One of the reasons so many are losing the battle for their marriages is that people expect marriage to do for them what God never designed marriage to do. Many marriages become disappointments because miserable people expect marriage to make them happy. In fact God never intended for marriage to make people happy. Your happiness comes out of your relationship with Him.

Marriage only intensifies the state in which it finds you. If you’re a reasonably mature person who is reasonably happy most of the time—and you’re fortunate enough to marry someone equally mature and happy most of the time—then the two of you will manage to make each other happier than either of you have been before your marriage. However, marriage will also intensify the misery of unhappy people.

Married people should ask themselves, “Am I depending upon my spouse to do for me what only God can do? Am I depending upon my spouse to make me a happy person, or am I bringing to my spouse a person who has already found happiness?”

It may be wiser if we chose our spouses with our ears than with our eyes. For, as Jesus said, “Out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks” (Matthew 12:34). When you listen to what a person says, you really discover what you will be living with if you choose to marry. We may mistakenly think our love can transform a person from the kind of person they are into the kind of person we are dreaming about. Nothing could be farther from the truth!

We ought to consider answers to these questions when looking for the right person to marry: Is that

person a Christian? Is he or she someone already happy and mature in their relationship with God and other people? Is he or she someone with whom I can enjoy and celebrate life?

Another important element in winning the battle for a successful marriage is defining exactly what Christian love and marriage should be. Years ago the Lord gave me this working definition of marriage: Christian married love is a persistent effort on the part of two people to create for each other the circumstances in which each can become the person God intended him or her to be—a better person than he or she could become alone.

THREE ELEMENTS OF A GOOD MARRIAGE

1. Persistent effort. If you are in a good marriage, you know it’s good because you and your spouse WORK at it. And you know it’ll stop being a good marriage the moment you stop working at it. You become partners in life. You become “team players,” yoked together and working at making life what God wants it to be for each other and for yourself.
2. Goal-directed effort. You work at creating the circumstances that you know will bring out the best in your spouse. As a husband, you need a “job description” from your wife so that you understand what she likes and the circumstances she prefers. And, she needs the same kind of “job description” from you. Then, as you work together to create these circumstances for each other, your marriage becomes an environment in which both of you can flourish.
3. Each person becomes a better person than either could have been alone. God has designed marriage so that it shapes each of us to some degree into the image of the other. I become the masculine counterpart of my wife and she becomes the feminine counterpart of me. In loving God and loving each other we grow together—and become the people God wants us to be.

Spouses bring different lives and different family backgrounds into their marriage. Good marriages tend to run in families, and unfortunately, so do bad ones.

Perhaps we fail to give adequate thought to the marriage models we each internalized as we observed our own parents’ marriage relationship while we were growing up. Your parents’ marriage is the most powerful influence in your definition of the marital roles and expectancies you bring into marriage. A husband is likely to treat his wife the way he saw his father treat his mother. A wife is likely to treat her husband the way she saw her mother treat her father. Early in life, our understanding and definition of marital roles are being defined and internalized as we see the way our parents’ marriage works.

If you are single, then, look very carefully at the family of the person you are interested in before you are too emotionally involved in the relationship to reconsider your choice. Then, if you choose to continue the relationship, talk with each other about characteristics in your parents’ marriages which you want to avoid, as well as those you hope to model in your own marriage.

Surveys of large groups of women and men surface certain qualities each would like to find in a spouse.

What a woman wants in a husband:

1. Someone who will spend time with her.
2. Someone who will be tender with her.
3. Someone who will be her spiritual leader.
4. Someone who will be a good father to her children.
5. Someone who will be a good provider.
6. Someone who will talk with her.

What a man wants in a wife:

1. Someone he can have fun with!
2. An interesting and exciting sex partner.
3. A good homemaker.
4. A good mother to his children.
5. A financially responsible partner.
6. A wife who will respect and admire him.

Since God chose to make us body persons and sexual persons, He obviously wants His married children to have a satisfying, biblical sex life. Only about 10 percent of the Christian couples I see are able to talk comfortably about their sex life. If this is a problem in your marriage, don’t ignore it. Satan will take advantage of the awkwardness you feel in discussing this vitally important area of your marriage. There are excellent resources available at Christian bookstores that you can use to initiate an open discussion and fulfilling relationship in the area of God-given marital sex.

With the Lord’s help, you can win the battle for your marriage. He will help you emulate what is good and overcome what is bad from your parents’ marriage. Remember your marriage is becoming the model your children will take into their marriage. Make it a good one! They may not know the details of your marriage relationship—but they should know that good things are happening by the way that they see you treat each other and them.

Winning the battle for your marriage will not only will bring God’s blessings on your lives, but will also give your children a great advantage in knowing how to choose their own spouse and build their own successful marriage.

Copyright by Dr. Richard D. Dobins @ Akron, Ohio; 2000.