You may have diligently pursued pre-marriage counseling, acquired all sorts of important tools of sound communication, and, early on, have learned the principles of effective conflict resolution, but, yet, find yourselves years later struggling to make your marriage work. How can it be that, with so many good intentions at the beginning, your relationship could end up becoming as fractured as it is? Didn’t you do all the things people told you that would guarantee a good marriage?
You might be surprised how many times young couples started out well, but ended up with an unhappy marriage. There are, of course, many reasons why relationships fail. However, four factors are of particular importance in determining the staying power of a loving connection. So, let’s briefly look at them with the idea of forming pre-emptive strategies that will safeguard the integrity of what you’ve started.
Expect surprises.
The first factor we might call the marital practice of “behavioral hygiene.” No matter how much you think you know your partner before marriage, there will always be some “surprises”, i.e., things you didn’t see before or things you saw but dismissed as either unimportant or changeable once you were married. You may have heard the humorous aphorism about this: “A man marries a woman expecting that she won’t change, but she does; and a woman marries a man expecting that he will change, but he doesn’t! “
In reality, such expectations are the stuff of denial. When I have asked couples if the problems they’re seeing in their marriage occurred, at least to some degree, during their courtship, over 90% of them respond that they did. But they usually just dismissed them at the time as due to momentary stress or as easily changeable after they got married. Their reasons more generally followed some variation of the theme that “love always wins out.” But, as author, Aaron Beck, noted with the title of his seminal work, Love is Never Enough, there are many factors other than love that determine the outcomes of marriage. Most important among them is the persistence of a sound work ethic in keeping the relationship fresh and constantly growing. It means the ongoing mutual (and open) discovery of what relational habits need attention, followed by the give and take kind of strategizing for creative change. Remember, reciprocity is essential if you want a successful outcome.
Form functional communication patterns.
The most common habits to address are the communication patterns between you and your spouse…and this is in spite of the tools you learned in pre-marriage counseling. These patterns usually reflect the persistence of rules of engagement learned in your homes of origin. Such rules were typically learned as coping mechanisms in dealing with the (often dysfunctional) interactions either between your parents or between you and your parents or both. The problem is that, if you continue to use the same communication rules as you had in your home of origin, they will probably clash with those of your partner, unless you open them up to change.
This was, in part, what Jesus meant when He said you must leave your mother and father and “cleave” unto your mate. In other words, you must fully emancipate from your parents in order to fully bond to your spouse. And emancipating means to review your rules of engagement to determine which ones no longer work and need change, and to develop new, healthier ones that better fit the realities of your marriage.
When you make changes in how you relate to your mate because you want a better relationship, it reflects a fundamental premise of all interactions in the human family:
We all want to feel that we matter to at least one other person.”
God created us with this desire; it’s why He has told us how much we matter to Him. When an argument breaks out between two people, it almost always means that one or usually both feel that their opinions, beliefs, or feelings don’t matter to the other. If your spouse is angry with you, just ask yourself, “have I said or done something that communicates (perhaps unintentionally) to him or her that I don’t care what they think or feel”? If you don’t know the answer to that question, then ask your spouse.
Nurture your marriage.
All of these considerations are, not surprisingly, founded on a sound spiritual connection with our Lord. It says repeatedly in His Word that, if we ask in His name, it shall be given us (e.g., Matt. 7:7; Luke 11:9; John 14:14, 15:7; James 4:3). In other words, if you and your spouse spend time together asking God to show you where you need to grow your marriage, you will better honor Him, and give greater pleasure to yourself in the bargain!
It is remarkable how few Christians spend any time spiritually nurturing their marriages. Going to church on Sunday seems to be considered sufficient. But it’s the personal alone time with God and time together with your spouse before God that’s really more important in cultivating the spiritual dimension of your marriage. It’s so easy to assume that, with a great start in your marriage, everything will take care of itself. But that’s not how it works. Assumptions, even if they are charitable, are often the enemy of the best.
In C.S. Lewis’ book, The Screwtape Letters, we are reminded of Satan’s tactics: If all seems to be going well with a godly person (or marriage), make him (them) proud that he’s (they’re) humble!” That is, find out what they consider their strength and attack them there.
Vigilance in keeping your marriage under the scrutiny of God’s direction is always wise.”
This is not intended as some kind of guilt trip….just a practical reminder that, if you want your marriage to operate at peak satisfaction, you might want to consider what God has to say about it. Of course, that also means doing the relational work and behavioral change necessary to accommodate your differences as a couple.
So, although you may have a great start in your marriage, unfortunately you cannot merely rest on your laurels by assuming the real work is over. The best news is that no other work has such rich rewards as the efforts you put into your marriage. That’s the exciting part of what is left after everything starts right.
