~  MAKING MARRIAGE MEANINGFUL - By Paul Finn  ~

It was 8.00pm one Wednesday evening when they arrived. A middle aged couple who had been married for some twenty years. They were comfortably off, both in good jobs and didn’t want for anything. They had two children at school, could afford nice holidays abroad and were members of a large evangelical church. They sat in our lounge and admitted that their marriage had been in a mess for a number of years and so far as they were concerned, we were their last hope.

Over the years, my wife Janice and I have counselled many couples who arrive at our home with the same statement, “You are our last hope.” When hope is gone in a marriage, we become hopeless and a hopeless marriage is one that has lost all meaning.

When God first came up with the idea of marriage, His original intention was that it would meet the need of aloneness that Adam was experiencing. In a perfect world where everything was there for his pleasure and satisfaction, Adam still felt alone. This fact tells us that material things can never fully satisfy because we were designed for relationship.

When Adam woke up from his divine anaesthetic, he took one look at Eve and said, “This is it!” Suddenly he felt complete and even though a bit of him was now missing, God had given it back to Adam in a far more beautiful and useful form. Eve brought meaning to his life that he had not been able to find anywhere else in all of creation.

The meaning of marriage is, as the apostle Paul says, “a mystery”, and the mystery for many couples is that whilst they begin their marriages full of hope and purpose, somewhere along the way they lose it and feel that they have nothing left to live for anymore.

One man who was finding his marriage really hard going, answered the telephone and sighed saying, “Yes, Mother. I’ve had a hard day. Mildred has been in one of her difficult moods…I know I ought to be firmer with her, but it’s not easy. You know what she’s like….Yes, I remember you warned me….Yes I remember you told me she was a vile creature who would make my life a misery….Yes, I remember you begged me not to marry her. You were right….You want to speak to her? OK.” He put down the phone and called his wife in the next room; “Mildred, your mother wants to talk to you!”

It’s a humorous story, but it also underlines a familiar scenario for many husbands and wives in that they fail to discover the wonderful mystery that God intended for marriage. So how can we restore meaning to our marriages when it becomes lost?

Some time ago Janice and I appeared on a local radio station where we were asked what were the vital ingredients for a good marriage. We gave the following three ingredients that would help to make our marriages more meaningful every day.

Romance

A favourite film of mine is Gladiator and just recently someone asked me if I had followed the thread of romance that runs right through the story. I had to admit that I had missed it. Oh yes, it’s there alright, but as I am not a strongly romantic type, I had totally overlooked its presence in the story. Am I a typical man? Maybe! However, I do realise how important romance is in marriage and I cannot ignore its necessity by claiming maleness.

Romance is like the oil that keeps the marriage relationship alive and fresh. It adds the spice and sparkle that is so necessary to breathing fresh life into our marriages every day. It does not have to be terribly expensive either; a walk and a picnic, candles instead of electric lights, going out to a film together, a weekend away or taking the afternoon off together. Some of the most romantic times I enjoy with Janice are when we can take time out to walk together in the country, hold hands and talk together.

Try to remember how you felt when you were dating. You made time for each other and grasped every opportunity to be together. That attitude is just as important to maintain even after five, ten or twenty five years of marriage. Yet romance doesn’t just happen, it has to be created every day. When did you last send you husband or wife a love note? When did you last plan a surprise for your wife? When did you last make your husband feel really special?

It is so easy to neglect this important aspect of marriage and then it becomes harmful to our relationship. David Instone-Brewer points out the danger of this kind of neglect when he says, “When neglect becomes positive harm it turns into abuse – neglect of material support becomes physical abuse and neglect of physical affection turns into emotional abuse.” J.John reminds us that, “Even when a marriage is made in heaven the maintenance work has to be done on earth.” Romance has the power to draw us together into a world of our own that will build and strengthen marriage and maintain its meaning in a powerful way. Read the Song of Solomon…it’s very romantic.

Communication

We live in an age where we’ve never had it so good so far as our ability to communicate is concerned. Yet so often in marriage we too easily lose the art of effective communication. We become like ships that pass silently in the night, (perhaps on the way to and from the bathroom!), unable to share our innermost thoughts and feelings. Meaningless marriage is where the wall of silence divides us from the wonder of intimacy.

Communication is vital to a meaningful marriage because it is the measure of how good the relationship is. John Powell makes this claim when he says, “It is certain that a relationship will only be as good as its communication.” The biggest cry of most married women about their husbands is, ‘he doesn’t tell me what he feels.’ “The biggest challenge for woman,” says John Grey, “is to correctly interpret and support a man when he isn’t talking.” And the biggest challenge for a man is to listen to his wife when she is thinking her thoughts out loud. A fundamental difference between men and women is that women generally share their thought processes out loud as they work through an issue, whereas men think in silence! That’s why the average man speaks about 10,000 words a day, whereas the normal woman will speak anything up to 22,000 a day. But we won’t go too far down this road…it’s a bit risky!!

In the New Testament, the word ‘communicate’ is used on several occasions and comes from the Greek word koinonia which we commonly understand to mean ‘fellowship.’ Good communication is about fellowship together and the sharing of our lives; it is the process by which something becomes ‘common’ between us. It also involves the three key elements of talking, listening and understanding. Many men find it difficult to talk about their feelings which frustrates most women, but if we are to reach the goal of understanding one another then this will never happen if we don’t share what we feel. One woman having been married for less than a year wrote:-
To all the world we look like a happily newly-married couple. He puts on a veneer when we are with others. But a few weeks after we were married I felt so disappointed. I thought we would be able to talk about everything but he never tells me about his feelings.

The art of listening is most important too. Paul Tillich said, “The first duty of love is to listen.” King Solomon saw the wisdom of listening when he said, “Answering before listening is both stupid and rude.” Sometimes we don’t recognise just how poor we can be as listeners. Maybe we prefer the sound of our own voice rather than hearing our husband or wife. One man having attended a marriage course said, “I hadn’t recognised I was an interrupter until I was in the car with my wife on the way home, and then I realised I hadn’t allowed my wife to finish one of her sentences.” Learning to listen to each other will take time but it’s a skill that will enrich any marriage.

Paul Tournier once said, “No one can develop in this world and find a full life without feeling understood by at least one person.” When we are understood we feel valued. Tournier continues, “Listen to all the conversations of our world, between nations as well as those between couples. They are for the most part dialogues of the deaf.” Our longing to be understood will never be diminished and it’s what makes for successful communication.
Arriving at a place of understanding is at the heart of effective communication. To be clearly understood builds relationships, but tensions do arise in our understanding of one another because as men and women we are so different. Peter gives some sound advice when he says, “….you husbands must give honour to your wives. Treat her with understanding as you live together. She may be weaker than you are, but she is your equal partner in God’s gift of new life. If you don’t treat her as you should, your prayers will not be heard.” God places the responsibility upon man to try to understand woman and to speak her language. Remember that, “When a man speaks, he gives you a piece of his mind. When a woman speaks, she gives you a piece of her heart.”

Only when we share what we really feel, and listen with full attention, will we begin to understand one another and enjoy the meaning of koinonia in marriage.


Forgiveness

Forgiveness is a power that deals with the past so that our future ensures we grow together and not apart. None of us are perfect and therefore hurting each other is inevitable in marriage. Rob Parsons observes
The strange thing about rows in marriage is that, if we can learn to resolve them, then two days later we can’t remember what the row was about. If we can’t resolve conflict, then two days later we still can’t remember what started it, but the bitterness goes on rolling down the years…..Those unresolved hurts are never forgotten; they are so often pushed to the back of the mind, where they lie for years and grow in secret. We see it so often as they are recalled years later, often in divorce proceedings. They were never dealt with.

Whilst conflict is inevitable in marriage, if we are going to enjoy a relationship that is meaningful, then forgiveness will be a necessary part of that marriage.

Forgiveness is a value for life and it is much more than saying sorry, it is choosing to let go of the hurt and to allow love to flow again. Marlene Dietrich said, “Once a woman has forgiven her man, she must not reheat his sins for breakfast!” When we hold on to our hurts and nurse them deep within, we allow resentment to grow and division ensues. Philip Yancey talks about the power of resentment when he says, “resentment means, literally, ‘to feel again’: resentment clings to the past, relives it over and over, picks each fresh scab so that the wound never heals.”

Every act of forgiveness costs us something of ourselves. It is being willing  to ‘give to’ the other person something they don’t deserve. The very heart of forgiveness is in its ‘givenness’. Forgiveness means letting go of the past and choosing to forgive as an act of the will regardless of my feelings. We are never more like God than when we forgive, and forgiveness cost Him his only Son! It was also impossible for Jesus to hold any resentment against those who nailed him to the cross because as they did so, He prayed, “Father forgive them…”. Forgiveness is the means whereby we can ‘let go’. And because of what Christ has done for us we have no right to hold on to our hurts.

Making marriage meaningful is all about what we sow into our relationship day by day. Paul says, “You will always reap what you sow!”  If we sow into our marriages, every day, romance, good communication and forgiveness, then each day we will enjoy marriage as God meant it to be.

To ‘give’ healing to the wounds of another, it is being willing to ‘give up’ our pride, it is being willing.

Paul R.Finn