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.
Saturday, July 25, 2020
Saturday, July 11, 2020
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.
Saturday, July 4, 2020
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.
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.
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