Not too long ago, I was handed a script for a Christmas skit my church was putting up. I had the role of a middle-aged man whose marriage had become dull, and in the words of the character “lacked a certain spark”. His lines were mainly about how things were no longer exciting for him and his wife.
I laughed and told my wife that I was going to nail it. As a marital counsellor, I’ve met many people who face this character’s struggles—whether they were trying to stay in their marriage or get out of it.
One thread runs through many of the difficult relationships I’ve encountered in the course of my work: a strong sense of paradox, or contradictions. Here are seven glaring paradoxes I’ve observed:
1. Appearances without Accountability
Many of us think we need to keep up the appearances of living well. We eagerly fill our Instagram feeds with picture-perfect moments, projecting a happily married life.
My friend Leslie’s social media, with his wife’s, told a story of a perfectly blissful couple. They often posed for photos together and dedicated posts of gratitude to each another.
Once when we were catching up, however, he looked tired. He admitted that while his marriage seemed blissful on social media, he had been miserable and lonely at home, as of late. They had kept up the appearances of doing well, so nobody really knew how badly they fought.
Leslie and his wife had appearances without accountability. Couples living like this isolate themselves from the wider community’s fellowship. They deprive themselves of the benefits of accountability to others.
Confessing our sins and struggles within a loving and accountable community that prays for us is the first step towards healing and restoration in our marriages.
Accountability can help us refocus our attention on shared ideals, like what satisfying relationships ought to look like amid the distractions the world throws at us. Accountability gives Christian couples a safe space to help and encourage one another in their relationships with their spouse and God.
James 5:16 gives us an alternative to focusing our time and energy on looking good in front of others: “Confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed” (emphasis mine).
Confessing our sins and struggles within a loving and accountable community that prays for us is the first step towards healing and restoration in our marriages.
2. Better Lifestyles without Better Lives
The world sells us ideas about marrying equal or marrying up.
When two join as one, so do their lifestyles and incomes. Couples tend to have more money to afford better houses, cars, and, well, lifestyles.
I’m not suggesting that having a higher standard of living is wrong—in fact, I believe that we reap what we sow. If we have worked hard to earn our keep, we can rightfully enjoy the fruits of our labour.
We must be careful not to love things and use people—instead, our marriages ought to be where we love people and use things.
A better lifestyle, however, doesn’t mean a better life. Marriage isn’t a joint investment or a series of transactions geared towards a higher-end lifestyle. A couple that affords better things together isn’t always a couple that experiences a better life together, because better lives are anchored upon unity and responsibility, not money.
For our wedding, my wife and I chose 1 John 3:16 as our theme verse:
“This is how we know what love is: Jesus Christ laid down his life for us. And we ought to lay down our lives for each other.”
Christ showed us what love is by laying His life down for us unconditionally, and in obedience to His Father’s will. In a similar way, let’s build our marriages on unconditional love, not what we’ve brought to the game. On keeping steady, not keeping scores. On holding hands, not having the upper hand.
Many couples I interact with share that they regret putting their livelihoods above their relationship. We must be careful not to love things and use people—instead, our marriages ought to be where we love people and use things.
3. Big Expressions without Small Moments
While tear-jerking proposals and lavish weddings are nice, strong and resilient marriages are rarely built on such events alone. Rather, they are built on small, everyday moments that result in deep emotional connection and intimacy between husband and wife.
Seemingly ordinary moments of interaction set the foundation for every couple’s relationship. These are simple moments of “turning towards” each other, of positive connection through conversation, humour, affection, jest, or support.
When done well, such interactions will add to each spouse’s emotional “bank account”. It’s how seeds of trust, commitment, and love are sown. On the flipside, when small interactions like these are ignored, loneliness and isolation will fester and grow.
As 1 Peter 4:8 (ESV) exhorts: “Keep loving one another earnestly, since love covers a multitude of sins”. The deeper we lean into small moments of affection for our spouse, practiced frequently, the more we learn to overlook their offences against us and find joy in their companionship.
Big, romantic gestures are nice. But it’s often the small things that foster fondness and admiration between married couples. These small things are the very elements that protect a relationship from the traps of contempt and snares of pride.
4. Romance without Revelation
Recently, I caught up with some university friends. Some of us hadn’t met in decades. We enjoyed swapping love stories—how we met our spouse, how we knew he or she was the “right one”, and the things that love prompted us to do for him or her.
Listening to the others, one question I kept asking was: “So what was it that made you realise that he or she was ‘the one’?” In other words, “How did your attraction become affection?”
Some of us have spent lots of time and effort romancing our partner, making him or her feel special, trying to outdo our last demonstration of love . . . Many couples do this to drive home an impression.
However, the challenge is to move from the impression to the connection, to reveal to the other who we really are, what we believe in and value, and how we think and feel.
Knowing our spouse down to the core is how our marriages can bloom from a place of friendship rather than showmanship.
In Psalm 139, the psalmist asks the Lord to search and know him, for the Lord is “familiar with all [his] ways” (v. 3). How the Lord intricately knows us with such intimacy, may perhaps serve as a model for how we can know our spouses better. After all, in marriage, husband and wife are “one flesh” (Genesis 2:24).
Marriage experts John and Julie Gottman call friendship the foundation of a strong relationship. They are referring to how well we know our spouse’s inner psychological world—their worries, stressors, joys, and dreams.
Revealing ourselves to our spouse in this way is the starting point of marriage, not just romantic declarations. Knowing our spouse down to the core is how our marriages can bloom from a place of friendship rather than showmanship, with a strong foundation that lasts for a lifetime.
