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The movies don’t show us this part—the part where the initial euphoria goes away, the oneness disappears, and the couple become disillusioned. They wonder, “What went wrong? Did I marry the wrong person?” At this point more than half give up and part ways. They think they can “do better” with someone else, not knowing that the remedy probably lies in their own growth, not in finding a new person. A new relationship will require the same growing pains, both as individuals and as a couple, that they are avoiding now.
The Bible defines a complete person as a mature person. A complete person is able to do all the things that adult life and relationship requires: give love and receive love, be independent and self-sufficient, live out values honestly, be responsible, have self-confidence, deal with problems and failures, live out their talents, and have a life. If two people who marry are complete, the oneness they establish will be complete. To the degree that either is less than complete as a person, the oneness will suffer under the strain of that incompleteness.
if one or both are coming to the marriage asking the marriage to complete them as people, the marriage will break down.
You may have heard couples say, “We are such a good balance for each other.” This can be good if, for example, he is good at business and she is good at building the nest, or vice versa. But it is not good if it means that she could not survive in the real world of work and commerce on her own without him. If this is true, she has married a “meal ticket,” or someone to take care of her in a childlike dependency.
Completing means making up for one’s immaturity as a person. It is an attempt to use another person to balance an imbalance in one’s character, and it never works. Each person is responsible for developing these character imbalances on one’s own and then bringing a whole, balanced self into the relationship.
many times people will marry to make up for what they do not possess in their own character. This is often what is behind the head-over-heels, “falling in love” experience. Someone who is incomplete in some area will meet someone who has a strength in that area and feel an intoxicating “wholeness.”
They began dating, and her initial impression turned out to be correct. He was suave, strong, and assertive. Sometimes she felt that he was too strong, and he didn’t listen to what she had to say. But their “love” was strong, and her need for him was more powerful than her reason and ability to see the significance of the problem.
there is no shortcut to growth. You cannot skip out on maturity by “marrying into it.” You must become a complete individual on your own in order to have true oneness with your spouse. Make sure you understand the difference between completing one another versus complementing one another. Eric was still the business whiz that Amanda would never be. She was the organizer and project manager that he would never be. He was creative and entrepreneurial. She was systematic. They had gifts that worked well at creating a team. Those are good complements.
For example, if a wife does not take responsibility for how she feels, she blames her partner when she feels unhappy. Her kind of irresponsibility translates like this: “If I feel bad, you are doing something wrong. You should be doing something different.” How many divorces and how much unhappiness occur because one partner depends on the other for happiness and completeness?
That is a possibility, but its framing ignores the fact that we do affect each other in profound ways. We can't be the source of all happiness for each other, but that doesn't mean we are not responsible for any happiness at all.
codependency is taking responsibility for another person’s problems and not requiring that person to take responsibility for his own.
One of the greatest gifts we can give to each other is the gift of honesty and confrontation. As Proverbs tells us, “Wounds from a friend can be trusted, but an enemy multiplies kisses” (Proverbs 27:6). We grow when someone who loves us “wounds” us by telling us painful truths we need to hear. Requiring responsibility from each other by telling each other the truth and not giving in to each other’s immaturity is indeed a gift.
Mature people think of nurturing, developing, and taking care of the treasures of the people with whom they are in relationship. They are always thinking of how their loved ones are doing, how they are feeling, and how they could help them grow. Mature husbands and wives place a great value on the feelings, thoughts, and attitudes of their spouse.
To have good boundaries is to be separate enough from the other person that you can allow her to have her own experience without reacting with your own. Such a clear stance of separateness allows you not to react, but to care and empathize.
Unpleasant things seek the level they are allowed to exist in your life, especially in a marriage.
Your values are the ultimate boundaries of your marriage. They form it, protect it, and give it a place to grow. They dictate what the nature of the relationship is going to be, what is not going to be allowed to grow there, as well as what is going to be sought after and maintained.
This person’s greatest value was his own happiness and his own immediate comfort. And I can’t think of a worse value in life, especially a life that includes marriage. Why? Is this a killjoy attitude? Hardly. I am not advocating misery. I hate pain. But I do know this: People who always want to be happy and pursue it above all else are some of the most miserable people in the world.
And in this example, the client has so narrowly defined "happiness" so as to lose the depth, beauty, and necessity of true happiness. When "happiness" becomes the sum of "what makes me feel good," being happy is reduced to infantile pleasure-seeking.
happiness is a result. It is sometimes the result of having good things happen. But usually it is the result of our being in a good place inside ourselves and our having done the character work we need to do so that we are content and joyful in whatever circumstance we find ourselves. Happiness is a fruit of a lot of hard work in relationships, career, spiritual growth, or a host of other arenas of life. But nowhere is this as true as in marriage.
Don’t think like a little child, who feels that being happy today is all that matters. People like this see marriage existing just to gratify them in the moment, which is a very self-centered and ultimately self-destructive way to live.
Agape is love that seeks the welfare of the other. It is love that has nothing to do with how someone is gratifying us at the moment. It has to do with what is good for the other. In short, agape is concerned with the good of the other person.
What does it mean to love someone “as yourself” in marriage? It means three things: you so deeply identify with your spouse that you feel the effects of your own behavior on your spouse, you think first of making your spouse’s life better, and you want the best for your spouse even when your spouse can’t see what that is.
as I’ve pointed out many times: suddenly our behavior affects the other person, yet we are told that we aren’t responsible for each other’s feelings.
If someone is not committed to a marriage, when the marriage gets difficult, he is tempted to leave the marriage instead of working through the difficulty. If leaving is an option, why go through the pain? Why go through the work? A problem in a relationship is usually a sign that both parties need to grow and change, and without commitment, avoidance is often the easier way out. Some do not leave physically, but they leave emotionally. They forsake the relationship by taking their heart out of it.
We can’t stress enough the importance of being able to share with each other your deepest feelings, needs, hurts, desires, failures, or whatever else is in your soul. If you and your spouse can feel safe enough in your marriage to be totally vulnerable, if you can remove each other’s fig leaves, then once again your marriage can return to a state of paradise.
Have enough grace to tell the truth. Promise that you will never punish your spouse for being honest. This doesn’t mean that there will be no consequences, but punishment, shame, and condemnation should not be part of those consequences.
"Have enough grace to tell the truth” AND have enough grace to be present, be quiet, and listen.
Our notion of faithfulness in marriage is too often shallow. We generally think of it only in the physical realm. Yet, in many marriages spouses are physically faithful but not emotionally faithful. They are faithful with their bodies but not with their hearts. The partners can’t depend on each other in the ways listed above. There is little trust, little certainty, little safety. Especially in religious circles, people think that if they are not sleeping with someone other than their spouse, they are being faithful.
faithfulness means to be trusted in all areas, not just the sexual, trusted in matters of the heart as well as those of the body. Being faithful to your spouse means that you can be depended upon to do what you have promised, to follow through on what your spouse has entrusted to you. It means that your spouse can be certain that you will deliver on what you have promised. It could mean being sexually faithful, but it could also mean doing chores faithfully! It could mean staying within the monthly budget and coming home when you say you will. It could mean sharing without fear of reprisal or
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“Objects” of unfaithfulness are numerous. Some are people, some are not. But the bottom line is that they come between you and your spouse. Some part of you avoids the relationship. We are not referring to the situations in which you are unable to take certain parts into marital intimacy, or in which the relationship is not safe enough for certain aspects of who you are. This dynamic is about deliberately splitting yourself into two people, one of whom is not connected to the marriage.
An act of unfaithfulness is something that one person does, not two.
I like how the Bible describes God’s compassion: “to bend or stoop in kindness to an inferior” (Strong’s Hebrew and Greek Dictionary). For God to have compassion on our brokenness or sin is certainly to stoop to an inferior. But we need the same attitude toward an equal spouse for two reasons: First, you forgive what is inferior to the ideal standard. You humble yourself to identify with your loved one, who is experiencing life in a way that is less than you or even he would want. You give up all demands for your spouse to be something he isn’t at that moment. Second, if your spouse is hurting
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Most of us would like to avoid having to say no in life. It’s work, it causes anxiety, and it can upset people. Yet reality dictates that in order to say yes to keeping a close marriage, you will have to say no to lots of other things. A life of “yes” to everything else ultimately results in a “no” to your marriage. You simply do not have the time, resources, or energy to do everything you want to do.
When we address the idea of keeping out intruders, we are not saying that marriage is a self-contained unit in which each spouse meets every emotional need of the other. Marriage was not designed to be the source of all life for us. This would be idolatry. God and his resources are our life source: “He is before all things, and in him all things hold together” (Colossians 1:17). The marriage bond is one of God’s many avenues of sustenance for us, along with his own love, the Bible, and relationships in the church. The marriage relationship is a covenant between two adults. They join lives to
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Dale is the energetic optimist who loves being involved in all sorts of church and civic groups. He coaches all his kids’ sports teams and genuinely enjoys his job so much that he works long hours. Margaret, by contrast, is an MBA who feels she is always following Dale around and cleaning up his messes. When he overcommits himself, she helps him decide which meeting to drop and which to attend. When he overspends, she figures out how to get them out of trouble. But even though she sees this as part of their marriage, she is troubled by how little of a priority she feels to her husband. Dale is
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This problem usually has to do with the “limitless” spouse’s inability to see how his actions have consequences. Someone else is always there picking up the pieces, starting perhaps with a parent, then friends, then co-workers, or a spouse. The lack of anxiety about marriage problems comes from a lack of anxiety about anything. This spouse has lived with human safety nets and is secure and confident that either (1) nothing bad will come if he doesn’t get to his responsibilities; or (2) if something bad happens, no one will mind; or (3) if anyone is bugged about it, someone else will bail him
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Do not mistake a lack of crisis as a sign that the marriage is healthy. Couples need to regularly check in with each other and ask the hard questions, such as “How do you feel about us?” and “What am I doing that hurts or bothers you?” Think about how you would feel if your annual physical with your physician consisted only of a chat about sports over a cup of coffee.
the boundary-less mate may be less afraid to let his spouse down than the boss or others. It is often because he feels safer with her and knows she won’t leave him. But this is a fatal error in perceiving safety. We should be able to trust a safe spouse and relax in her love. However, safety was never meant as a rationalization for neglecting the love obligation. Living in unconditional grace is never an excuse to be irresponsible or hurtful.
Because you are not two clones, your differences guarantee conflict in marriage. Two people who feel strongly about how life should be lived will try to resolve the differences. However, some people fear conflict more than others. They may have grown up in homes in which conflict was never experienced as a good thing. As a friend of mine said, “When we saw my parents argue, they would tell us, ‘That wasn’t an argument; it was a discussion.’ Angriest discussion I ever saw!” These people will often then hate conflict, as it means that the love has gone away. They can’t feel connected while
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some people have difficulty becoming aware of their effect on people. They have trouble sensing emotionally that they hurt others. This is a problem in compassion. They may do all the right things, but they can’t sense the feelings of others. A wife may tell her husband how tough it is when he is late for dinner, and he may not understand why she is bothered. Like Mr. Spock of the old Star Trek television show, he may be mystified by her upset feelings and wish she were more “rational” and “logical.” Often, people who struggle with understanding feelings tend to be detached and self-absorbed.
Don’t ignore the situation, hoping it will get better. Time alone does not heal character immaturity.
Stating your boundary, however, may not be enough. Ever since Adam and Eve, humanity has known the rules and still crosses the line (Genesis 3:6). Whatever your spouse is doing that is hurting you, the benefits he receives may far outweigh your appeals and requests. At this point, you need to set consequences. A consequence is an effect, or result, of another act. You need to establish some consequence for your spouse’s transgression so that he will experience some discomfort for his irresponsibility. A consequence has to have several very important characteristics: Designed to help with
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This is a distinction without a difference. You create consequences for bad behavior to effect a positive change. This is a form of control. in this scenario, you are attempting to fix the other person who truly does need help being fixed. Why do the authors deny that?
When someone wants to live a life unaffected by the feelings and hurts of others, that behavior goes against everything that is true about God. Yet God gives people great freedom to be selfish and hurtful, because this freedom may one day be the freedom through which they choose his ways. As C. S. Lewis says in Mere Christianity, “If a thing is free to be good it is also free to be bad…. Why, then, did God give [humans] free will? Because free will, though it makes evil possible, is also the only thing that makes possible any love or goodness or joy worth having.”*
Few passages in the Bible have been subject to more misunderstanding and misuse than this teaching on submission: “Wives, submit to your husbands as to the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church, his body, of which he is the Savior…. Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her to make her holy” (Ephesians 5:22-23, 25). Husbands have used the apostle Paul’s teaching to justify control and abuse of their wives. In fact, we have rarely seen a client in marriage therapy bring up submission unless a big part of
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What submission does not mean is that a husband just tells a wife what to do. Leadership does not mean domination. Marriages that work best have equal partners with differing roles. Decisions are best made mutually, as both parties with their different strengths bring in different perspectives. A loving man would never make some decision that would hurt his wife. He needs her input, and she needs his. They are interdependent, and they are partners in the marriage. In fact, in the verse before the submission verse, Paul says, “Submit to one another out of reverence for Christ” (Ephesians 5:21).
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In one sense, people with real boundaries could avoid many divorces. But they might have to take a strong stance; separate, not participate in the behavioral patterns against which they are setting boundaries; and demand righteousness before participating in the relationship again. If they become the light, then the other person either changes or goes away. This is why, in most cases, we say you really should not have to be the one who divorces. If you are doing the right things, and the other person is truly evil, he most likely will leave you. But you can rest in the assurance that you have
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