One Flesh, Two Persons

It’s important to emphasize both oneness and otherness in marriage. You can’t have real union without real distinction. A marriage isn’t the melting of two people into some sentimental goo. That’s not covenant, that’s codependency with wedding rings.

Genesis 2:24 says, “And they shall become one flesh.”

And they do. In sex, in shared mission, in raising children who bear the fingerprint of both their father’s strength and their mother’s softness. They become one in goal, in bed, and in the small domestic liturgies of everyday life—morning coffee, bills, bedtime prayers, grocery lists with scribbled hearts. That’s beautiful.

But they don’t become the same. God didn’t make two Adams or two Eves. He made a man and a woman—different frames, different ways of knowing, different strengths, different weaknesses. And that difference wasn’t erased by marriage; it was required for it.

Otherness is not a flaw in the system. It’s the feature.

The husband remains a man. The wife remains a woman. They each carry their own soul, their own conscience, their own calling under God. They grow together, yes—but not into the same shape. They remain individuals. That’s part of the glory of it.

Marriage ought not be a swamp that swallows your personhood whole. It’s more like a riverbed, holding and shaping each person’s flow—guiding it, but never erasing it.

When a marriage collapses into sameness, what you get isn’t unity. What you get is stagnation. A slow death of the self. And eventually, someone breaks. There’s a crisis. There’s an awakening—sometimes quiet, sometimes violent—and a person who’s been smothered in the name of love stands up and says, “I need to be a person again.” That’s not a failure of commitment; that’s a failure of design.

Healthy marriages honor both the “one flesh” and the “two persons."

I make sure my wife has time for godly friends, quiet moments, books I wouldn’t read, and hobbies I wouldn’t touch. She does the same for me. We check in, we stay tethered, but we give each other space to grow. We’re not two vines choking each other out. We’re two trees planted side by side, rooted in the same soil, reaching upward, bearing fruit.

And oddly enough, it’s that otherness that keeps the marriage fresh. We’re not bored with each other because we’re not identical. She still surprises me. I still confuse her. That’s good. We like each other—and we like each other in part because of our differences.

But—and this is important—that individual growth isn’t off doing its own thing. It’s anchored in the marriage. The growth is covenantal. It belongs to the mission. The strength she builds in solitude? It blesses me. The clarity I gain in prayer or reading? It strengthens her. We grow as individuals so that we might better serve the one flesh.

So yes, preserve the mystery of “one flesh,” but don’t forget the miracle of “two persons.” God didn’t make clones. He made companions. Flesh of flesh. Bone of bone. And yet, still distinct—so that their union would be a picture of something far deeper than sameness. A picture of love that honors the other and gives itself away without losing itself in the giving.