimes it feels like, “Well, then, we’re going to have to suffer, or do without.” But it’s really the opposite, isn’t it?

Val: Yes, it is. So over the course of a few days, I realized I needed to be willing to change. I needed to be willing to pay off the debt. I needed to be willing to discuss this with Mark in a way that wasn’t fraught with emotion, but was really solidly based on a sincere desire to promote good and honesty within our marriage.

So I did go to him and tell him that I wanted to try to work this through, and that I was willing to do whatever it took. It took a few days for me to really get there. We would talk, and then I’d have to go and pray about it. And then we’d talk again, and I’d have to go pray about it some more. But eventually we worked up a plan. We paid off the debt much more quickly than we thought we would and I stopped the overspending.

The golden nugget of this was how it brought Mark and me together, and how we were able to communicate much more easily about money, and how I was willing to respect his position. And I think he’s come to respect my desire for spontaneity a little bit. In fact, it’s sort of funny. Recently he spent money on a Christmas gift for me, and I looked at him and said, “Do we have it in the budget?” I was concerned about it, which was such a flip-flop.

Mark: It did bring us closer. We’ve communicated better ever since. And of course, during those days, I was praying too because I didn’t know which way things were going to go. I had to know that God was taking care of us. If God had brought us together, God would keep us together.

Rita, you were asking about sacrifice. And what I’ve found, both in marriage and in life, is that the more I give, the more I gain. It’s not a sacrifice at all. It seems like it is at first. And I think one of the big things that I’ve seen in our marriage is—for years and years, I had all these expectations. I expected my wife to be a certain way, and I expected her to fulfill all my dreams. And when that didn’t happen—and no person can fulfill those kinds of things that you think you want—it forced me to go to God and find a higher source for my happiness, a higher sense of love, that comes from God. I realized, through much prayer, that I had to quit focusing on areas I felt Val was lacking in, and start magnifying all the wonderful qualities that she expressed all the time. And boy, as soon as I did that, I started loving her even more.

I just really started appreciating Val and trying to help her each day, to help her be happy, to say nice things, to do nice things. I love what Mrs. Eddy said in Science and Health—and it took me years to figure out that she really knew what she was talking about here—”Husbands, hear this and remember how slight a word or deed may renew the old trysting-times” ( p. 59). And trysting-times are those fun times of togetherness. So my message to all men out there is, that statement is so true!

Val: One thing Mark does for me is every night when I get home in the winter, there’s a fire going in the fireplace. I feel his love every evening in that simple thing that he does.

Mark: Instead of sacrifice, what I’ve found is this tremendous joy in doing those things. It has added so much to my life. And what it adds to our marriage has been phenomenal.

Originally published in the Christian Science Sentinel, January 14, 2008.