You can’t talk life goals around people who don’t have the same hunger as you, it’ll just sound like you are bragging. ~ Aubrey Drake
Someone posted that on Quora, and I thought, yes, exactly.
I’ve run into this more than once when Lori and I were discussing our relationship or the growth we wanted in our marriage. We’ve been told we care too much about our marriage, and that we love each other too much! Yes, really.
The reality is, the average temperate of marriages is so low, folks with a normal temperature are accused of having a raging fever.
I’m not suggesting you stop “bragging” about your marriage. Others need the nudge. Just smile when you’re accused of having a fever.
Beyond that, be aware that being surrounded by folks with lower temperature marriages can cause you to slack off. Peer pressure pulls us towards the norm, even when the norm is in the wrong direction. Don’t let others convince you that it’s you who has the problem!
We usually sit up front at church. But yesterday we arrived just before the service started, and the front was full, so we ended up close to the back.
I was looking at the folks in front of me during the sermon, and I noticed a number of married couples sitting close, or one with their arm around the other, or a hand on a leg.
It seems showing love for your spouse is a cultural norm there. That’s great, it encourages others to do the same. It may also nudge those who are not as loving. Perhaps it could even cause someone to think they should work on their marriage.
Public displays of attention aren’t just for you and your wife. They have the power to effect other couples in a good way.
A couple of years ago, a group of researchers released a study in which they discussed “divorce clusters”. Based on that, some have talked about divorce being contagious. Some findings from the study:
When close friends divorce, the odds of your marriage ending increase by 75%.
Those who have divorced friends in their larger social circles are two and a half-time more likely to get a divorce than people whose friends are still married.
You are 22% more likely to divorce if you have divorced siblings.
In small companies, divorce by co-workers could increase your risk of divorce by 55%.
I agree with the idea something like divorce is socially contagious, but I see the same being true for having good marriages. In part, it’s about permission – permission to divorce, or permission to be more loving. There is also the power of peer pressure – living up to or down to the norm for your group.
If your marriage isn’t as good as it should be, I would suggest you need to assess your friendships. You need more time with those who have strong marriages, and limited time with those who are in trouble. On the other hand, if your marriage is strong, please help those who are struggling by spending some time with them.
Am I proposing you ditch a friend because their marriage is in trouble? No, but if many of your friends have significant marriage problems, maybe you need to figure out why you seem to be attracted to such people. Are you looking for a group that won’t call you on your marriage problems? Do you want friends who will “be understanding” if your marriage craters? Are those friends pulling your marriage down?
If there is a good deal of marriage turmoil, or divorce, in those close to you, I’d see it as a serious warning sign. See it as a signal it’s time to make your marriage more of a priority.
Lori and I have been ministering about sex online for 24 years. We’ve seen the good, the bad, and the ugly. This post is about praising the good, but for you to understand how amazing the good is you need to have an understanding of the bad and the ugly.
Lori and I do what we do because when we needed help for sex in the late ’80s we couldn’t find it in the church. We lived in the very liberal city of Austin TX and yet Christians were unwilling to talk about sex. The few Christian sex books that existed were dry and not of much use. (I don’t blame the authors for that, it was the Christian publishing industry. I spoke to one author who said he had many battles with them and was told he could not mention some things he felt were important.)
When when we started in 1997 (the image is the forerunner of The Marriage Bed site) there were very few Christian sex resources on the web. And most of what did exist was more about promoting their sin than following the Bible. There were the “Liberated Christians” who had liberated themselves from God’s limitations, the Domestic Discipline crowd who promoted BDSM as headship, and the Christian Nudists who tried to convince me Jesus and the disciples were often nude in public. When we started to blog about marriage and sex in 2001 we were not aware of anyone else doing it.
Finding a place to host the web site as we got bigger was interesting. One Christian fellow who ran some servers from his basement didn’t want us because he didn’t want our stuff near his children. (How zeros and ones on a hard drive were going to influence his kids, I don’t know.) A guy who did allow us on his server for years, and took good care of us, didn’t want us to thank him on our web site lest some of his Baptist customer’s find out and move their sites off his servers. I don’t blame him for this, being associated with us was risky back then. One fellow who worked for a large Christian media outlet was fired for mentioning our site to a co-worker during a break. Several pastors got in hot water for associating with us and at least one lost his job.
Our church, at the time we added the message boards, didn’t want anything to do with us. The pastor said he thought what we were doing was good, but he never mentioned it and didn’t want us to do so. Then there were the hate emails telling us we were going to hell and taking others with us. (I even got an email signed by Satan saying I was doing a great job!)
That was some of the bad and ugly. Now for some good!
In 2000 The American Association of Christian Counselors annual conference was about sex. Granted it’s a professional organization, but it was still a bold move. It helped to push the issue by educating and encouraging pastors and counsellors about sexuality.
In 2001 a church in Pineville LA had us speak. And we saw a few other churches doing the same with others who talked about sex. Additionally, we saw pastors daring to talk about sex from the pulpit.
We saw some excellent books about sex from a real Christian perspective being offered. Books that dared to talk about things like oral sex and how to deal with problems like ED and PE.
A number of folks stepped up to blog about these issues. Most only lasted a year or two, but many of those made great contributions. Others have stood the test of time, and I know they have had a hugely positive effect on many marriages and countless couple’s sex lives.
As we talk to people and visit churches now, we hear more and more positive talk about sex and far less negative talk.
Of course, we have a long way to go and I bemoan that here on occasion. But seeing the growth is vital and gratitude for that is appropriate. The church has made massive positive improvements on this over the last three decades and I expect that to continue and to pick up speed.
In short, it’s gotten a lot better and I am greatly encouraged.
And finally, I urge you to be a part of the solution. Authors, bloggers, and leaders will never “fix” the situation. For real change, we need grassroots changes. When you speak positively about sex and marriage you change people’s thinking. If enough people do that we will see a huge shift. Those who were a voice calling in the wilderness have shown the way, but it’s up to the body of Christ to continue the job.
I follow a number of news sources. Overall I look for sources that don’t let their bias slant things much, but I follow a couple of clearly right-leaning and clearly left-leaning sources. During the last year, it’s been kind of scary to see how very differently the far leaning sources report many stories. One side focuses on an aspect the other never even mentions. They downplay or emphasize various parts to the point you wonder if they are even reporting the same story.
Unfortunately, this is human nature, and we all do it. We curate our life to make ourselves look better than we are. We don’t mention the bad parts or try to downplay them when they can’t be avoided. We make a lot of noise about the good things and maybe exaggerate a bit (or more than a bit). We even try to do this with our spouses and we certainly do it when we talk about our marriages!
In the world, this is normal and generally excused if not done to an extreme. But God expects better of us. What we call spin, curating, or fluffing He calls lying, deceiving, and sinful.
Various studies have found being on social media a lot leads to being less satisfied with one’s life and can contribute to depression. We compare the curated lives of others to our real life and we fall short. We get the feeling the majority of folks have more than we have, have it better than we do, get more sex than we get, and so on. And at the same time, we’re putting out a carefully scrubbed and polished facsimile of our lives, contributing to others feeling bad about their reality.
How about we all become honest about our lives; the good, the bad, and when we’ve acted ugly? I am NOT encouraging you to badmouth your spouse, but don’t paint a picture of a perfect marriage if that’s not what you have. When you show others your marriage is not perfect, you help them feel less bad about their own marriage problems and give some hope.
In addition to not contributing to the problem, being honest about your life means you can ask for advice, help, and prayer.
Imagine the impact if enough people did this!
A post worth reading:
The November/December edition of The Marriage Bed Quickie is out! ◄ A quick read with links to great stuff!
I’m a big fan of policing your own group. That’s why I’m a lot harder on Christians than on the unsaved. I have no responsibility for those in the world, but I do have a responsibility for those who follow Jesus.
This idea is also why I tend to be harder on husbands than wives.
With that in mind, I’d like to ask you to “police your own”. And in particular, I’d like you to police your own friends with regard to marriage. I find this entirely biblical and I know it can improve or even save a marriage.
A post worth reading:
The Generous Wife | Compared to What? ◄ Comparing your wife or marriage can really mess you up.
“The church has a responsibility for/to marriages, and is often complicit in divorces. Be your brother’s keeper with regard to marriage.” (Follow TMB on Twitter)
This was prompted by a dream I had the night before (more on that below) but it’s hardly a new thought for us. And we think the Bible says the same thing:
“Let marriage be held in honor among all…” [Hebrews 13:4a ESV]
There’s a good chance your version makes that a statement of fact (Marriage is honorable among all [NKJV]) rather than a command. We need not dig into the Greek to realise the “statement of fact” translation is incorrect; marriage was NOT held in honour by all when this was written. In fact, marriage was not even held in honour by all who claimed to follow Jesus. Sadly nothing has changed, many who follow Jesus don’t understand how important marriage is and don’t understand how vital it is for the church to support and protect marriages.
The Greek word that is translated as honour in this verse means:
as of great price, precious
held in honor, esteemed, especially dear
Do our actions as followers and churches match that? Do we fight for marriages? Do we see a couple’s marriage as more important than our friendship with the husband or wife? Are we willing to fight for the marriages of others, even if that puts us at odds with one or both spouses? Are we willing to limit what a couple does at church, telling them they need to focus on their marriage for a time?
I’ve seen plenty of divorces happen with the church the couple attended never doing anything to intervene. Regardless of whether or not the church could have done something that would save the marriage, its inaction condemns it. When we put “privacy” or “it would be uncomfortable” or “I don’t want to offend” ahead of a marriage, we are NOT honouring marriage as the Bible commands us.
My dream is, to me, how it should be. In my waking life I don’t know the people in the dream, nor did I recognise the location. In the dream, the location was my home town.
It was mid-day and I was out on some small errand. I got a call telling me that a man had told his wife to leave, he wanted a divorce. The man was not a part of my church, but Lori and I knew the couple a bit. I was asked to go to his house. When I got there I saw a handwritten sign on the door that read, “Your key won’t work, I changed the lock.”
I knocked and was let in. I had said a couple of words when the man’s phone rang. It was someone in leadership from his church and I could tell from his side of the conversation that he was being “encouraged” to work on his marriage. I heard him say, “Yes, I will be accountable to you about this.” Just then there was a knock on the door. I walked to the door and saw several cars had arrived. The wife and several female friends were at the door and I let them in.
From this point to the end of the dream I moved around as if no one saw me, just listening. Someone was talking to the husband, asking him questions and challenging him.
The women were talking to the wife, and one asked, “Has sex been a problem in your marriage?”
“Oh yes!” the wife replied, “He’s always asking, he wants it all the time.”
Another woman replied to this with “So he is sexually starved because you refuse him?”
The wife looked like she’d been shot! And then she got it. The woman continued to talk to her, helping her see that while this was not the only problem in their marriage, it was a very real problem and was one that she had caused and needed to deal with. The women were loving but firm.
A short time later the wife went to her husband and pulling him aside, she told him to get rid of the people so they could go upstairs and have sex. She said this in a rather graphic way and his reaction told me that 1) she had never talked this way before, and 2) he liked it.
The rest of the dream is unclear, but I recall hearing a report that they were doing better and a couple of details of how certain people were meeting with them individually and as a couple. I also had a discussion with the husband at some point in which he said her willingness to admit she had wronged him sexually, and her working on that, had caused him to see all the ways he had wronged her.
In my mind, this is how it should be. It would be even better if the church had rallied before the man threw his wife out, but when it happened they jumped into action. I was called because someone knew I would be available and they wanted a man at the house when his wife came home. Both husband and wife were confronted on their part of the breakdown of the marriage. The wife’s friends didn’t “Oh poor baby” her and tell her how horrible her husband was. Instead, they found something she could change and strongly encouraged her to do it.
As I write this we are staying at the hotel where we spent our honeymoon 34 years ago. It brings back a lot of memories, and unfortunately, many of those are not happy. It was on our honeymoon that I started to learn my wife’s interest in sex was significantly less than my interest.
It was easy to throw all the sexual issues at Lori’s feet given the abuse she had in her past. I hadn’t looked at porn in nine years, so I figured it was all her. I also decided that apart from sex our relationship was just fine.
It turns out I was very wrong. First I was not clear of the effects of porn, and second, we had problems that had nothing to do with sex. And worst of all, I was at least part of the problem in most of our non-sexual problems. It took me far too long to see the truth, and that added to our pain and frustration. It also delayed doing what needed to be done to make things better.
I really wish there had been some older guy with a few years of good marriage under his belt who would have cared enough about me to tell me how full of crap I was. If you’re an older guy with a decent marriage, I encourage you to get to know some newlywed guys well enough to be able to speak into their marriages.
