Features Modern Marriage

Modern Marriage: An Interview with Professor Coolman

February 26, 2020
Patrick Stallwood
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As the American divorce rate hovers around 50%, examples of happy marriages increasingly stand out as the exception—yet most of our fellow Boston College students, statistically speaking, will be married in the future. The interview series “Modern Marriage” aims to provide encouragement and insight to young people as we consider what a healthy marriage looks like. 

This month, Patrick Stallwood spoke to Professor Boyd Coolman of the BC Theology Department.

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  1. Tell us about your spouse. How long have you two been married? I married Holly Ann Taylor in 1992, but we met 7 years prior to that, so we’ve known each other for 35 years—about two-thirds of my life! How can I begin to describe Holly in a few sentences? She is simply an amazing person— faith-filled, beautiful, brilliant, strong, thoughtful, determined, competent. She is a loving wife and the devoted mother of our five children, ranging in age from 23 to 11. She is currently the chair of the Theology Department at Providence College. Over the past three plus decades, we’ve journeyed together through two undergraduate degrees, four graduate degrees in theology (including PhD’s from Notre Dame and Duke), five adoptions, two tenured professorships, and one campaign for local political office.
  2. How did you first meet? We first met in 1985 as freshmen at Wheaton College (in Illinois). I don’t recall the first time we were introduced, but at some point in the spring semester, I began to take an interest in her. But there is a backstory to that: I was on the basketball team and several of my teammates were friends of hers from high school. Behind the scenes, they were maneuvering to get us together, which machinations culminated in a basketball team Spring Break trip to her hometown near Ft. Lauderdale, where, completely by coincidence, I ended up being housed at her home. Of course, she was home for spring break too! The rest, as they say, is history.   
  3. How did you get to know each other better after that first meeting? We had our first date in the spring of 1986, at the end-of-year banquet for the basketball team. We dated, on and off, through the rest of our time at Wheaton, but then went our separate ways after graduation in 1989. Then, late in 1991, we got back together, got engaged, and were married the following August. Yes, there’s a longer story there!  
  4. What is it like to discern marriage? Have you discerned any other vocations before that? We both grew up evangelical Protestants and had become Episcopalians just before we married. So, both of us assumed we would marry. Our discernment question, accordingly, was not whether to marry, but whom. On that score, I would offer these 3 principles, as general guidelines:
    • Beware of “chemistry”: opposites attract, but likes should marry.
    • Dating, though good and necessary (I heartily endorse “bring back the date”), does not actually tell you much about what being married to someone will be like.
    • You always marry a family of origin.
  5. How does your wife help you grow in faith? So many ways! The first, which can’t be understated, is simply our shared commitment to our Catholic faith and its foundational centrality in our lives. She also is excellent about always keeping the question of discipleship front and center of our daily lives. It’s very easy to fall into an autopilot mentality in family life—just keeping the trains running on time and never stepping back to say “how then should we live?” today—in light of the resources and abilities we’ve been given, the circumstances in which we find ourselves, the needs that surround us, and the opportunities afforded us. How should be faithful stewards of our time, treasure, and talents?
  6. What was something that you learned about marriage, through experience, that has surprised you? Marriage is far more difficult and demanding than most unmarried people assume. One of the many cultural myths surrounding marriage is that if you make a good choice—discern well the right spouse—then your marriage will more or less “click.” Sure, you’ll need to work at it, but nonetheless with a little effort everything should go fairly smoothly and happily. Thus, as soon it becomes apparent that the spouses are not “in sync,” and can’t seem easily to get there, many couples conclude that they’ve chosen the wrong person, and so divorce, and then try again to discern the right person. A BC colleague of mine likes to say: “you always marry the wrong person.” The homily at our wedding began with these words, the priest looking directly at us: “The two of you are not right for each other!” I was taken aback when it happened, and most people are perplexed when I relate that story, which is a good index I think of how pervasive the myth is.
  7. You’re answering these questions while on paternity leave (congratulations!). Why is paternity leave so important for families? Two reasons seem obvious to me: First, it enables and encourages fathers to cultivate strong relationships with their children very early in a child’s life. Second, and this is a much larger cultural issue, it makes it clear that the work-family relationship should implicate fathers as well as mothers. If only mothers take family leave, it suggests (wrongly in my view) that fathers’ professional lives shouldn’t be as implicated by family issues and responsibilities as the professional lives of mothers. In my view, there are many social issues confronting us today that won’t be properly solved until we’re willing as a society to make family a higher priority in our economy generally and particularly in the way that employers accommodate and support families.
  8. What is it like to be an adoptive father? What have you and your wife learned by being adoptive parents? So many things, but perhaps best noted here is the surprising way that raising adopted children prevents (or at least discourages) the subtle and unconscious tendency to think of one’s children as miniature versions and extensions of oneself. The first time someone remarked on some natural or innate quality of one of my children, I politely accepted the compliment, but in my head I was thinking— “well, he didn’t get it from me!” Somehow, it seems easier to see adopted children as separate and unique individuals, with their own mysterious ensemble of shape and size, traits and talents, inclinations and abilities, personhood and personality.
  9. Let’s say you encounter a college student today right off the street. What do you think they need to hear about marriage? Besides the point above about the demanding nature of marriage, I would add the following:
    • Marriage should be viewed as a schola caritatis—a school where genuine love is learned. But “school” may be too mild; “crucible” is more apt, since marriage requires a constant learning to die to self. Marriage is cruciform. The matter could be put thus: the fundamental goal of marriage is holiness not happiness. Don’t misunderstand: marriage often brings intense happiness, but as Remi Brague once shrewdly noted: “the snag about happiness is that it is never reached when you set it as your goal.” I think many people wrongly assume that happiness, rather than holiness, personal gratification rather than deep formation in sacrificial love, is the goal of marriage
    • An abiding commitment to marriage generally, as a sacred, divinely-instituted and sacramental reality, is a necessary foundation for a commitment to any particular marriage. In order for a marriage to succeed, both spouses have to believe in marriage qua marriage, unconditionally. An illustration from my own family: Shortly after they wed, my great-grandmother discovered that during their courtship her new husband had successfully concealed, among other disgusting personal habits, an addiction to chewing tobacco. Worse, he had no intention of reforming. Eventually fed up, she hitched the horse to the wagon (yes, pre-automobile days!) and drove the few miles back to her own parents’ home in the rural farming community in which they lived. Her mother, seeing her coming, met her at the door and would not even let her into the house! Despite the litany of serious complaints her daughter recited about her husband, her mother replied: “you married him, go back and live with him.” They eventually celebrated 65 years of marriage, before she died at age 89.
  10. What would you tell a student who told you in relation to marriage or any other serious relationship “I just don’t want to feel tied down”? Can you name an enduring relational good in your life that is not the result of someone being “tied down”? I suspect not. There is no genuine human flourishing in community apart from obligations and responsibilities. These are not sufficient, but they are necessary. Developmentally, of course, someone may not yet be ready to undertake the responsibilities of marriage. So, not wanting “to feel tied down” could reflect a particular life stage wherein marriage would be premature. Temporarily, such a sentiment might make sense, but not ultimately.

Patrick Stallwood
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