As Chris and I approach our 16th wedding anniversary, I think about what we’ve learned together through our own experiences and other people’s mistakes, watching and mentoring hundreds of couples dealing with marriage problems. My goal here is simply to put up warning signs along Marriage Road so that if you see them on your marriage journey, you know you need to do something about it or maybe even get help.
This list is by no means exhaustive, but I would rank each of these seven signs very high on any such list. Ready? Here we go:
1. Crisis in the dormitory department. At the top of the list, a couple’s intimate life acts as the thermometer of their marriage. When a couple no longer gets together physically, or rarely, they are leaving the door open for other problems. To be ‘one’, husband and wife must keep the bedroom temperature high. The keywords are frequency, disinterest and quality.
2. You are not best friends with each other. Husband and wife should be able to talk to each other about anything. No secrets. A best friend is someone you can trust, who is non-judgmental, and whose company you enjoy. They laugh together. You know everything about each other. Unfortunately, some couples become withdrawn and uninvolved in their lives. The result? Strangers sharing the same house.
3. Your best friend is another woman (man). As a married person, if you have a close friend of the opposite sex who is not your spouse, you are asking for trouble. Not only problems in the sense that you will be tempted, but also because you will provoke the jealousy of your spouse. Do you want a friend? Read number two again.
4. Unresolved laundry issues. There is a golden rule that my wife and I set for ourselves early in our marriage: We will not sleep until we have talked AND RESOLVED any issues between us. An unresolved problem is an evolved problem. It will come back to bite you later, wanting revenge. Why wait? Nip it in the bud, get this over with.
5. They have lost respect for each other. When you no longer care what the other person feels or thinks, you are on a very dangerous path. Call me old-fashioned, but I’ve noticed that marriages are healthier when the wife lets the husband lead, be the head of the house, and when the husband cares about his wife more than himself.
6. You are putting yourself first. What is the first thing couples do when they get divorced? Fight over who gets what. In other words, see how you can get the most out of each other. If that is what happens in a divorce, the opposite must happen in a marriage. It’s not what you can get from your spouse, but what you can give him. If you normally think first of pleasing yourself, you are not in a marriage relationship.
7. You don’t want to listen. Experts say that effective communication is 80% listening and 20% talking. The reasoning behind this is that we can’t really say anything meaningful until we have heard and understood the other person. In no other situation is this more true than in marriage. You cannot have a relationship without communication. And you can’t have proper communication without listening, a lot. Somehow I think God had that in mind when he gave us two ears but only one mouth.
Make no mistake, marriage is a difficult thing. But it’s only hard because people are hard. If you try to fix the other person, you will make it worse. You can only change yourself, not others.
Don’t know where to start? Need some relationship advice? Email me at [email protected]