Divorces are happening at an alarming rate, our society tells us if we’re not “happy” to jump ship, and mainstream media seemingly applauds adultery, presenting it as a glamorous option within marriage.  It would be highly negligent of us as a Church to not to examine the cracks in the sanctity of marriage within our society to see what is at the root of its brokenness.  As I have met with countless women and couples as a pastoral counselor, I have seen several patterns contributing to such pitfalls in marriage.  I’d like to outline three of them in this article… three ways to increase your likelihood of experiencing hurt and hardship in your marriage—current or future.

Making marriage your everything.

This pitfall establishes itself early on… well before marriage in most cases.  Our hearts begin to long for the love of the person who will live life with us.  This desire in and of itself is not necessarily a bad thing; however, it can become very harmful as marriage is set as “life’s biggest goal.”  Before we know it, we’ve begun putting our life on hold until “the one” comes and sweeps us off our feet.  This is where the danger begins.  When this poor person does come, unbeknownst to them, they have all the pressures of the world on their shoulders because we have made them our everything… the fulfillment of all of our dreams, our satisfaction, our first love, our main goal in life.

Can you see the danger here?  I remember struggling with this so much at times during my singleness.  I wanted so badly to have that companion, that best friend, the man that I was going to do life with.  I had ten… yes, ten… bridesmaids dresses in my closet, one of them I wore in my sister’s wedding, who is almost four years younger than me.  I remember really battling to live my life and enjoy those years of being single; as hard and lonely as they were at times, I miss them now because they were some of the sweetest years of my life.

Jesus found me in that season and helped me see that it was Him and me doing life together.  I remember my dad telling me “Megan, even when you get married… it’s still ALWAYS going to be you and the Lord.”  If the Lord did have marriage for me, I wanted my husband to be attracted to me because of the way I was running after the Lord and making Him my life… because that was what I wanted to do together in marriage.

I have also seen married couples who make their marriage their everything and at some point in their journey together, they are bound to be sorely disappointed.  God made us for relationship… and this doesn’t just mean with our spouse it means with His people—married, single, old and young.  Period.  Once couples get home from their honeymoon, the temptation begins to shut others out and just enjoy each other.  While this definitely needs to happen at times to grow and enrich a martial relationship, there is so much joy that takes place in reaching out to others, getting involved in ministry, having alone time and time with friends that is essential for a healthy, godly marriage.  In their book Just How Married Do You Want to Be? Jim and Sarah Sumner touch on the importance of being in community as a married couple.

“Every Christian couple needs to be in Christian community.  Couples who get along well need it every bit as much as couples who argue and fight.  Being active in Christ’s body is part of what it means to love the church’s head, Christ Jesus.  Authentic Christian community is interpersonal.  Being in it is not the same as merely attending church.  In fact, it’s possible—even common—for Christians to go to church without ever participating in authentic fellowship with other believers.  To be in Christian community is to be relationally connected with other people who are connected to Christ, the head.” (Just How Married Do You Want to Be, p 156)

This again, is a pattern that begins in a dating relationship; before one even enters marriage.  If you’re dating, make sure to surround your relationship with community.  Not only will this help establish a sense of accountability for both you and your partner, but it will also keep your sole focus and attention off each other and help remind both of you that life exists outside your dating relationship!  Stay grounded in your church community, in your friendships… don’t center your entire life around your romantic relationship.  This will only assist in creating a pattern of unhealthiness in your relationship. Make sure you’re spending time apart and enjoying your own separate friendships, ministries and activities.  If you’re expecting your spouse to again, be your everything, you’re setting yourself up for disappointment and you’re guaranteed to cause your spouse undue frustration.  This is not the way God designed marriage to be.  He wants to be our number one love, passion and desire.  No one and nothing else is designed to fulfill that position in our lives; including our spouse.

When my husband and I were first falling in love, he always made it a point to tell me that I was his “second love”.  He told me I would never be his first, and that he should never be mine.  I found myself getting annoyed when he would tell me that; it seemed so abrasive to me.  Now I’m so thankful that my husband always reminds me of that because it reminds me of my place in his life, and where his place should be in mine.  This order was not instituted after we walked down the aisle; it was established in each of our lives long before we met one another.  This only helped us keep God where He needs to be–as number one; not only in our individual lives, but in our relationship together.

Thinking marriage is about happiness

One of my favorite books on marriage is Sacred Marriage by Gary Thomas.  It caught my eye once because of the tagline of the book which reads “What if God designed marriage to make us holy more than to make us happy?”  This sentence can singlehandedly revolutionize the way we look at marriage.  I can’t tell you how many women and couples I see in my office on a weekly basis complaining about their marriages because they are just not “happy” anymore.  This thought not only applies to our marriages, but it beckons us to look more deeply into the sole purpose of life period.  Is it to make us happy?  Or does life exist so that we can make God happy?  In his book, Gary speaks to this thought when he writes:

“One of the reasons I am determined to keep my marriage together is not because doing so will make me happier (although I believe it will); not because I want my kids to have a secure home (although I do desire that); not because it would tear me up to see my wife have to “start over” (although it would).  The first reason I keep my marriage together is because it is my Christian duty.  If my life is based on proclaiming God’s message to the world, I don’t want to do anything that would challenge that message.  And how can I proclaim reconciliation when I seek dissolution?  This analogy of reconciliation does more than merely provide the purpose for our marriage.  It also helps us live out this purpose, even when “lightning strikes”… If I’m married only for my happiness, and my happiness wanes for whatever reason, one little spark will burn the entire forest of my relationship.” (Sacred Marriage, p.37)

Many people in their in the single phase of life buy into the lie that “if only I were married, I’d be happy”.  I certainly fell victim to this thought from time to time.  This is when marriage begins being elevated in one’s life as the source of ultimate happiness.  Sure, marriage brings about so many wonderful blessings; with that, it also brings about a different set of trials, a different set of difficulties.  This is where the “becoming holy process” begins.  Just two months into our marriage, my husband and I had a fairly severe falling out with his family over an issue that wasn’t even about us, however it impacted us greatly.  Being newly married, we were still trying to adjust to this new life and now this huge conflict was looming over us.  It felt as though we were dragging a huge cinderblock behind us in the months that followed.  It was heavy and exhausting. I remember sitting on the couch one day, both of us in tears, as I told my husband that I just wanted to enjoy being newlyweds.  I wanted that bliss, that giddyness, that chance to just sail through for a while merely enjoying all the benefits of marriage that were still new and exciting.  Instead, the Lord allowed a huge hardship to slap us in the face so early on.  I was angry.  It just didn’t seem fair.

However, being on the other side of this conflict now, and seeing how the Lord used it in our marriage, however painful it was I wouldn’t trade that time in our lives together for the world.  The Lord used it to remind me that His desires for my marriage with my husband are so much greater than mine.  I thought I wanted a blissful, easy, smooth and happy marriage, but I know that my heart longs for something so much deeper.  I long for passion, for a profound sense of connection with my husband that comes as the result of working through conflict and hardship.  Not only that, but God longs for something deeper for me and my marriage; He longs to make me more like Him.  Don’t give into our culture’s lie that finding love will make you happy; that marriage is all about our comfort, our satisfaction, our bliss.  I believe it’s important for us to develop a healthy sense of marriage while we are still single… not only that, but to develop a right view of life in general; that it’s not about our happiness, but instead about our holiness.

Not having those hard conversations

Oftentimes in dating and in marriage, we are so afraid to deal with potential areas of conflict, so instead we resort to avoidance… a behavior that is fatal to the level of inimacy within a relationship.  We are oftentimes afraid to deal with these sins or “hot button” issues so we don’t share with our partner and thus avoid bringing up these conversations altogether.  We don’t want to “upset the apple cart” so instead we compromise our closeness as a couple.  When my husband and I began dating, he suggested from the start that we share with one another our struggles and issues whether past or current.  Though we were both nervous and scared, it helped establish a pattern for us early on… we were able to love each other for who we really were; not who we pretended to be.  We saw the importance of this because of the work both of us did in becoming healthier before we met each other.  We were far from being perfect, that goes without saying!  But we were engaged in dealing with our struggles, seeking accountability, and allowing others to ask tough questions of our lives.

My husband, Nick, had been in counseling and discipleship for a few years and I was meeting with an older woman in a mentor type relationship and digging through my weaknesses as well.  This opens us up to the practice of having those hard conversations… but it also helps us deal with our junk before we drag it with us into a marriage where it has the ability to affect another person so deeply.  We’ve had some pretty tough conversations throughout our dating relationship and our marriage.  We’ve had to work through dealing with each other’s sin and the things that make us insecure and afraid.  These moments of truth can be scary and tempt me to retreat back into my desire for a cozy, comfortable marriage… however, I know that’s not what I desire at all.  We cannot possibly have complete oneness in marriage if we’re not willing to go to the dark places with our spouse.  Intimacy will only happen to the level of which we are willing to be open and honest with one another.

For me there is fear in having those tough conversations because it feels like my husband and I are both exposed… walking around without our skin on.  And that is scary.  Vulnerability is oftentimes something that causes us great fear.  We all, on some level, have a need for security… and baring our souls to another person (or having them bare their souls to us) seems like we are being robbed of that sense of safety.  However, learning to communicate through these hard issues will only result in a greater sense of security and trust within a marital relationship.  This must begin first in the dating process.  All too often people sign on to marry someone that doesn’t really exist; they marry who that person pretends to be–or who they desire that person to be–rather than the reality.  This is when the most intimate of relationships is established on shaky ground and a couple must work even harder to re-establish crumbled trust and security within the relationship.

Opening up our wounds to one another also allows for the beauty of the healing process to take place.  Shame and guilt are met with grace… this is where the gospel gets to live within marriage.  While it can be a scary process, a marriage can be deepened as a result.  More importantly, God is glorified as we allow His grace and love to transform us from the inside out.  Authors Jim and Sarah Sumner have lived this out in their marriage.  Though they write honestly about their struggles in living out the gospel in their marriage, their example implores us to live the deeper marital relationship God desires for us.  Jim, a former male stripper, met Sarah a seminary graduate and theologian after he had first met Christ at Willow Creek Church outside of Chicago.  Their story is marked by the beauty of oneness and Christ’s restoration as we take ownership of our junk and live in authenticity with one another.  Jim writes this:

“Whatever we had been fighting about may have started with a hot button, but it ended in a rage.  Yet God was right there with us.  Because I had turned to God, and Sarah had turned to God while I was away, both of us had gained a fresh willingness to take ownership of our stuff.  Time and again we have gone to God, rediscovering our need for his forgiveness.  In all our pettiness from past pain, immaturity from hot buttons, and sin from marital fights, we have found forgiveness in the Lord.  Because God has forgiven us in Christ Jesus, we can forgive each other. We are partners in forgiveness.  That is how we managed our engagement, and that is how we live together now.  Our relationship isn’t easy, but it’s strong—because forgiveness is the method that engables us to venture through this humbling life as one flesh.” (Just How Married Do You Want to Be, p.137)

Their book begs an intriguing question… just how married do you want to be… now or someday down the road?  How deeply do you want to experience intimacy in your relationship?  How far do you want to practice oneness and allow the gospel message to live out in your marriage—current or future?  It may be scary to open up to each other on such an authentic level, but it allows us to experience God’s design for marriage: total dependancy on Him, allowing Him to chisel us more into His image and practicing His grace and forgiveness with ourselves and with our spouse.  God’s purpose for marriage is far different than our culture’s; but far more rewarding.  Marriage is an amazing journey… good, hard, messy and beautiful all rolled into one.  God wants us to experience nothing less.  You can be sharpening yourself now, whether married or single, in these areas of your life.  Dependancy on the Lord, making Him your number one love and passion, developing an understanding of holiness vs. happiness and living in authenticity with others are all things you can practice long before you ever walk down the aisle; it’s what God calls us to.

About The Author

Megan Cornwell is a counselor at Irving Bible Church near Dallas, Texas. She is a graduate of Dallas Theological Seminary and loves to watch shows like The Hills because that show is a constant reminder of why the world needs counselors like Megan. She is married to the super amazing Nick Cornwell who plays quaterback (armchair) for the Dallas Cowboys. Be looking for more articles from Megan in the future.