What Is Your Marriage Worth?

Published December 9, 1983. If your marriage is like ours, you often begin projects that you have a difficult time finishing. Or maybe they never should have been started in the first place. Sometimes these projects become a major source of contention in the marriage.

For instance, a few years ago we were living in Wisconsin and decided our house needed a coat of paint. A paint contractor gave us a bid of $500 to complete the job. We later figured if we painted it ourselves we could save about $200. So with good intentions we set about to do so.

Spring arrived, and we began our house-paining project. It was warm weather, husband and wife cheerfully began painting, and a pitcher of iced Kool-Aid was on the patio table. It was a scene worthy of a Norman Rockwell painting.

But that is about where the pleasant part ended. After starting, we learned that almost all of the old paint had to be scraped off, which took much more time and work than we anticipated. We would also have to apply a primer coat, which we had not known. Then we found out that Susan became nauseated with the smell of paint. In addition, at the university where I was teaching summer school, some unexpected projects came up which also required a great deal of time and effort.

To make a long story short, our house-painting project to save $200 began to drag on and on. We started scraping and painting on one end of the house, and as time passed on it stood as monument of our inability to finish a major project we had started. And our painting project, or lack of it, became the object of many good-natured jokes with our neighbors.

As the spring weather began to disappear, so did our patience, first with our project, next with ourselves, and finally with each other. Each afternoon as I arrived home from work, the unfinished, unpainted house stood there to defiantly greet me as I drove into the driveway. It was truly a frustrating experience in our marriage.

After dinner one evening, I knew I was supposed to go out and either scrape, prime, or paint. But I was exhausted. So Susan and I sat down and re-examined the situation. We recalled the original bid of $500 for the professional painter to come and paint our house. We were sincere and perhaps even justified in our efforts to save $200 by painting it ourselves. But in the process we also realized that the project had become a major source of contention in our marriage. And we both agreed that our marriage was worth more to us than $200.

So the next day we went down to the credit union, borrowed the $500 and called the painter. It was one of the wisest things we ever did and one of the best investments we ever made in our marriage. We were able to go on and enjoy what otherwise would have become a very frustrating summer. And besides that, the painter did a much better job on our house.

It often amazes me how much money people will justify borrowing or spending on items or projects of personal interest. But when it comes to borrowing or spending money to avoid something that is a source of contention in a marriage, what penny pinchers we become. Exactly how much money is a marriage worth anyway?

Be careful not to begin projects you can’t finish. Does that seem like contemporary advice? It isn’t. Several hundred years ago Jesus noted: “For which of you, intending to build a tower, sitteth not down first, and counteth the cost, whether he have sufficient to finish it? Lest haply, after he hath laid the foundation, and is not able to finish it, all that behold it begin to mock him, Saying, This man began to build, and was not able to finish” (Luke 14:28-30).