{"id":39349,"date":"2018-03-12T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2018-03-12T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.christianitytoday.com\/pastors\/preaching\/sermon-illustrations\/einstein-listed-marital-expectations-for-his-wife\/"},"modified":"2018-03-12T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"2018-03-12T00:00:00","slug":"einstein-listed-marital-expectations-for-his-wife","status":"publish","type":"sermon-illustrations","link":"https:\/\/www.christianitytoday.com\/pastors\/preaching\/sermon-illustrations\/einstein-listed-marital-expectations-for-his-wife\/","title":{"rendered":"Einstein Listed Marital Expectations for His Wife"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>A collection of Einstein&#39;s letters auctioned off in 1996 contains a list of marital expectations for his wife, Maliva Maric. The list includes daily laundry &quot;kept in good order,&quot; &quot;three meals regularly <em>in my room<\/em>,&quot; a desk maintained neatly &quot;<em>for my use only<\/em>,&quot; and the demand that she quit talking or leave the room &quot;if I request it.&quot; The marriage ended in divorce, but the list lives on as an illustration &hellip; of assumptions commonly held about marriage in 1914.<\/p>\n\n<p>Compared with Einstein&#39;s requirements, modern marital expectations have surely evolved for the better. Or have they? An insightful study theorizes that as people abandon religious institutions, they start expecting romantic relationships to satisfy a host of needs that formerly were satisfied through religion. If you think clean laundry and regular meals require effort, try meeting the demands of relationship-worship today by providing transcendence, unconditional love, wholeness, meaning, worth, and communion.<\/p>\n\n<p>An article in <em>First Things<\/em> concludes:<\/p>\n\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow\">\n<p>The Western fixation on romantic love creates a crushing burden for mere mortals. It engenders a powerful myth regarding love, courtship, and marriage: that a fallible human partner can not only share our passions but sate our existential yearnings. Contemporary couples expect much more from marriage than it can realistically deliver &hellip; As Eli Finkel of Northwestern University observes, &quot;most of us will be kind of shocked by how many expectations and needs we&#39;ve piled on top of this one relationship.&quot;<\/p>\n\n<\/blockquote>","protected":false},"author":30,"featured_media":0,"template":"","tax_ctp_audience":[],"tax_ctp_authors":[],"tax_ctp_categories":[165],"tax_ctp_format":[171],"tax_ctp_illustration_types":[405],"tax_ctp_multimedia":[],"tax_ctp_point_editor":[446],"tax_publications":[140],"tax_ctp_tags":[3552,3823,3918,3972,4196,4425,4528,4792,4854,4856,4858,5068,5255,5270,5285],"tax_ctp_topics":[],"class_list":["post-39349","sermon-illustrations","type-sermon-illustrations","status-publish","hentry","tax_publications-ct-pastors","tax_ctp_tags-celebrities","tax_ctp_tags-divorce","tax_ctp_tags-expectation","tax_ctp_tags-faultfinding","tax_ctp_tags-husband","tax_ctp_tags-marriage","tax_ctp_tags-need","tax_ctp_tags-relationship","tax_ctp_tags-roles","tax_ctp_tags-romance","tax_ctp_tags-romantic-love","tax_ctp_tags-spouse","tax_ctp_tags-vows","tax_ctp_tags-weddings","tax_ctp_tags-wives"],"acf":{"scripture_references":[{"first_verse":null,"add_second_verse":false,"second_verse":null},{"first_verse":null,"add_second_verse":false,"second_verse":null},{"first_verse":null,"add_second_verse":false,"second_verse":null},{"first_verse":null,"add_second_verse":false,"second_verse":null},{"first_verse":null,"add_second_verse":false,"second_verse":null},{"first_verse":null,"add_second_verse":false,"second_verse":null},{"first_verse":null,"add_second_verse":false,"second_verse":null},{"first_verse":null,"add_second_verse":false,"second_verse":null},{"first_verse":null,"add_second_verse":false,"second_verse":null},{"first_verse":null,"add_second_verse":false,"second_verse":null},{"first_verse":null,"add_second_verse":false,"second_verse":null},{"first_verse":null,"add_second_verse":false,"second_verse":null},{"first_verse":null,"add_second_verse":false,"second_verse":null},{"first_verse":null,"add_second_verse":false,"second_verse":null},{"first_verse":null,"add_second_verse":false,"second_verse":null}]},"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v22.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Einstein Listed Marital Expectations for His Wife - CT Pastors<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.christianitytoday.com\/pastors\/preaching\/sermon-illustrations\/einstein-listed-marital-expectations-for-his-wife\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Einstein Listed Marital Expectations for His Wife - CT Pastors\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"A collection of Einstein&#039;s letters auctioned off in 1996 contains a list of marital expectations for his wife, Maliva Maric. 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