Unequally Invested

While working with the young men from our youth group at the construction site over the weekend, one commented that if you want people’s attention, talk about relationships. This came about as we discussed the poor response to a discussion we had had the previous night on mental health. So, I thought I’d test this hypothesis.

I want to adopt the concept of not being unequally yoked to talk about a common downfall in relationships: being unequally invested. A couple can have many differences and a number of qualities and values in varying proportions, but investment into the relationship cannot be one of them. Unlike shareholders of a company, one cannot hold more shares in the relationship than the other. If one values the relationship more and puts in more into it, they run a high chance of being used and abused.

The concept of ‘unequally yoked’ is rooted in 2 Corinthians 6 where the bible states that believers should not be unequally yoked with unbelievers. Paul says this on the foundational understanding of the Mosaic law which forbade that an ox and a donkey be yoked together (see Deuteronomy 22:10). This was said because of the imbalance and inequality that would result as they worked. One has better strength and endurance than the other, so they’d always be fights of one putting in more work than the other and actually being delayed and slowed down by their partner.

A yoke is a wooden instrument used to hitch together draft animals so that they can pull heavy loads evenly. The last word is key in this definition. The purpose is not just to be able to bear and pull heavy loads, but to do so evenly. The issue is not that believers and unbelievers have absolutely nothing in common, it’s that the purpose of a covenant relationship, be it friendship or marriage, is that we pull the heavy hardships of life together and we can’t really do that when there’s an imbalance between us as a result of our faith (which is what frames our worldview). That’s why Paul goes on to use words like ‘fellowship’ ‘harmony’ and ‘agreement’.
Anyway, I don’t mean to discuss this text, I just want to adopt the concept.

Thanks to Tangled (yeah, yeah, I watch animation) and other Rom-coms, we’ve gotten creative with our responses to ‘I love you’ with the likes of ‘I love you more’ and ‘I love you most’. It’s cute but it shouldn’t be the reality of the relationship if it is to work. Love needs to be proportioned equally in the sense that both parties need to be equally invested in the relationship. They need to value it in the same way so that they will put in equal effort to make it work. If this element is missing, heartbreak is inevitable.

Samson had one such heartbreak. We never think of it that way because his story centers around a battle of deities, but mighty-man Samson had his heart broken into pieces by little miss Delilah and was because of one little but very important thing.
“Some time later, he fell in love with a woman in the Valley of Sorek whose name was Delilah.” Judges 16:4
The verse after this one immediately details how Delilah was approached to form part of a plot against Samson. Delilah never seems to express the same kind of feeling towards Samson, making it easy for her to trick, betray and use him. She was not equally invested in this relationship. Maybe to her it was just about having a hunk like Samson all to herself, maybe it was the fame that came with being Samson’s girlfriend, or how fun it was to be around him. Whatever it was, it kept her from seeing what they had the same way Samson did. If she felt slightly the same way about him, she would have protected him, she would have refused any gain that would bring him harm.

It is not that she didn’t understand the way he felt about her, maybe if it was we would have given her some credit. But she knew very well how Samson felt about her, even using it against him.
“Then she said to him, ‘How can you say, ‘I love you,’ when you won’t confide in me?...”
Absolute transparency is a must in a relationship, but she said this not because she wanted to know things about him out of love but because she wanted to know one particular thing in order to profit through it.

I love Songs of Songs because it details a story of love the way it should be.

“Lover: How beautiful you are, my darling! Oh, how beautiful! Your eyes are doves.

Beloved: How handsome you are, my lover! Oh, how charming! And our bed is verdant.

Lover: The beams of our house are cedars; our rafters are firs.” Song of Songs 1:15-17

Both parties are equally invested. How the other person feels is not assumed nor is it imposed upon them. Not only are the in equal agreement about their feelings for each other, but they agree on the future of this relationship.

The pain of being in an unequally invested relationship is that you will be thrown under the bus without a second thought when chance comes. The relationship is not a priority. Not only are you vulnerable, but you are also the only one putting in all the effort and taking all the strain of it. This is one of the reasons why I strongly believe in and promote premarital counselling because it helps pick up on such red flags where possible. By defining what the relationship is that is being entered into, one can evaluate whether both parties are on the same page which will determine how much effort they’ll put in into making it work.

In our desperation we tend to think some love is better than no love at all. Baby girl, ‘some love’ doesn’t cut it when the weight you have to pull together gets heavier, when the ground gets thicker and the plough is stuck. It’s all or nothing. Get this right and you’ll be fighting equally to make things work when the honeymoon bliss fades away.

"My lover is mine and I am his..." Songs of Songs 2:16