Week 2 / Day 3: Thoughts from a Marriage Counselor

Pastor John Hunsberger, M.A., LIMHP

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Submit to one another out of reverence for Christ.
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Wives, submit yourselves to your own husbands as you do to the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church, his body, of which he is the Savior. Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit to their husbands in everything.
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Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her to make her holy, cleansing her by the washing with water through the word,and to present her to himself as a radiant church, without stain or wrinkle or any other blemish, but holy and blameless. In this same way, husbands ought to love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. After all, no one ever hated their own body, but they feed and care for their body, just as Christ does the church— for we are members of his body. “For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh.” This is a profound mystery—but I am talking about Christ and the church.However, each one of you also must love his wife as he loves himself, and the wife must respect her husband.
Ephesians 5:21–33

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Assuming the Best

Last week we discussed how beliefs about the marriage covenant shape our framework and goals while our boundaries help us articulate what we can actually control. This week, we will take that understanding and apply it directly to our narrative about our spouse. We all have an internal narrative about our marriage. We know our spouse. When we first get married, it is common to feel overwhelmingly positive about them. However, the longer we are married, the easier it becomes to imagine each scenario and interaction before they happen. We find ourselves thinking, “If I say or do this, he/she will respond like this. I don’t want to have that interaction, and so I am not going to say anything at all.” Or we prepare ourselves for conflict and approach our unsuspecting spouse with defensiveness or aggression that is rarely well-received.

This is not a healthy relational pattern, but it is very normal! We need to be aware that we can be guilty of this, and how destructive it can be towards the long-term health of our marriages and relationships. Dr. John Gottman, the leading marriage research psychologist in America, studied what makes marriages last or leads to their demise and found a simple equation that accurately predicted these outcomes. The equation that accounts for happy, stable marriages is five positive interactions for every one negative interaction. Even in conflict, healthy couples can maintain this ratio with empathy, affection, admiration, and gratitude. When we assume the best in our spouse, we allow for both our own struggles and their imperfections.

Over time, it is common for us to be frustrated with those things about our spouse that annoy us. It is also easy to take the things we love most about our spouses for granted. If we are not careful, our internal narrative of their most likely responses can lead us to resentment and bitterness. This resentment and bitterness takes root without the interaction ever actually having happened! Allowing our spouse to surprise us does require risk and vulnerability, but, with practice and communication, it can lead to better understanding and intimacy. Furthermore, making a daily effort to remind ourselves of what we love about our spouse leads to a better internal narrative and sets in motion a beautiful cycle of reciprocated admiration in our marriages.

Points to Ponder

• Do you explicitly tell your partner every day what you appreciate about them?
• Do you apologize when you know you have hurt your partner?
• Do you respond positively to your partner’s “bids” at connection rather than ignoring or rejecting them?
• Do you start conversations with accusations? Or do you gently explain your feelings and desired outcomes without blame?