We’ve looked at a marriage mistake commonly made by wives and one usually seen in husbands. We close this series with a mistake that both husbands and wives show in equal measure.
This mistake involves what I am calling here a cardinal principle of marriage. Despite its important, even critical nature, I see this mistake at least once a day when marriage is the subject of the counseling or therapy.
Because of it’s significance, I want to give you that principle up front, and as succinctly as I can put it:
You cannot maintain a vibrant marriage, let alone experience growth in it, with behaviors that would never have led to marriage in the first place.
I encourage you not to rush by that statement. It is as immutable as the laws of physics.
Just what am I saying?
I’m saying that to keep a marriage in good health, and to grow it into something even greater, the relationship itself must be an ongoing priority for you. It requires the kind of prioritizing you gave the burgeoning relationship when you were dating.
I want you to consider how inconvenient falling in love was to your then current life.
· It distracted your focus
· It rearranged your priorities
· It demanded your time... lots of your time
· It took incredible energy
· It was utterly inconvenient
And it was worth every blissful, wonderful minute of it!
You had found your “pearl of great price” on the human level. And just as in the parable, you gladly sold all that you had to win her or him.
And it was great!
For a while.
Then slowly, almost imperceptibly slowly, focus changed. Mortgage, career, child, finances, the Joneses (you know, the ones people try to “keep up” with) crept in.
I hear all the descriptions from clients: “We feel like ships passing in the night.” “We just seem like roommates.” “I feel like we’re nothing more than business partners.”
The primacy of the relationship has moved to the back of the stage.
You wake up one day and realize you’re in a place you never imagined you would be when you were dating. I know this because I’ve tried to warn so many couples of this danger in their premarital counseling. But they’re so in love they can’t imagine it happening to them.
I’ve heard it many times. It sounds like this.
Dr Ruth I know you know what you’re talking about and I’m sure that happens to a lot of people. But it won’t happen to us. We’re just SO in love.
Uh-huh.
And they are!
But they’re likely wrong in thinking it won’t happen to them.
I can almost tell you for certain it will happen. That is, unless they safeguard against it by attending to the primacy of their relationship as the years unfold.
*So I want to come back to the key principle as I close this post: You cannot maintain a vibrant marriage, let alone experience growth in it, with behaviors that would never have led to marriage in the first place.
You know what to do. You’ve already done it. You did it when you were dating. It will be a different version from then, a more mature version. But the aspects of it will be the same.
Blessings!
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YES!! Absolutely agree with this! What a great reminder! Thank you so much!