The more I meet with couples who are struggling with their marriage the clearer it is to me that one of the greatest problems plauging marriages in this day and age is simply the unintentional way in which we navigate these relationships. Simple questions for believing couples like do you pray together are generally answered with a no. Even questions like are you intentional about a date night with your spouse bring sparse answers.
I truly believe that in any relational context. The only way to make the relationship work is by intentionally focusing our time, effort and attention on making it work. I would like to point out something that is a little lost in today’s society. That is the idea of marrying for love in the context of human history is a relatively new concept. For the first 5000 years or so of man’s existence marriages were put together either in arranged format or some other cultural construct as a means for companionship with the understanding that love would be cultivated in the context of that relationship as it grew. Today for whatever reason that paradigm has swung very widely in the opposite direction. Many people are looking for someone they fall in love with that they can marry to cultivate companionship with. I would submit that this is a false paradigm. In no way am I advocating returning to the dark ages of arranged marriages, I just think we would be much better served, particularly in the body of Christ counseling with couples who were contemplating marriage and instructing them in the ways of companionship. As anyone who has ever been in love can attest, the feeling of love is a fleeting feeling. We do not practice love as the verb that it is intended to be, rather we practice love as if it were a noun. We still believe that love is found in a person, place, or thing. When in reality love is found in the fruit of our hand and the fruit of our lips.
The point that I am trying to make is that if this writing finds you in a place where your marriage is no longer sweet and you’re having to endure every day wondering how much worse he can get, I believe if you survey the past several years of your life you’ll realize that neither you nor your spouse has been intentional in making your relationship work. We get into the death spiral of reacting in every situation in our relationship rather than being proactive in how we navigate the situations we find ourselves in. It is kind of like a tennis match where one spouse is on each side of the net hitting the ball over to the other side wondering how the ball will be returned. My suggestion is you both put the rackets down for a moment, stop the game go to the bench and talk about the way the game is going to be in played. It’s time to be intentional about your relationship.
Allow me to plant this thought. Someone is intentionally pursuing relationship with your spouse as we speak. It might be in a business context. It might be in a personal context it might be in a hobby context, but somebody is being intentional about relationship with them. Don’t let the only place they find intentional pursuit be found outside of your relational context. Be intentional about pursuing companionship with your spouse and love will follow. After all we do not want to commit random acts of love against our enemies. But our companions we will gladly show love to in word and deed. Your life will end up at a destination. Your marriage will end up at a destination. That is not the debate. The question is whether or not you will allow yourself to be a passenger that is dragged along to that destination by circumstances of life or whether or not you will be the one driving the car when you arrive at the intended, intentional destination you’ve chosen together.
