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PRINCIPLES OF MARRIAGE Greg Swenson, Ph.D.Click on links below to move to that topic.
The Bible contains only a few direct references to
the nature and practice of marriage. Most references are brief. In the first
book of the Bible there is a succinct description of marriage as one of the
centerpieces of God’s creation (Gen. 2:18-25).
In Ephesians 5:21-33, and I Peter 3:1-7, the apostles Paul and Peter
focus on the attitudes of husband and wife toward each other. Jesus addresses
the necessity of the integrity of the marriage relationship, and reminds his
listeners that God the Creator is the originator of marriage, and intended it to
be a lifelong commitment (Matt. 19:3-10). Most other references to marriage are
shorter, or in the context of another subject. Nowhere in the Bible is there a treatise on marriage; a
guide, if you will. Working with
couples in conflict almost daily, I have often wished there was one.
Perhaps the reason there isn’t, is that everything
involved in following Christ is relevant to marriage. As worship, prayer,
fellowship, spiritual discipline, and service bring us closer to God, there is a
corresponding effect on how we value, protect, and nurture our spouse and
marriage. While I believe this is fundamental, there are some basic
principles of marriage that have become evident to me while working with
couples. They help identify cracks in the foundation of a marriage that need
repair.
What do marriages and
vacations have in common? Our
idealistic visions of both can turn into disasters, or adventures.
They seldom turn out to be exactly what we expected.
We plan to have fun. We
don’t plan to argue, get lost, be bored, or run into bad weather.
When have you camped for a week or shopped the Mall of America for a day,
without a glitch? How likely is it
that in the course of a marriage, nothing will go wrong?
Yet we often react with frustration, anger, and despondency when a
significant problem develops. Idealization
is a necessary part of the process through which a man and woman move, from
strangers to husband and wife. It’s unlikely anyone would want to be married if they
didn’t have a positive vision of their future together.
There is a point in marriage where the problems and challenges that we
will face begin to materialize in our minds.
It often occurs early, but for some later in the marriage.
At this point, it is important to accept that we, and our spouses, are
real people, and that we will come up against things that we wish we hadn’t.
Romance gets us started together, but
realism, determination, persistence, and problem-solving keep us going.
We need to be committed to do whatever is necessary to stay engaged in
the process of dealing with the realities of marriage.
Despite all of the magazine articles about bringing your marriage back to
life by restoring romance, this is
usually not the answer. Trying to
make a marriage out of romance is something like trying to remain a child
forever. If we were children forever, we would miss the adventures of
growing up. The same is true of
growing up in marriage.
One of the first realities of marriage that we face is that
we must “leave home”. The
concise definition of marriage found in Genesis reads, “…a man will leave
his father and mother and be united to his wife, and they will become one
flesh”. We have to do more than
walk out the door of our childhood home, or even move half a world away. We have to become aware of what we have taken with us, in the
form of attitudes, behavior patterns, and ways of relating, some of which may
not be compatible with our new lifelong partner. The critical thing here, is that we get away from the
unconscious notion that if I was acceptable in my family, I should okay as I am,
to my spouse. People who were
quietly present in their family find that their spouse wants to know their
thoughts and feelings. Behavior
that comes to be tolerated by parents and siblings can be intolerable in a
marriage: selfishness, emotional
explosions, irresponsibility. It is
important to determine that traditional ways of living, inherited from family,
need to be reevaluated. This can
involve anything from how the dishes are arranged in the cupboard, to how
children should be raised, to how we talk to each other.
When we leave home, we bring a lot more with us than we think.
Some of it will enrich the marriage and some of it won’t.
Each spouse needs to be willing to examine what they have brought from
home, and leave it behind if necessary.
When we marry, we become mutually dependent.
Unconsciously, we begin to function as a unit, each person taking on
complementary roles. One manages finances, the other the kitchen.
One instigates affection; the other social contacts.
While traditional roles have changed, we still depend on each other.
Where there is dependency, there is always opportunity for disappointment
and anger. Many married people feel
their spouse is overly dependent on them. They feel the balance is unfairly weighted on their side.
With time, things change in the marriage.
There are new responsibilities, some obvious and some not.
Some things must be shared by both spouses, such as nurturing and
disciplining children. Sometimes a
person tires of carrying the ball as planner, conciliator, or cook, and wants to
share a task that they have handled alone for years.
Mutual dependence requires balance.
Like an old-fashioned scale, it must be checked frequently to be sure
that it still works, and adjustments made.
What works in the first five years of marriage may not after twenty
years. The foundation of marriage is permanent, and must be made of rock solid
commitment, but the structure needs to be flexible to withstand the changes of
time.
Does it ever cause you to wonder how many times two
people can have the same argument? Usually
this has a lot to do with expectations. Defying
reality, we expect a person who has never been on time, to be on time; or a
person who listens only to country/western to enjoy the symphony.
Some of the classic conflicts in marriage involve hanging on to our
expectations, rather than giving them up. We
need to examine where they come from. Some
may develop from our experience in our family of origin. They seem right because
we’ve never questioned them. Some are wishes in disguise:
“I wish my husband bought me flowers”, becomes “I expect my husband
to buy me flowers”, when it becomes apparent that some husbands do such
things. Perhaps the biggest problem
is that many people who have repetitious quarrels have never examined what their
expectations are; whether they are realistic; where they came from; or whether
they are worth fighting for. Sometimes
they are. But we can’t have
everything we want, and sometimes it would not be good if we could.
Getting to the root of our expectations and determining what to do with
them may eliminate a hundred arguments with one decision.
While it is true that “man’s anger does not bring about
the righteous life that God desires” (James 1:20), anger, like other emotions,
has a purpose. Anger, or its
counterparts, withdrawal and discouragement, are indications that something
needs attention. Certainly we are
capable of excess when it comes to displaying and expressing unpleasant
emotions, but the fact that there is emotion remains important.
Intense emotion brings us to a critical point, at which many couples go
the wrong way. I believe that one
spouse’s emotions often evoke fear in the other; fear of failure, the unknown,
or fear that something must be terribly wrong
Emotions may give us the sensation that we have “lost” our spouse, as
we would like to have them, for a period of time.
In our fear, we often allow our own emotions to dictate our response.
We may have conditioned reactions to our fear, hiding away until the
storm is over, or taking the offensive, attempting to overwhelm our spouse’s
anger with our own. Every married
person needs to become inoculated to their spouse’s anger and distress; to
take it seriously without being overwhelmed by it.
It’s easy to see the need for this in others’ marriages, but
difficult to apply the concept to our own.
It often requires help from someone
who can calm our fear, insert reason where emotion is predominant, and
help us put things in perspective.
If we were brutally honest with ourselves, many of us would have to admit that we seldom think we are at fault when conflicts arise. It sounds good to say that marriage is a 50-50 deal. In reality the percentage breakdown in the back of our minds may be more like 95-5, when measuring our spouse’s responsibility for problems, versus our own. And the five percent of the time that we would admit to being wrong involves unimportant issues. This kind of thinking causes marriage counseling to come to a dead end, until husband and wife can grasp the principle that what counts is effort, rather than correctness. I have yet to see an instance in which accurately determining blame resulted in any significant improvement in a marriage. There
are cultures where people typically marry in mid-adolescence.
You would think that marriages would last longer when marriage takes
place later. Yet today’s later
median age of marriage hasn’t brought a corresponding increase in duration of
marriage. Our national average is
around nine years. We don’t have
equal opportunity when it comes to maturity.
It isn’t uncommon for one spouse to be more mature than the other at
the point of marriage. This isn’t as critical as what happens after the wedding.
The first step in maturity is to acquire the ability to trust.
It depends largely on bonding with parents early in life.
Those who aren’t fortunate enough to have had a parent who nurtured
them from birth, often have difficulty believing that their marriage partner can
care for them when their human weaknesses become evident.
They expect the marriage to fail, and may hasten its demise to avoid
prolonging the expected rejection. Another
milestone in development is acquiring a sense of autonomy, confidence in self,
and the ability to act independently. Those
who miss this step are likely to try to appropriate their spouse’s
independence. Borrowing confidence
doesn’t really work. As the
marriage progresses, the inability to assume necessary responsibilities takes
its toll. A third step in maturity
is achieving a sense of identity or individuality.
The person who fails to acquire their own identity often looks for
someone who “completes” them. Usually,
neither spouse finds this arrangement as attractive after ten years of marriage,
as it seemed in the beginning. Another
step in maturity involves realizing that other people are as important as you
are. Without this, marriage can
become a competition to determine who can meet their own needs to the fullest,
often at the expense of the other. Growth
and maturity seem to happen unconsciously as children develop.
With adults, it requires a more conscious effort.
It requires sufficient humility to acknowledge that we are not complete;
a degree of self-searching and openness to criticism; and a willingness to
change.
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Dr. Greg Swenson PhDCopyright © 1997-2003
All rights reserved.
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