I Don’t Expect My Kids to Get Married

Train up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not depart from it.

— Proverbs 22:6 (NKJV)

As I entered adulthood, I faced pressure from my dad to get hitched. My parents thought that I “used to” struggle with same-sex attraction after a most complicated religious experience. I could likely write an entire post on that experience alone, but to put it succinctly: I encountered grace in such a way that made me know and love God more and caused lust to lie low for years.

However, I still had loads of shame tucked away, the experience didn’t shift my physical attractions toward the opposite sex, and if you scratched far enough below the surface, I most assuredly still liked guys.

I was confused by what happened and wrestled to settle in on language to describe the experience. It’s no wonder my dad was bewildered about my sexuality — him and me both! But what proved more difficult was how he latched onto the encounter as if to say, “Oh good, that’s in the past now — let’s get down to business and find him a woman!”

My dad feared that his firstborn, high-achieving boy wouldn’t have someone to love him. Someone who might supply my dad with grandchildren. Someone who might curb anything like same-sex attraction from rearing its head again.

With homophobic fears lingering, my father set me up on date after date, even plotting whether a girl’s parents could help set up the perfect match.

Amid my own confusion, I knew I wanted to take things slower. I wasn’t sure what had happened to me. I knew I had drawn close to God, but I wanted to know God and love Him well before thinking about directing my life toward marriage or celibacy. I disclosed this desire with my dad — to take it slow — on a walk around our local neighborhood. He was so taken aback that he had an emotional breakdown later that day. I cannot begin to understand what he felt.

Disappointment in his efforts failing.

Fear of his son’s experience of desire.

Dread of a future unknown.

It was quite a rocky relationship thereafter. He seemed to have given up hope, meeting questions of mind with despair, while I finally felt a little freedom to breathe. I had space to pray, worship, and come close to God before thinking through just what my life could look like. And when I innocently and trepidatiously followed the path to marriage, it felt like it was mine and not one pressured onto me.

My dad managed to come around, after my marriage. He sees how my wife and I have more kids than either side of our family has ever housed under one roof. He smiles and laughs with them as he makes the same goofy jokes I heard as a boy.

The bite comes when he does something off-putting, like mocking the “gay accent.” As much as I want to correct him and reprocess my experience, I fear his mental health would only take a heavy blow. Who knows, it might happen in the future, but what matters more to me is how the continued experience helps direct how I love my own kids.

I’m now on the forefront of learning how to “train up a child in the way he should go,” but just what should that look like? None of my kids are anywhere close to marrying age. My main focus right now is making sure they don’t poop on any of our rugs. However, I still perceive vestiges of my past, little thoughts of how I could pair them as partners for marriage.

If my life has taught me anything on this point, I know that I desire to give my children freedom to love God more. I don't know what God is calling each of them to, and I do not want marriage idolized as the best or only path for how they may know Christ.

Plus, I don’t know how many of them will be straight. My own experience proved complicated enough in describing passion and dispassion, so it may take time to settle on what desire looks like for each of my kids.

As they discern, I want to show my children the rich beauty and the presence of God in how we may live our lives. I want to show them the beauty and joy of monasticism in my tradition. I want to show them the power and depth known in a life devoted to God while living in the world in celibacy, both from my parish and from other brothers (to them, “uncles”) with whom they’ve grown up. I want to show them sacrificial love through how my wife and I attend to each other, even after the most chaotic of days.

I want them to know that life is beautiful in Christ, no matter what God calls them toward or what they must give up to follow Him or how messy their stories might get in figuring themselves out.

So, no, I don’t expect my kids to get married.

I expect that they will know parents who love them and will show them Christ.

And I expect that as they know Him, He will bring them into the ways each of them should go.

Have you felt parental pressure toward a specific path for your life? How do you show to your family and others the beauty of Christ in your own pattern of life? What has discernment of your path looked like in knowing Christ?