Keeping the Canoe Floating

Shirley and I have taken two canoe trips on the Au Sable River in Michigan.  When we had been married just a few weeks, a couple we had become friends with talked us into going with a church group.  42 years later we talked the same couple into going again.  What we remember most from the first trip was the scenery.  To a young couple who had grown up in a suburb of Los Angeles, the scenery was truly amazing.  What we remember most from the second trip was capsizing our canoe twice.

The section of river we were on was not white water by any means, but it isn't perfectly smooth sailing either.  People that were used to canoeing down this river made it look quite easy.  The key to handling any rough spots is to keep your head still while you let your hips move with the rocking of the canoe.  If you overreact to the rocking of the canoe you have a chance of tipping it over.  We did.  Twice.

Your marriage is bound to have some rough spots.  I'm not talking about drug addiction or infidelity.  Those are tougher issues.  I'm talking about the challenges, disappointments, hurts, and disagreements we all face.  A key to facing these moments is keeping your head on straight and not overreacting.

Sometimes we borrow trouble from the past because today's trouble reminds us of old troubles.  We overreact because we haven't gotten over the past and are reacting to it along with today's trouble.  This will be worse if you haven't forgiven people who have hurt you in the past.

Sometimes we borrow trouble from the future because today's trouble makes us wonder how many more times we are going to face something similar in the future.  This is especially true when we are in a new home, new job, or a new relationship.  We think, "So this is how it's going to be," and we multiply today's trouble many times in our mind.  (If we haven't yet closed on the house, taken the job, or said, "I do," today's trouble may be a red flag telling us to slow down or stop.)

Marriages are meant to last a lifetime.  There are going to be a lot of bends in the river and some rough stretches.  We need to keep our head up, not overreact, and keep the canoe above water.

Seasons of Your Marriage

There will be seasons in your marriage that each present new challenges. Consider what you will need to do to navigate your way through these changes.
Children – Adding children to your home is a great blessing, but it comes with added challenges. You will have less time for each other and more demands on your energy and finances. Keep your relationship with each other strong during this time, by making time for each other. This will be the most important time in your marriage for keeping a regular date night. Work at keeping your family relationships sweet, so that your entire family can enjoy one another with a minimum of conflict.
Children Becoming Adolescents – You may find your adolescent children challenging your values and rebelling against your traditions. You will need a strong relationship with each other to maintain a positive approach to parenting your children. You may find it useful for the two of you to get away alone for an occasional weekend to strengthen your relationship with each other.
The Empty Nest – While you were raising your kids, you probably found meaning and purpose in parenting. When the kids leave home, you will need to find new direction. If you have nurtured a healthy marriage, you will enjoy the freedom of an empty nest. You will enjoy each other’s company and the ability to do things together that you may not have been able to do when you had a family to consider. If you are not enjoying the additional time with each other, that is a signal that you need to work at nurturing your relationship.
The Not So Empty Nest – Sometimes couples with grown children find themselves raising their grandchildren or providing a home for a grown child who may not have left or may have come back to the nest. This may place new demands on your strength and finances at a time when you were hoping to slow down. We’re sure that entire books could be written on some of the circumstances people face with their grown children and their grandchildren. We want to encourage you to maintain your relationship with your spouse, no matter what added challenges you may be facing with your offspring.
Retirement – Retirement can create a huge change in your use of time. Be sensitive to each other in the adjustments you must make during this time. If you have worked on your marriage, the additional time you have together will be a blessing.
End of Life Issues – We aren’t going to live forever on this earth in these bodies. We’re leaving one way or another. One of you may have to care for the other and make decisions for the other at the end of life. This won’t be easy, but it may give you a great opportunity to express your love for each other in practical ways.
Life is challenging, but a solid marriage will equip you for each of life’s seasons. Build your marriage, invest in each other, and walk through each of life's seasons together.

Sources of Conflict

In their book, It Takes Two to Tango, Gary and Norma Smalley identify five sources of conflict in marriage:

• power and control - both people are fighting for control or resenting not having control
• individuality - one person tries to change their partner and the other resists
• distance - one person begins to pull away or put up walls of defense
• distrust - one or both feel unsafe expressing their feelings or needs
• unmet needs - one partner feels his or her needs are not being met

If you have conflict it can be useful to think about the underlying reason for it.  A couple can fight about something that really is not important to either of them, because there is something underlying that is the real reason for the conflict.

Friends of ours had a fight that got heated and then resulted in days of avoiding each other and not talking to each other.  The fight started when he painted one of the rooms of his house.  She was out of the house at the time and didn't know he was going to paint.  The fight wasn't about the quality of his work or the amount of money he spent on a can of paint.  She felt disrespected because he hadn't talked to her about it or asked for her input in choosing a color.

Of course their fight illustrates what poor communication can do.  Good communication, even about little stuff, is like oil to an engine.  If he had a short conversation in advance explaining his plan to paint the room and listening to her thoughts, there would have been no fight.

Their fight also illustrates how an action can be interpreted in light of the health of a marriage.  This couple had been in the habit of fighting and it was easy to jump from perceived disrespect to a big fight.  Another woman accustomed to being treated with respect and honor might have reacted to a newly painted room with joyful surprise.  She may have told her husband how sweet he was to paint the room.  The stronger your foundation of respect and honor there is in your marriage, the less room there is for conflict.

As married couples we will have differing opinions about hundreds of things, but with mutual respect and good communication we don't need to fight about them.

Building Trust and Maintaining Faithfulness

Trusting each other to be faithful is essential to a healthy marriage. Your human heart wants to trust your spouse and wants to know that your relationship is exclusive. Trust stands on two legs, 1) a willingness to trust another person, and 2) trustworthy behavior.

Do you think that trust is freely given, or is it earned? The answer is yes, both. In many relationships you start with assumed trust that you give to each other freely, but you can only keep trust through trustworthy behavior.

The human heart gets hurt when we think we have an exclusive relationship and find that our partner has cheated. Humans can be irrational with this desire and maintain a double standard. Someone can feel hurt that their spouse cheated on them, even when they are also being unfaithful.

It’s reasonable, though, to expect a relationship to be exclusive when you have made a commitment to each other and you are being faithful to that commitment yourself.

Trust in an exclusive relationship satisfies a deep desire in our heart. Trust, however, is based largely on how people have behaved toward each other.

Some people have had their ability to trust someone damaged by the actions of their parents or others who have broken trust with them in their past. Your spouse may have already had difficulty trusting another person when the two of you met. However, over time, the influence of the past will dim and your spouse’s trust for you is going to be based primarily on your actions and your words.

What do you need to do to build and maintain trust in your marriage? Your words and actions need to line up with your marriage vow to forsake all others and keep yourselves for each other.

But among you there must not be even a hint of sexual immorality, or of any kind of impurity, or of greed, because these are improper for God's holy people. (Ephesians 5:3)

The command here is that there not even be a hint of sexual immorality. I believe this means that we shouldn’t joke about cheating and we shouldn’t put ourselves in situations where our intent is unclear.

Cheating on your spouse, or even entertaining the idea is a foolish choice. Proverbs 5 is devoted to warning us against adultery, telling us it will cost us health, wealth, and reputation. The person who is unfaithful will look back on it with regret. We are urged to maintain faithfulness in our marriage.

Drink water from your own cistern, running water from your own well. Should your springs overflow in the streets, your streams of water in the public squares? (Proverbs 5:15-16)

And we are warned to take care to take precaution not to put ourselves in a tempting situation.

Keep to a path far from her, do not go near the door of her house. (Proverbs 5:8)

If your spouse doesn’t trust you, don’t ignore it and don’t merely yell at them for not trusting you. Examine the roots of the lack of trust and discover what it will take to build trust in your marriage. If your words and actions have been worthy of trust, give your spouse time to develop a stronger sense of trust in you. If, on the other hand, you have said or done things that damaged trust, you need to change your words and actions to those that reinforce trust in you.

If you have been tempted to infidelity, it is a symptom that you need to nurture your marriage. Cheating is a fool’s bargain.  Proverbs warns us:

For the lips of an adulteress drip honey, and her speech is smoother than oil; but in the end she is bitter as gall, sharp as a double-edged sword. Her feet go down to death; her steps lead straight to the grave. (Proverbs 5:3-5)

It may take some effort to build trust and maintain faithfulness, but it is well worth it.

Is This a Fight or a Dance?

If you get in a boxing ring to compete, you can only win if you make the other person lose.  Competitors may show each other respect, shaking hands before a match and maybe hugging afterward, but boxers are there to fight.  The objective is always to win by making the other person lose.

If you go out on the dance floor for a swing dance, you either do well together or you do poorly together.  You aren't trying to defeat your partner.  There may be disagreements, especially when you're learning a dance, but dancers know that they are there to succeed together.

Some couples create disagreements that become win/lose arguments.  Someone has to win this argument by making the other person lose.  When you create a win/lose argument, you're going to be tempted to resort to manipulation.  Our post on this blog on 3/21/20 discusses some of the types of manipulation that people resort to: lying, insulting, threatening, violence, nagging, whining, shouting, withdrawing, guilt, and unfavorable comparison with others.  All of these techniques focus on getting what you want without maintaining respect for your spouse.  If you find yourself doing these you are probably in a win/lose argument that you are trying to win. 

In most win/lose arguments the "win" isn't really about whatever the argument is, but about which of you is better, smarter, or worthy of more respect.  Almost all arguments in marriage are a fight for respect.  If you have shown each other clearly that you respect each other, there may be plenty of things you disagree about but there will be few that you fight over.

In a dance like salsa, swing, or the waltz, there is a leader, but the leadership is subtle.  Both partners have to be working together.  Dance instructors will tell you that the man must lead, but his job is to make the woman shine.

Working together in a dance is not always easy.  There are a couple ways you could dance that would  make it easier. 
1) Stand a few feet apart and each of you can do whatever dance moves you want.  He can do the twist while she does the watusi.  It won't matter what either of you does.  Some couples create distance in their relationship to reduce conflict.  They don't eat together, they keep their finances independent of each other, and they are usually going separate ways.  That may be a low conflict marriage, but it isn't the "one flesh" relationship God designed.
2) Tie the wife to an office chair that swivels and has wheels.  The man can move her around the dance floor freely and spin her whenever he wants.  Sometimes someone may respond to conflict with domineering leadership.  This reduces conflict only as long as someone is willing to be dominated.  Since the Bible instructs men to honor their wives and for wives to respect their husbands, domineering leadership isn't what God had in mind either.

May you succeed together in your marriage.

Integrity

You won't think you'd had a successful marriage if an apostle calls the two of you out for lying and you both drop dead.
Did you ever wonder why God was so tough on Ananias and Sapphira? In Acts, chapter 5, they agreed together to lie to the Apostles. No one was forcing them to sell land and give money to help other Christian believers. They chose to do that, but they decided to keep some of the money for themselves. That wouldn’t have been a problem either, but they agreed to lie and say that they were giving the full amount of the sale. For some reason, it was important to them to look to others like something they weren’t. This is what is called hypocrisy. It was their lie that got them in trouble, and they both ended up dead.
Then Peter said, "Ananias, how is it that Satan has so filled your heart that you have lied to the Holy Spirit and have kept for yourself some of the money you received for the land? Didn't it belong to you before it was sold? And after it was sold, wasn't the money at your disposal? What made you think of doing such a thing? You have not lied to men but to God." (Acts 5:3-4)
You can have two forms of hypocrisy in a family. First, members of the family may try to hide who they really are from the other members of the family. A woman may try to sneak a smoke while pretending to the family that she doesn’t smoke. A man may say he is working late, but be stopping off at a bar. A teen may be trying to hide drug use from their parents. These lies are destined to be uncovered. It isn’t that difficult for your family to see the truth. Sometimes a family member really knows the truth, but chooses to live in denial rather than face the facts.
Second, as in the case of Ananias and Sapphira, a couple or the whole family may conspire to fool the outside world. Sometimes family members are expected to lie to cover up physical abuse within the family or substance abuse by one of the members of the family.
Either of these forms of hypocrisy will damage the respect that family members need for one another.
Your family gets to see your life close up and knows what you are really made of. Being honest with yourself and with your spouse will add strength to your marriage and increase the respect you have for each other.
There are a lot of things you can’t choose. You can’t choose how tall you are, who your parents are, or what century you live in. But you can choose to be an honest person who does not try to pretend to be something you aren’t.
Integrity begins with putting God first in your life. If you only want to please Him, and know you can’t fool Him, you won’t be motivated to try to fool others.
For a man’s ways are in full view of the Lord, and He examines all his paths. (Proverbs 5:21)
Lying to your children will eventually hurt them. There are very few lies you are going to tell them that won’t eventually be discovered. When your children discover you have lied to them, they will not only be hurt, they will lose respect for you and for the otherwise good things you have imparted to them.
Notice where lying fits in God’s eyes:
There are six things the Lord hates, seven that are detestable to Him; haughty eyes, a lying tongue, hands that shed innocent blood, a heart that devises wicked schemes, feet that are quick to rush into evil, a false witness who pours out lies and a man who stirs up dissension among brothers. (Proverbs 6:16-19)
He mentions lies twice in this passage, “a lying tongue” and “a false witness who pours out lies.”
If you and your spouse have conspired together to lie to anyone, you are going to need to repent together and make it right together.
If you have lied to your spouse or children, you need to make it right by speaking the truth. There is a good chance your family already knows the truth, but when you come clean you will remove the stain on your character.
Don’t make promises to your children or to your spouse that you don’t intend to keep. If you committed to something that you absolutely cannot keep, explain it to them and find ways to make it right.
Pay your taxes, pay your bills, and be a person whose word can be counted on.

Write it Down

Here is an exercise to improve communication in your marriage.
1. Choose a simple topic that you each have significant feelings about.
2. Each of you write about it, separately, but at the same time.
3. Exchange papers.
4. Read what your spouse wrote.
5. Talk about it.
This exercise is a way to foster communication about your feelings. It has the advantage of allowing each of you to think clearly, without interruption, while you are writing. You will then have the opportunity to get your spouse’s feelings, uninterrupted, while you are reading. Your discussion afterward will increase your understanding of each other.
We have found this simple exercise increases our understanding of each other and our ability to communicate. For example, one time we wrote down the five most satisfying experiences each of us had in the last five years. I was shocked to find two items on Shirley’s list were improvements we had made in our home. I think home improvement is fine, but until our little writing exercise I didn’t know how important it was to Shirley.
Make sure that when you begin this exercise, you have enough time for it. When you start writing, it may take you a little while. When you start talking, you may find that there is a lot to talk about.
As you write, try to express your feelings. Don’t accuse or complain. Just explain the way you feel. For example, “You don’t spend enough time with me,” is a complaint. On the other hand, “I enjoy the time we spend together and often wish we would make more time to spend together,” expresses feelings.
When you read what your spouse has written, make your primary goal understanding your spouse’s feelings. If you read something that sounds like an accusation or that expresses some disappointment in you, don’t become defensive. If you read something that sounds like a problem, don’t try to jump to the conclusion. You can discuss solutions to problems after you have fully understood each other’s feelings.
We wouldn’t recommend this exercise as a means of dealing with major conflict or topics that need urgent attention. This exercise will work best when your minds are relatively clear, you are in a reasonably good mood, and you are not feeling defensive or troubled about your marriage.
This exercise may be particularly useful when you take a trip out of town without children and have extended time together.
We hope this exercise gives you some new understanding of each other and deepens your communication. We aren’t looking at this exercise as a method of unleashing a huge backlog of feelings you have been holding inside for years. If this happens, it is a clear symptom that the communication in your marriage has been inadequate and that you need to devote much more effort to healthy communication.
Something to Write About – Here are some topics you might find useful, but don’t be limited by this list. Think of your own topics that interest you both.
· What are your three favorite memories you have of doing something together?
· Describe what you would like to see happen in the next five years?
· When have you felt closest to God? Why?
· What three people have had the most important positive influence in your life?
· If you were to write a book, what would it be about?
· If you could do one thing to help other people, and you had all the time, training, and money you needed to do it, what would it be?
· If you could go one place, anywhere in the world, on vacation, where would it be?