Often it is a particular crises or event that motivates a married couple to seek outside help. This could take on average 4 to 6 years before a couple finally takes this step. Unfortunately, many couples who come before counseling do so with their mind already made up as to a course of action they are going to take. The counseling sessions degenerate into a contest between the spouses to convince the counselor who is right and who is wrong. They come seeking some relationship skill technique to apply to the immediate pain they are experiencing, overlooking the fact that the pain comes from a deeper source. They want relief from the symptoms but not a cure for the ailment.
It is far better to assess your marriage at regular intervals. It does not have to be long appointments in front of counselors. In fact, if you just spend regular quality time with your spouse to gauge how he or she is feeling and make small adjustments, your marriage will stay in good shape.
At our most recent workshop, we divided into four groups of couples and practiced assessing the state of our marriage in four particular areas. The results were very enlightening.
The first group assessed how strong is their marriage which is determined by the ability to overcome external or internal conflict. How resilient is your marriage? In other words, how well can you cope by successfully going through trials? If you are confident, then you will not be afraid to bring up sensitive topics to your spouse.
Conflict comes to all relationships with the end result to strengthen or weaken it. Conflict exposes your character, both the good and the bad, which is probably why we try to avoid it. However conflict is God’s method for transforming us.
Scripture tells us in James 4:1-4 that the source of our arguments comes from our own motives and desires which are not of God. We don’t ask God for what we want and instead try to achieve under our own power. When our spouse doesn’t comply, we lash out with anger, frustration or passive aggressiveness.
Some questions that group one discussed were…
- Think about the last crises, external stressor or marital conflict you experienced. Did the final outcome serve to strengthen your marriage or weaken it?
- What can we do as a couple to make sure crises ultimately strengthens our marriage?
- What has your behavior pattern been for dealing with conflict? What would you personally like to do differently in future conflicts?
The second group assessed marriage intimacy in its 3 forms; spiritual, emotional, and physical. When one suffers, the others usually suffer as well because we are triune beings made in the image of our creator. We are spiritually intimate with those who we pray for and pray with. Emotional intimacy depends on our communication at the highest level which is to discuss our ideas, opinions, personal information and feelings. Physical intimacy can only be fulfilling when the other two are nurtured.
Nurturing intimacy requires communicating at the highest level with some regularity in order to really connect with your spouse. Group two was asked to have a 2 minute discussion with just their spouse and converse about something OTHER THAN…
- Work
- Children
- News events
- Ministry / Church
- Television/Entertainment
- Home chores and daily tasks
- People outside of your marriage
Group two did not have time to complete this but we urge you to have this type of discussion with your spouse for at least 4 minutes a day (the average) and build from there. Some of their other assessments were…
- Ways to keep the physical intimacy alive in your marriage
- The effects of pornography, masturbation or having fantasies on marriages
- Ways to give your spouse his/her own space to grow spiritually
Group three assessed commitment, defined as taking steps in a relationship that cannot be undone. Commitment is a three step process. The first step is trust which takes your consistent reliability. The second step is vulnerability which requires courage. The third step is sacrifice and that requires Jesus.
Counselors, coaches or therapists can impart relationship skill techniques to address certain crises but there can be no lasting change without the third step of sacrifice. We see from scripture that during Jesus ministry on Earth, he made the blind see, the dumb speak, the lame walk…all quick fixes to immediate crises. However, it was His sacrifice that brought about salvation, the permanent solution to what really plagued mankind. In the same way, it takes your sacrifice to bring about healing and real transformation of your marriage into what it is supposed to be.
Group three addressed the following questions…
- What does the act of trust, vulnerability and sacrifice look like in your marriage?
- What have you done to earn your spouse’s trust?
- What are some examples of acts of commitment that you can take in your marriage to move you forward in God’s purpose?
Group four discussed marital happiness. The Institute for American Values and the National Center on African American Marriages and Parenting charts an index of the five leading marriage indicators. Their conclusion was that children are directly affected by a couple’s emotional state. On average, children raised by happily married parents fare better on almost every measure of child well-being compared to children raised by unhappily married parents. A happy marriage is also linked to physical health. As for the rationale that it is better to get divorced than to subject children to an unhappy marriage, the statistics on how children in single parent households fare compared to both parents tell otherwise.
A University of Texas study concluded that married persons with more favorable attitudes toward divorce actually experience less happy marriages than those who oppose divorce. In other words, if you are miserable, divorce is an option. You just haven’t justified it yet. If divorce truly isn’t an option, you will be happier, what other choice makes sense?
Some of the questions that group four addressed were…
- How realistic is it to say that happiness is a choice we make when confronted with an antagonistic or hurtful spouse?
- Is happiness and vulnerability mutually exclusive in marriage; meaning do we have to choose one over the other?
- How have you dealt with sadness or depression in your relationship? What advice do you have for others?
- Do you consider it phony to come to church and act “happy” when you are experiencing marital difficulty? How should we conduct ourselves in public when going through problems? How should we conduct ourselves in private?
These were just four topics out of many that you can assess. What you give a priority to depends on your marital core values and greatest pain areas. Perhaps these should be the first things that you assess. Start practicing assessment today. Start with just 4 minutes a day and build a habit. A conversation a day keeps the marriage counselor away.
