The Marriage as Triskelion

Heather and I have had the same argument for nineteen years.

The subject changes. The argument doesn't. Underneath every version of it is the same question, restated in a dozen different vocabularies: who is the center?

It took me a long time to realize the answer is neither of us.

The argument in most marriages — the one that sits underneath all the particular arguments — is an argument about polarity. Who has the final say. Who defers. Whose needs organize the household. Who carries the invisible weight.

Most couples resolve this by deciding, consciously or not, that one person is the center. The hub. The one whose priorities shape the system.

The system is efficient. It is also fragile. And when the person at the center burns out, breaks, or simply needs to be cared for rather than cared about, the system has no load-bearing structure to fall back on.

The triskelion is the shape I use as a mark — three spiral arms, no hub, each turning, each load-bearing, the center hollow. The early church used it to describe what the Trinity does: perichoresis, mutual indwelling, three persons each fully present, none managing the other, the whole thing held by motion rather than hierarchy.

I've been arguing, mostly to myself, for years that this is also the shape a marriage runs on. Not two people and a center. Not one person organizing the other around their priorities.

Three things: you, your spouse, and the relationship itself.

The relationship is a third living thing. It is distinct from both of you. It has its own needs, its own history, its own capacity for health and sickness. You cannot manage it by managing each other. You tend it directly, as a third thing, separately from the work of being yourself and the work of being in relationship with the other person.

Here is what this looks like practically:

There are questions only you can answer — about your own vocation, your own formation, your own wounds and their management. These belong to the first arm.

There are questions only your spouse can answer — the same category, for them. These belong to the second arm.

There are questions that belong to neither of you individually — they belong to the relationship. What does this marriage need? What has it been trying to become? What is the thing that exists between you that would disappear if either of you left? These questions can only be answered by attending to the third arm.

Most couples collapse this into two arms. They attend to themselves, and they attend to each other. The relationship itself — the third thing — goes untended. And the untended thing, in a marriage as in a garden, goes toward whatever the untended things go toward.

Heather is a florist. She thinks in terms of what a living thing needs to keep living. The flowers she works with are not decorative objects. They are organisms with water requirements, stem angles, and temperatures they can survive. The work of keeping them alive is specific and constant.

A marriage is like that. Not in a sentimental sense. In a specific, practical sense. It requires water. It has a particular temperature it can survive. You can neglect it for a while and the surface will look fine. Then it won't.

The tending is not romantic. It is not special occasions and grand gestures, though those have their place. It is the daily work of attending to a third thing — asking what it needs, not just what you need or what your spouse needs.

The line in the book I'm writing goes like this:

The marriage as Triskelion: two flawed people plus the relationship itself = three spirals turning. None alone. Together, one movement. The center hollow — not empty but kenotic, the space where the third thing forms.

Kenosis is the theological word for self-emptying. In the Trinity, each person pours toward the others. The hollow center is not a void. It is what mutual indwelling makes room for.

In a marriage, that hollow center is the relationship itself. Neither of you owns it. Both of you tend it. What lives there is not reducible to either of you individually, and it is not the average of you together. It is the third thing.

You don't manage a marriage from the center. You tend three arms.

Tend — formation for couples → tendmarriage.com · What the Triskelion Means →