The Security of Marriage Is an Illusion

If anyone has ever told you they stood underneath their wedding canopy with 100% confidence they were making the right decision—they are lying.

Many of us have been blessed with that deep feeling, “This is my person.” But even with that “beyond us” inner voice still comes A LOT. OF. FEAR.

While hopefully excited to choose this person, there is still that whisper: What if I am making the wrong choice? What if we don’t make it?

Because choosing someone in marriage is enormous.

Underneath the chuppah, we aren’t just saying, I love you. I want you. I choose you today.

We are saying: I am choosing to build my life with you.

I don’t know who you will become. I don’t know who I will become. I don’t know what life is going to throw at us. I don’t know what challenges will press against us or how either of us will be changed by them.

And still—

I choose you.

Maybe that is what we get wrong about the security of marriage.

We want to believe that if we chose the “right” person, we should somehow feel certain. That there should be this deep knowing that says: Yes. This is going to work. We are going to make it.

But nobody gets that promise.

Twenty years down the line, when you’ve hopefully built a beautiful life together, you still can’t see the future. You still don’t know what the next twenty years will bring.

Marriage is not a guarantee.

Marriage is a commitment.

I am choosing this person, and I am consciously going to do everything I can to make this work.

And then we make that choice over and over and over again.

Maybe that is exactly why I can’t stop thinking about marriage as we enter Sukkot.

For one week, we leave the solidity of our homes and move into these temporary structures.

Every sukkah has its own unique style and structure, often representative of the personality of its builders. Some are beautifully decorated. Some are thrown together. Some feel incredibly sturdy.

And some shake with every gust of wind.

We sit inside them anyway.

We eat there. We gather there. We sing there. Some of us even sleep there.

We make a home inside something we can literally look at and know is vulnerable.

Maybe that is the point.

Because our permanent homes aren’t really as permanent as they feel either.

We move through everyday life believing in the security of our routines. There is work tomorrow. School tomorrow. Dinner to make. Laundry waiting. People relying on us. Plans for next week and next year.

And then sometimes life reminds us how little of it we actually control.

Poof.

Everything can change.

In the sukkah, we don’t get to pretend otherwise.

We sit underneath s’chach—raw branches and vegetation, more shade than sun, with the open sky just beyond it.

And we remember the Ananei HaKavod, the Clouds of Glory. We remember that our protection was never supposed to come entirely from the strength of the structure around us.

We choose to trust this vulnerable structure night after night over the week of Sukkot.

Sometimes we even leave for the day and wonder: Will my sukkah still be standing when I get home? Will it tolerate the wind? The first seasonal rain?

And don’t we wonder the same thing about our marriages?

Can this structure handle what life is going to throw at it?

We don’t know.

So again and again, we choose faith in the structure of marriage.

We strengthen its walls when they take a beating. We tighten and fasten things when the structure shakes.

And we look up.

May we spend this holiday feeling the chuppah energy of our sukkah.

May we look up through the vulnerable roof and remember that security was never the promise.

The promise was that we would keep choosing, keep building, keep strengthening the walls—and that Hashem would be there with us in the spaces where the light comes through.

And may the homes we build remain energetically open. Our chuppah stands open on all four sides, and during Sukkot we open our temporary homes to the Ushpizin. May the homes we build through our marriages carry that same energy—open to children, family, guests, community, and blessing.

May we feel the joy of living a life of commitment to another person—of growing, maturing, building, repairing, and choosing again and again.

May we be blessed with the eyes to continually see our blessings and feel open-hearted love.

Chag Sameach!