My two lawyer brothers have taught me that a “contract” is simply a document ultimately built on distrust between two parties where each person is primarily concerned only with his or her best interests. God created marriage to be much more than a contract; it’s a covenant. In a covenant, the focus isn’t on your own best interests but on the best interests of another. It’s selfless, and it’s timeless and there’s NO exit strategy. That’s the only way a marriage can really work, but our modern world has lost sight of this.
#5 is an epidemic that is robbing us of real love…
5. We build marriage on our FEELINGS instead of our COMMITMENT.
There’s nothing wrong with “feelings.” They’re an important part of life, but they were never intended to be our compass or our foundation, because feelings are fickle. Marriage is far too important to be based on feelings. Instead, we need to build marriage upon our commitments even on those days when we’re not feeling it. Our modern world worships feelings and is quick to quit on a marriage the moment the feelings change, but the strongest couples have learned that marriage requires choosing to love each other even on those days when you struggle to like each other.
#6 might surprise you, but take a minute to consider what it really means...
6. We view marriage as a 50-50 partnership.
Marriage certainly is a partnership, but in our modern world, we’ve divided everything into “his” and “hers” in a dangerous way. When we look at marriage as “50-50” we’ll always be keeping score and measuring our spouse’s efforts against our own (and almost always scoring ourselves higher than we’re scoring him or her). We’ll be tempted to give less effort so we’re never doing more than our share. This eventually creates a climate in the marriage where neither person wants to do anything and entitlement ultimately replaces love. Instead of seeing the relationship as 50-50, see it as 100-100. Give the best of yourself 100 percent of the time.
#7 is so important if you have children...
7. We think the happiness of our KIDS should be a bigger priority than the health of our marriage.
Obviously, our kids need to be a huge priority and we would do anything for our children, BUT our modern world has mistakingly viewed children’s happiness as a greater priority than marital health. It’s not our job to raise “happy kids;” it’s our job to raise responsible adults. When all the focus is on the children’s temporary happiness, we end up harming the kids and harming the marriage at the same time. We also end up with an “empty nest” and an empty marriage. One of the greatest gifts you can give your children is the security that comes from living a unified home where their mom and dad are in a loving, committed marriage with each other.
#8 might offend you, but it’s profoundly important...
8. We have “outsourced” SEX and romance.
This one is going to step on some toes, but it needs to be addressed. One of the biggest marriage-killers in our modern world is that husbands and wives have stopped pursuing each other and have turned their sexual/romantic fantasies to outside sources like pornography, erotica and graphic romance novels.
