My Top 10 Marriage Tips after 20 Years

I have done quite a bit of marriage counseling as a biblical counselor and if there was one thing I wish marriage book author’s would stop doing it would be saying “If you want a good marriage and a loving spouse, do (fill in the blank).”

 

You see, the thing is, free will is part of God’s will.  We can be the best, most loving, most giving, most sacrificial spouse who meets all the spouse’s needs and your spouse can still be ungodly, unloving and mean.

 

This whole “Living my best life” or “Making my best life” idea is worldly and makes us think “I can’t live my best life if my spouse doesn’t change.”  (Back to point one)  But the thing is that success in this life depends upon ONE THING ALONE … pleasing God.

 

We may never see our spouse say “Thank you” but if we live in obedience to God’s word, we can walk in love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, meekness, faith and temperance and we can hear the Lord say “Well done, thou good and faithful servant.”  And THAT is a promise that the author of the Bible will keep.

 

 

Can I just tell you that Satan will do his very best to get you to have sex before you are married and do everything he can do get you to NOT have sex after you are married.  

 

I talk to a lot of women and while there are exceptions to the rule a large majority of women (saved and unsaved) experience what the secular world calls “the ick.”  Here is a definition: 

I hear a lot of reasons why some women feel it happens.  Fornication before marriage, extreme view of purity before marriage, sexual assault / molestation, unattractive spouse, weight gain, hormones, stress, exhaustion, pornography use (of the person or the spouse), lack of respect for the spouse, child birth, homosexual feelings or interactions, unmet expectations, unfamiliar with “how things work down there” and even disagreements about finances and child training.

 

A lot of these things are real and should be spoken about and worked through, but the fact is this … when we get married, we commit to being physically available and physically affectionate to our spouse (1 Cor. 7:1-6) and we aren’t supposed to go very long without it (except for fasting and prayer and with consent).  {This poses a biblical problem for cultural expectations of war & missionary deputation … but that is a post for another day.}

 

So, what do I recommend? 

Yes, you should definitely seek counsel to process and comb through past trauma’s or behavioral or thinking patterns that could be hindering your sex life, but commit to being physically & sexually affectionate to your spouse on a regular basis in the meantime.  God promises that as you obey, your thoughts will be able to be sorted out and established in a healthy way.

 

Pray and ask God to help you focus on the positive.  When you think of intimacy with your spouse, commit to only pondering on the things that you can thank God for.  If it is only one thing … think on that thing.  Ask God to help you build a list of things that are positive about being with your spouse.  Maybe it is just the chance to be a giver, but find something of virtue and something of praise and think on those things.

 

(Also, I am not condoning sinful or abusive sexual acts or pressure in marriage.  I am speaking as a general rule.)

 

 

I have heard people say that the verse of “Don’t let the sun go down upon your wrath” doesn’t apply to everyone because sometimes trying to talk things over with your spouse just causes things to get worse.  

 

I look at it from a different perspective.  I believe we obey God and get our wrath right with Him regardless.  We are commanded to forgive, to forbear, to be longsuffering, to be charitable … pretty much to abide in the fruit of the spirit and love our enemy.  None of this is contingent upon the repentance of the other person.  These are heart issues.  God is concerned with OUR hearts and He wants us to get things right with Him before we go to bed.

 

You know what?  If you do that and then go to bed and get up in the morning, eat a nourishing breakfast, do your devotions, take a brisk walk in the morning sunshine and pray to the Lord … very often, by the time you have a chance to address the previous day’s conflict, you are in a much more Christlike mindset and everything will go much better.  Ask me how I know.  Lol.

 

 

When I first got married, I was given the advice not to complain about your husband in public.  The longer I was married, I realized that other than seeking counsel on how I should respond in a godly manner to difficult circumstances that may have been created by my spouse … the only person who could actually do anything to help was God.

 

I adopted the song “Tell It to Jesus Alone” as my theme song.  Are you weary? Are you heavy hearted?  Tell it to Jesus.  Tell it to Jesus.  Are you grieving over joys departed? Tell it to Jesus alone.

Do all things without murmurings and disputings: That ye may be blameless and harmless, the sons of God, without rebuke, in the midst of a crooked and perverse nation, among whom ye shine as lights in the world; Philippians 2:14-16 KJV

Why does God say that we will shine as lights in the world if we can just stop complaining and fighting?  Because it is unnatural.  It is supernatural.  It is of God to be able to be able to delight yourself in the Lord rather than feeling entitled to ease and comfort.  I speak from experience.  This was a hard one for me, but learning to shut up and pray was literally the best lesson I ever learned in marriage.

6. Learn to laugh at yourself not at them.

Rick and I find ourselves falling into this common trap of getting annoyed when the other person does things so differently than we would that it just feels like they are wrong.  But someone once said

“There are a lot of steps between taking your clothes off, putting them in the laundry basket, doing the laundry and returning them back in to the drawer or closet to be used again.  None of these are moral issues.”

But they sure can become a point of contention if we think our way is the best way and don’t just roll with the other person’s differences.  Laugh at yourself.  Realize you are being ridiculous for trying to make someone change just because they aren’t like you.  See it for what it is.  Call yourself on the carpet and just laugh.

7. It doesn’t matter whose fault it is.

There was a phrase an older gentleman said in a tongue-in-cheek kind of way that made this poignant point.  In the middle of a disagreement someone was in he replied,

Let’s all remember that the most important thing here is to assign blame.

So, if assigning blame or defining who is right or wrong isn’t the point than what is the goal?

Finding something you can both agree upon.  Finding a mutual goal and working towards it with some flexibility.  Kindness.  Respect.  Demanding nothing.  Seeking their best interest in charity asking nothing in return.  Pleasing God.

8. If the first goal of marriage is pleasing God, the second goal is being a good friend.

I would say that this is the defining character trait in our marriage.  We strive to be friends.  There is no one I would rather be with.  It takes effort to be the kind of person someone wants to be around. 

It takes biting your tongue when you could point out their flaws.

Investing in their interests even if they bore you.

Finding ways to encourage them in the most ordinary things.

Speaking in a tone of kindness, not with passive aggressive sarcasm … or impatience.

Being available when they are home and not treating them like a servant or a bother or a project.

Be ye kind one to another.

9. Take care of your health, because Satan will use stress and exhaustion to break down your marriage.

I did an entire series on hormone health, nutrition, depression, neurotransmitters & anti-depressants / psychotics, etc.  

That series is here: https://truthandsong.com/the-biblical-counselors-guide-to-hormonal-mental-endocrine-health/

But I want to point out that this entire world is bent on two extremes: do-nothingness and apathy or do-everything and exhaustion.  I say that Satan wants us to in the vice of making Pharaoh’s bricks by day and so exhausted in the nights and evenings that we are slaves to Nero’s entertainment.

Also, in a world that is largely controlled by a corporate oligarchy and consumerism, is it beneficial to the pharmaceutical community to keep us not dead by mentally and physically unhealthy. This plays right into spiritual warfare in that we are too mentally and physically dulled down to be getting out there and reaching the world for Christ.

But it also causes quite a bit of contention in marriage.  We over commit.  We feel over worked.  Arguments about how to spend time and who does what and competition over “shared work loads” are inevitable.  The more apathetic spouse isn’t as engaged as they “should be” and the more exhausted spouse is picking at the other spouse for “not doing enough” and who wants to be intimate with a jerk? (Jerks can be both male or female.)

I highly recommend the video series and learning to find balance to reduce the stress on your nervous system and to nourish your endocrine system and truly find rest with you spouse.

That being said, there is no excuse for bad behavior.  There are just greater temptations to do wrong.

10. The only person you should try to change is you.

This kind of goes full circle to point one, but in that point I talked about accepting your spouse.  In this one I want to talk about the journey of conforming to the image of Christ.

While there is an element of speaking to a brother or sister in Christ who is overtaken in a fault. (Galatians 6:1-2 KJV) and there is a time for rebuking sin (1 Timothy 5:20 KJV), generally speaking most issues in marriage are neither of those.

In fact, most of the griefs and mental burdens in marriage are due to OUR responses and thought life.

I heard a message at church yesterday speaking of godliness being manifested in our reactions: the whole “when a pot boils over it reveals what was in the pot already” idea.  How do we react to trials?  How do we react to temptations? How do we react to inconvenience?  How do we react to correction?

The VERY BEST THING we can do is stop.  Pray that you can recognize when you are losing perspective or that adrenaline is taking over or whatever your trigger is.  Then just wait until you can take things to God is prayer and ask Him to show us a humble, godly way to please Him in the situation.  

Because the #1 GOAL IN MARRIAGE is to please God.

I hope this was helpful. As always, thanks for being here and thank you for being my friends.

Melissa