Marriage Magnifies Our Personal Tendencies.

Each of us enters marriage with established spending habits and expectations about our future lifestyle. Prior to marriage were you ever debt-free? If your answer is no, your natural tendency probably was to overindulge, perhaps your philosophy was eat “eat, drink, and be merry! “You thought that somehow the money would always be there. Believing yourself to be deserving, it was all too easy to use credit cards and get home equity loans and lines of credit instead of budgeting and balancing your checkbook.
If you were responsible over indulger, you settled your debts. If you were responsible immense debit, which you eventually tried to escape again by acquiring yet more debt or by filing bankruptcy. Regardless of your style, as an over indulger, you no doubt faced incredible emotional stress, reduced flexibility, and restricted freedom. Perhaps you became a workaholic.

Often over indulgers marry under indulgers who perceived themselves one step away from financial disaster at all points in time. The underindulger uses money as a guarantee that there is “enough.” How much does it take to feel secure? The underindulger always feels like it will take a little bit more to feel safe and secure. So he or she becomes stingy and hoards and stockpiles all financial assets. While appearing responsible, under indulgers often deny themselves or their mate the basic necessities of life. They can’t really enjoy what they have.
If one mate is an over indulger and the other is an u8nderrindulger, a dangerous pattern will be established. It becomes like a precocious child who is joined in marriage to a withholding, critical parent. Neither partner really chooses to be adult and responsible. Double standards create resentments. One mate may overindulge him or herself and under indulge the spouse. Enough is never enough for both the overindulger and the underindulger.
Responsible adult choices lie at the balance point between overindulging and under indulging. Both of you have something to contribute to your relationship. The underindulger takes care of the necessities, and the overindulger who is generous and more impulsive demonstrates that it is okay to enjoy money. Both of you will need to give a little for the good of your relationship.
What are your spending habits? Rate yourself. Place an “x” where you think you fit on the following continuum:

Hi there,
I was talking to the team at Save My Marriage Today recently, and we were talking about marriages gone bad. It seemed at one time that the only place that marriages went bust was in Hollywood, but anyone you talk to now either knows someone divorced or someone with marital problems. Hey, it may even be you.
The single biggest reason couples break up is due to “falling out of love” or poor communication. It seems as though many couples reach the 5 or 10 year anniversary and it becomes a time of regret and reflection on opportunities lost. Too many people end their marriages because the love is not the same as it used to be, and they don’t know how to love their partners anymore. It’s so frustrating!
If “falling out of love” sounds familiar to you, help is at hand:
http://www.savemymarriagetoday.com
Online author Andrew Rusbatch showed me the latest course he has created to help troubled couples, and to be honest, I was very impressed! Andrew is the host of Save My Marriage Today Home Study Course. It’s a fantastic course that covers all the essential aspects to a healthy marriage.

Are you or your partner falling out of love?
Marriage falling apart and feeling powerless?
Anger and conflict tearing you two apart?
Is your marriage affected by addiction issues?
Partner cheated on you?
Marriage affected by money problems?
Are you in a marriage that is suffering because your partner has depression?
Is the honeymoon over?
Many couples break up over issues that could have been resolved if they had only taken the time for self-examination. Let’s face it, you can’t always control what your partner does, and the Save My Marriage Today Premium Home Study Course recognizes this and focuses on your actions and beliefs, and how they are shaping your approach to save your marriage.
Andrew’s Save My Marriage Today Premium Home Study Course helps all couples, both young and old, consider their relationship problems and how their misconceptions and attitudes can help shape a recovery or add to their ordeal.
Its quite normal for a marriage to go through cycles, and arguments will happen from time to time. In fact, one thing they talk about in the course is how disagreements are normal. It’s nothing to be ashamed about! Its how you deal with those arguments and disagreements that determines the health of your relationship.
The Save My Marriage Today Premium Home Study Course is an instant-download 12-part video and written course, AND includes FOUR additional topic-specific courses where Andrew, Richard and Amy delve into relationship issues for couples dealing with depression, addiction, infidelity, and money problems. That’s 8 hours of video and 5 study guides to work your way through!
Plus there are bonus interviews with guest relationship coaches Scot and Emily McKay discussing ways to cope with a partner with mental illness, and Mimi Tanner discussing how to keep your spouse interested in you forever.
In addition to this is a free email consultation so that customers can discuss any additional marriage issues with a member of the team. This really can help ANY couple with almost ANY marriage problem!
I really do believe Andrew and the Save My Marriage Today team are onto a good thing here, and they really want to help. The techniques are fresh, thought provoking, come from a range of perspectives, and have been proven over and over to help save marriages. I was very impressed with this course and have recommended it to everyone I know.
I would encourage you to look for yourself and do something today to kick-start your marriage-saving solution. There is never a better time to save your marriage!
Visit: http://www.savemymarriagetoday.com/premium
And take control of your future. I’m sure you will be as impressed as I was.
Bye for now,
[PRINCE VINCENT

Module 2: Quick-Start Guide To Saving Your Marriage
I have taken my Stage Of Crisis Diagnosis and converted it into a very powerful module that will help you to establish EXACTLY which stage of crisis your marriage is currently in.

It will then prescribe a path to recovery based on that particular stage.

This report will make your efforts immediately effective!

This will be the next stop in your marriage recovery, so that you have a “roa

Module 4: Quick-Start Guide To Saving Your Marriage
I have taken my Stage Of Crisis Diagnosis and converted it into a very powerful module that will help you to establish EXACTLY which stage of crisis your marriage is currently in.
It will then prescribe a path to recovery based on that particular stage.
This report will make your efforts immediately effective!
This will be the next stop in your marriage recovery, so that you have a “roadmap” to use in your immediate actions.

Greater Self-Preservation

Because you’re now living with a “villain,” the protective walls go up quickly, and you make them as thick as possible. You begin to watch every move your spouse makes with heightened suspicion. You believe your cry for love will be rejected because your spouse can’t possibly love you in return. It becomes just too dangerous to open yourself up like that. You become more exhausted, empty, and expect to live in eternal vigilance.
Whatever spontaneity was left in your marriage drains away.
But the assault on joy can come from another direction too. When in distress people often default to their strength. If they’re organized. They begin to organize everything. If they’re gregarious, they forget their responsibilities altogether. And when that happens, those little characteristics they found so endearing in their mates, they now hate.
This leads to more needs not being met, which leads us back to step one in the negative cycle, which is increased distancing and polarization.

Cycling Back Again

Each time we cycle through this negative cycle, disaffection grows and the secret resentment locked in our heart intensifies. The fight left in us turns to a strong desire to take flight to just leave.
As the cycle of disaffection grinds on, within it develops a response, which only feeds the complains, and the complaint is ignored, the offended partner may begin to sulk-sulking being a way of calling attention to the pain without saying anything about it. When the sulking is ignored, then come the accusations.
People don’t actually believe these accusations, at least the reasonable part of them doesn’t. They are just trying to get a reaction. The spouse wants to hear, “Of course I want you to be happy.” When he or she doesn’t hear an affirmation like that, and it is, in fact ignore again, and then come the threats. You want me unhappy? I’ll show you unhappy. You just wait.”
This growing problem of disaffection is like is like a death grip. But it’s not just a steady walk away from love, it involves hurt, distancing, hurt again, more distancing. It’s a pattern of clearly definable behaviors that spiral back on themselves, each time becoming more sever and more destructive. It’s like quicksand. The more you struggle to pull yourself out of the hole and subsequently get rejected, the more easily discouraged and tired you become. Before long, you become “islands of me,” where one cries for love but no one sees the pain or hears the cry for affection. That isn’t to say there’s no way out. It does mean, however, that battling with one another to somehow stop the marital decline only seems to make things worse.

Breaking the Cycle and Coming out of the Pain

If you detect your relationship sliding down this destructive, predictable cycle, immediately seek help from a Christian marriage counselor and extricate yourself. If you don’t seek help, your natural emotional survival skills will take over. When that happens you’ll continue to experience a downward spiral spiritually, emotionally, and physically-one that will eventually overwhelm your marriage and require you to work harder and harder just to stay even, And eventually, the vitality that God has put in your marriage will simply die.
Losing at love is a horrible thing to experience. It is made even more so by the possibility that it could all be avoided with a commitment to break the cycle and return to the love God wants for you and your mate. Your marriage should be filled more joy than sorrow. God wants you to have more warmth than indifference, more love than anger.
The pathway out of pain will involve at least these four ingredients:

1. Empathy

The most significant first step in getting beyond your pain is stepping back from the marriage and honestly looking at how you lost at love in your marriage. Could it be that your spouse is hurting too? That doesn’t mean he or she isn’t to blame for what’s happening, at least to some degree, but just maybe you both very subtly, even unintentionally, lost sight of each other. You started to drift apart and then life just got out of control. If so, why not turn to Psalm 139 and ask God to search your heart to see if there is any wicked way in you and ask him to do a new work in your life. Sure you’ll need to keep in place healthy boundaries, but you can begin a new by simply asking God to help you be defined as a person of love and begin to exhibit the behaviour of love ( see 1 cor.13) The God of Hosea knows betrayal (see Hosea 11: 1-11). He knows heartbreak, and he is there for you even now. Trust his heart and remember that your marriage is to be built on a spiritual foundation.

2. Safety

For positive changes to begin to take place, each spouse needs to feel safe. Creating a place of safety is crucial to reduce the pain and to allow the feelings of love to flow again.
It takes about five positives to counteract one negative experience, even one hurtful word in marriage. You can increase the ratio of positive to negative by cutting back on the negatives. Stop the yelling, nagging, badgering. Be judicious with your words and actions. First Peter 3:8-9(NKJV) reminds us that in our relationships we are to “be tenderhearted, be courteous; not returning evil for evil…but on the contrary blessing, knowing that you were called to this, that you may inherit a blessing.” These are sound principles for how to treat our spouse.

3. Affection

This is not just “You know I love you, baby,” but these are to be clear demonstrations of love in ways that your partner likes to be loved. Ask yourself:

1. How do I show love to my spouse?
2. How does my spouse show love to me?
3. How would I like to be loved by my spouse?

Now, have your spouse do the same thing compare notes and make changes in your behaviour so that you are doing the things that communicate love. Just saying “I love you” is never enough. You have to be sure that your spouse knows, and receives your love.

4. Forgiveness

As long as the two of you are alive you are going to have to work through times of heartache and disappointment. The oil of forgiveness is the only way you will survive. Forgiveness involves both forgiving and asking for forgiveness. Someone might be thinking,” I can’t forgive.” Ephesians 4:32 (NKJV) has helped us get over that hurdle. Paul tells us to “be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forging one another, even as God in Christ forgave you. There is nothing that God can not forgive through Jesus Christ. So based on the facy that God has forgiven you in Christ, There is nothing you can’t forgive because you have been forgiven so much.

Forgiveness is always my responsibility, even as I have been wronged. It means canceling a debt. That’s something I do within myself. Don’t confuse forgiveness with reconciliation. That takes two people. When I choose to forgive, it frees me to love.

Conclusion

Ultimately, the marriage you’ve always wanted will only come as you heed Psalm 127:1 (NASB), “Unless the LORD builds the house, they labour in vain who build it.” Spiritual intimacy is not about changing your spouse and demanding vulnerability. It will begin to flow as the two of you just simply seek to embrace the heart of God in your marriage.

Questions to Discuss

· 1. How have you handled conflict in your marriage? What concerns you most about the way you the way you typically handle conflict?
· 2. What are the expectations you brought to your marriage? Are any of them similar to the false expectations described in this chapter? What good expectations did you bring to the marriages that are now being met?
· 3. What strategies have you used in your marriage that has successfully stopped, or broken, negative cycle?
· 4. Talk together about ways you can increase the affection in your marriage. What does your spouse consider to be meaningful ways to experience affection?
Please use the above questions to evaluate your marriage situation. If you response to this article, please feel free to write us. We shall be willing to render further assistance to you, saving your marriage for the better.

The Negative Cycle Begins

Distancing`

Why does God hate divorce, Tim, when he knows how awful a marriage can be? “a broken woman asked when telling me of her marriage plight. She told me of the hateful words that cut deeply and the lack of touch and the silent treatments that would tear at her heart.
“I have prayed for my future husband since I was a little girl. Why is this happening to me-to us? I cry alone a lot, and I’m so tired of trying to make this marriage work,” this desperate woman said.
It’s hard to hold on when you are faced with persistent hurt and rejection.
As we’ve shared, just the everyday pressures like street, evil, sin, false expectations, the speed of living -all are enough to leave one or both partners confused, and expecting.
But, the path of disaffection goes deeper. A negative cycle begins stp-by step, day-by-day, emotion-by-emotion, until love is destroyed.
When you are in a relationship in which there is little or no respect, no warmth or closeness, or you feel as if you are taken for granted, abandoned, or shamed, it’s only natural to drift apart, to distance, and to insulate yourself from the other.
Distancing is a reasonable response to an unreasonable situation. But, It can also be a primary killer of love in marriage. Even before we know what has happened, distancing begins occurring in small ways, moments when we ignore or put down our partners, lapses of love that subtly eat away at the relationship. The early signs of this negative cycle include rubbing out your partner, ignoring important comments, and a general lack of sharing about everyday life. These are strong signals of love’s early demise. Such behavior often kills simple acts of thoughtfulness, such as a note placed in a lunch box or flowers sent for no particular reason.

Raising the Bar

Raising the bar is setting a love trap for your mate. It’s creating a hurdle your mate must leap over to prove his or her love. For instance, ” I just hope he’ll bring me flowers this week,” He hasn’t brought home flowers in five years. Is he going to bring home flowers this week? NO.
Raising the bar is a form of desperation. One or both partners want assurance that they’re still loved, so they set the hurdle-in secret. As the cycle spirals, the bars become increasingly high and increasingly unlikely to be hurdled. Raising the bar is a horribly destructive act:; it’s a love trap and it always leads to increased failures.

Increased Failure

The instant the partner fails to leap the hurdles, one partner gets angry and the other feels guilty For the one who was disappointed, thoughts like You just don’t care or you never how me you love me abound. For the one who failed to jump the hurdle, there are thoughts such as You’re impossible. There’s nothing I can do to please you. You’re the problem. You’re the one who needs help. Increased failures only cause both to shut down even more

Increased Negative Evaluation

Before long, both people become locked in the dank cellars of their own minds, and both are thinking the same thing-our marriage is getting worse. And the worse it gets, the less each is willing to invest in it. They’ve reached a very dangerous point; you were probably consumed with how tour mate was failing the marriage.
Simply put, you believed your mate was wrecking your marriage.

So what do most couples do when they get to this point, they begin to vilify their mate. In their mind, the mate has intentionally hurt them. He or she is destroying their relationship on purpose. At this point the negative thoughts and their resulting distortions begin to abound in the relationship.
And what do you do with villains? You punish them. And what do villains do to you?
They hurt you, so now there’s an even greater need for self-preservation.

3. False Expectation

Unrealized expectations leave us disappointed. Ii our expectations are unrealistic for our marriages, we’re setting ourselves up for a fall. A few of the most common expectations include:

Marriage will complete me. Perhaps we grew up with parents who didn’t care for us
Like they should, or with siblings who stole the limelight, or in some other painful
environment. We may expect marriage to reverse all the negatives we’re carrying
Into it.
My spouse won’t hurt me. As the first expectation sees marriage as the healing
agent, this one sees marriage as the ultimate safe heaven. The first hurt we
receive from a spouse is catastrophic.
Life will be easy now. This is the happily-ever-after expectation of fairy tales. If we
have this expectation, every unhappy moment in a marriage then brings
disappointment and possibly fear.
Love will keep us together. As the song says, “All you need is love.” Well, not so,
because you will need more than your love. This expectation, by far, produces the
Greatest disappointment as it batters the very thing that is supposed to hold us
Together-our love . Every time we hurt one another, intentionally or unintentionally,
love is perceived as increasingly less effective until, in the end, we can easily say
our relationship just wasn’t meant to be.

How do you combat unrealistic expectations? With realistic biblical ones. No one is perfect, including your spouse. No one person will ever fulfill all your needs, nor, will you supply all your spouse’s needs. Only God can. No marriage is free from discord, and no spouse is completely unselfish
Marriage brings together two people who have many human frailties that are at first magnified, then hopefully, in Christ, strengthened into godly traits. But it takes a lot of humility, grace, and constant work at understanding what is reasonable for you and your spouse to expect from each other.

4. Selfishness

During dating, most of our energy is exclusively focused on the other. But something strange happens after we say,” I do.” The giving often becomes taking. The “Island of we” becomes an “island of me.” In our marriage we don’t really want to hurt each other. We say hurtful words. You know the routine. Like the apostle Paul in Romans 7:15 (NKJV), regarding his walk with the Lord, we can say, “I don’t understand myself a all, for I really want to do what is right, but I don’t do it. Instead, I do the very thing i hate.”
Marriage was designed to be a team effort, one of loving and giving, of making a commitment to our mate. Lately, in our culture, marriage has been reduced to prenuptial agreements, occasional intimacy (or none at all), and quickie divorce. Selfishness creates an “island of me,” where there is a wall around me. On the “island of we,” there is a wall around us.

5. Scripts from the Past

A lot of our behavior is influenced by our past scripts, scripts that were written for us long ago. We find that we now faithfully follow them, and our scripted behavior is reinforced as we hold tightly to them. For instance, if one or both of our parents abandoned us when we were children, we will live today as if we expect those we love to abandon us in the here and now. Such scripts distort current reality and cause us to act and react in what can be very destructive ways. These scripts also impact how we give and receive love.
If this sounds true for you, look for those elements of your life that are unresolved. Look for the physical, emotional, or sexual abuse, the effects of parental divorce and/or abandonment. Look for the gross failures and the emotional loss and deal with them in sound biblical ways.

6. Speed

Relationships and intimacy take time. Time to understand, enjoy, and respond to one another-time to satisfy the other’s needs and have your own needs satisfied. When we live life in the fast lane, there is precious little time for the building of intimacy. We’re the microwave generation addicted to speed. Every element of our likes seems to be a trade off, and often we end up trading off the very steps to intimacy the time to nurture our mates and our marriage.
Both partners in a marriage succumb to these pressures to varying degrees at various times. So we think a date night will solve our problems. What happens on date nights when things haven’t been going well? One lousy night! The result is loneliness, anger, feelings of rejection, and sorrow-enough to rip the foundation out from under most couples. A natural response to this pain is to create space, a gap between you and your partner. A subtle, even unintentional severing of relational strands takes place characterized by some pretty hurtful communication patterns.

Live joyfully with the wife whom you love all the days of your vain life which he has given you under the sun
Ecclesiastes 9:9(NKJV)

Living joyfully together is one tough assignment, especially when it seems that almost everything in life competes for our affection. Too many couples are tired of trying to keep it all together and are pained by love gone bad.
And many of them just throw in the towel and give up on love.

Yet, marriage is close to the heart of God so close that the apostle Paul uses marriage as an analogy of Christ’s love for the church and how he gave himself up for her. It’s that kind of love and commitment God had in mind when he ordained marriage. The most satisfying marriages-the ones best able to fulfill the Ecclesiastes call to joy and love-come about when a husband and wife align themselves with God and his original intent for spiritual and marital intimacy.

Marriage, then, is not just two people in love; it’s three strand cord not easily broken. When God enters the marital equation, a horizontal and temporal contract is transformed into am eternal covenant relationship with vertical and horizontal dimensions. Mundane marital existence is transformed into an adventure of love and joy, lived as a gift from gracious God.
However, thus kind of marriage is not given and doesn’t come without hard work, deep forgiveness, and incredible mutual sacrifice.

LOVE ON THE ROCK

Let’s be fair. Marriage can be difficult. It brings two people together, two people with very different personalities, and desires, and puts them in such close proximity that their faults and weakness will be discovered. as a result, all marriages go through periods of disaffection, times when love feels distant, cold, times when you just seem to have “lost that loving’ feeling.” When conflict and misunderstanding occur, what happens during these times will usually set the course for the rest of the marriage.

Unfortunately, disaffection often wins out, and couples who get to that point never know God’s desire for their marriage. An estimated 50 percent of to day’s couples will see their marriage end in divorce, most of them within the first seven years. And those are just the raw statistics. Many of those who stay in their marriages live unhappily behind closed doors. In the quiet corners of their hearts are profound sorrow and emptiness.

Couples are seeing the marriages of their friends and family ravaged like never before. They see the love that held them together crumbling, its strength and endurance gone. Perhaps you’re seeing that in your own marriage.

Chances are you or someone you love has a marriage in trouble right now. If so, you’ve wondered what went wrong or wondered how a union that started with such promise and with the blessing of God himself could have soured.

Losing at Love

When conflict first hits, every couple has some doubt and also wonders how they might lose at love. After all, neither of them is necessarily a hateful person, neither is particularly selfish, or at least it seemed they didn’t start out that way. How can things go so wrong?
We have found that most couples are unaware or under aware of what happens in these circumstances. When they begin to experience trouble in an effort at self-preservation, they dig in their heels and lay the blame for the problems at the feet of their spouse. This is a losing strategy and is guaranteed to allow the problems to fester and grow.
Believe it or not, there is an answer for why everything goes so wrong, for losing at love is often predictable. It follows a step-by-step process and creates a repeating cycle that if left unchecked can take a couple from love’s first embrace to the point where love is totally destroyed and the marriage will probably end in the pain of divorce.
But there’s hope for the troubled marriage. Because the cycle is predictable, if the steps are understood, the courageous couple can work to stop the cycle, arrest the destructive spiral, and literally save their marriage. Most couples want what it takes to keep their marriage afloat, and by understanding how they got to where they are, they can reverse the process and breathe new life into their marriage.

Everyday Pressures-How Disaffection Gets Started

How does disaffection start? It actually begins with everyday life, with the six pressures we all face daily.

1. Stress

Futurist David Zach refers to our age as the time of hyper-living.” We’re pulled in every direction, busy and going nowhere fast, having to do more with less time. Before long, tempers, stomachs ache, heart break. Hurried decisions become bad decisions.And bad decisions make people hurt.

Marriage becomes a perpetual uphill climb. And our hurt makes us irritable, discouraged, and very difficult to live with. Some have just flat out been overwhelmed by life, wayward kids, financial pressures, health problems, and demanding work schedules.Take an inventory. What stresss have been tearing a your relationship since you married?

2. Evil

Since the time of Adam and Eve, the evil one has sought to destroy this God-ordained intimate bond of marriage. He is the great confuser and the ultimate liar. He magnifies our weakness and fears and uses them as wedges that comes  between us.
The apostle Peter described the evil one a a “roaring lion,seeking whom he may devour”( 1 peter 5:8 NKJV).And, he’s out to take as big a bite as he can out of your marriage. If he does, he stands to win a lot, possibly causing fatal blows to you, and your kids.

Life is an opportunity for every person to create a new story that can be passed along by generations to come.

Did you realize that when you married your prince or princess charming you inherited the king, the queen, and the whole court? In a real sense, you did marry the whole family. Despite all the “in-law/out-laws” jokes.. In-laws play a significant role in how your marriage goes.

Healthy in-law relationships are a wonderful blessing in any marriage.

Un-healthy in-law relationships can be a continual drain and irritation. so what can you do to build healthy relationships with your in-laws? That’s what this chapter is all about. We want to help you evaluate your present in-law relationships and come up with a plan for building better ones in the future.

We’ll look at what you can do to improve relationships with your in-laws. We’ll also consider what you can’t do to-what is un-realistic in relating to your parents and in-laws and how to handle the reality that some relationships are just closer than others. Then we will give you some tools to help [you build better relationships with your spouse’s parents and siblings. Let’s get started.

The more mutual respect and enjoyment you experience with your extended family, the more security and stability you and your spouse will feel in your marriage. Start by looking at your place on the family seesaw. Are you newlyweds just starting out? Or perhaps you have young in-laws who also demand your time and energy and have parents and in-laws who also demand part of your life. You might even have aging parents who are beginning to experience health problems. If you are a blended marriage with his children, her children, and “ours,” you could have extended family members all up and down the family seesaw. Wherever you are on the family seesaw, it will be a balancing act. How can you build your marriage and love your in-laws at the same time? Let’s start by evaluating your present relationship with your in-laws.

LEAVING AND CLEAVING.

In the beginning God created marriage and it was very good. And in Genesis 2:24 he gave three foundational principles for making marriage work. It is not surprising that the first principle deals with in-law relationships. We read, “For this cause a man shall leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave to his wife” Why is leaving so important? Aren’t we always to love and respect our parents? Absolutely But we’re also commanded to leave.

In Genesis 2:24 leaving is switching our family allegiance. If one mate refuses to realign his or her priority from parents to spouse, that marriage will have problems. When most modern-day couples marry, they physically leave their parents homes. But they also need to leave on another level-on the emotional level. The realigning of our priorities means we need to move our allegiance from our parents to our partners.

We don’t stop honoring, respecting, and loving our parents, but they are no longer the number one priority relationship in our lives-or they shouldn’t be!

Understand What You Can and Can’t Do

We like to say, “You can do what you can do and that’s what you can do,” We might add “that’s all you can do” may be you are blessed with parents and in-laws who are positive and loving. Or you might be in a more distressing situation, and your parents and in-laws are negative and critical.

Whatever the situation, whether your extended family has a positive or negative situation can depends more on you than on the situation. A negative situation can bring you closer together as a couple as you seek to find a solution you can all live with. One couple in our survey decided to turn down an offer of financial help from their parents because it was perceived as a means of control. They would rather be poor than manipulated by their parents.

Also, we need to face the fact that some extended families are just closer than others. Your extended family will not be as close as your nuclear family, nor should it be. Everyone struggles with family relationships. And the older we get, the more complex family relationships become. Also, we assume that if we had a closer-knit family growing up, that closeness will remain when we add in-laws. But having a great nuclear family doesn’t translate automatically into a great extended family.

Evaluating your own unique situation will help you understand what is and what isn’t realistic to expect from your in-law relationships. Stop for a moment and think about the following questions:

1 What is the best aspect of my relationship with my in-laws?

2 What is the major tension with my in-laws?

3 What is the best way to communicate with my in-laws?

4 What kinds of things pull us together as an extended family?

In the following pages we want to share with you some of the answers we received from couples in a survey we conducted about how they were attempting to love their in-laws, and also share with you some practical suggestions that will help you do what you can to build better relationships with your own in-laws.

“You Want To Do What ?”

In every talk we have ever given on sexuality, the question of oral sex is raised. What does the Bible say about oral sex ? Is it okay? Is it a perversion ?” This is another topic like masturbation, that is not specifically addressed in scripture. Nowhere do we read that it is expressly forbidden, nor do we clearly read that it is encouraged. However, just because something is not expressly forbidden does not make it right or necessary, and just because something is not clearly affirmed and encouraged does not make it wrong or sinful. We must look to other scriptural principles to guide us.
Many read passages such as {Jude 7}, which refers to the sexual immorality and perversion of Sodom and Gomorrah, as including oral sex, because they consider it a perversion of God’s design for sexuality. Their position is strengthened by the fact that most dictionaries define sodomy as including not only homosexual acts and bestiality but also anal and oral copulation with the opposite sex.
However, others interpret the many references to oral delights in the Song of  Songs as an indication of the total body enjoyment that the couple celebrates throughout the song. They bolster their position by the fact that the two most densely concentrated bundles of nerve endings in our bodies are in the penis or clitoris and in the tongue. Oral sex then is seen as a natural means of pleasuring each other, in keeping with God’s design of our erogenous zones.
These are issues couples need to consider openly and discuss outside of the bedroom. Most individuals will have fairly strong convictions one way or the other. If both are in agreement on the issue, there is not a problem -they are free to act in accordance with their desire to abstain or to engage without further concern.(However, we do strongly  caution couples engaging in oral sex against focusing primarily on that pleasure and forfeiting the greater connection and oneness of intercourse.)
If partners disagree, and especially if they feel strongly about their positions, this can become a bitter battleground, and that must not be allowed. It is certainly more loving to abstain from an act that is not necessary than to push for it when one’s spouse is uncomfortable, feels violated by it, or believes it is wrong. The issue should remain one that either party can bring up from time to time for reconsideration, but it is impossible to envision God being please with such an intimate act if it is engaged in under duress.
Scripture probably speaks most directly to issues such as this in , where Paul addresses disputable matters such as dietary restrictions and observance of sacred days:The man who eats everything must not look down on him who does not, and the man who does not eat everything must not condemn the man who does, for God has accepted him. Who are you to judge someone else’s servant ? To his own master he stands or falls. And he will stand, for the Lord is able to make him stand. One man considers one day more sacred than another; another man considers every day alike. Each one should be fully convinced in his own mind.

Concerns about pregnancy and Birth Control

Obviously when a couple of childbearing age are engaging `in sexual relations, there is always the chance of becoming pregnant unless there is a fertility problem. Even the most reliable forms of birth control are not 100 percent effective, and some are actually fairly ineffective. Pregnancy is one of God’s greatest miracles and perhaps his richest blessing, but it is not always desired at a specific time and that is okay. Couples should talk a great deal about their desires for children and would be wise to do a degree of planning unless they want to have as many children as possible.
These can sometimes be difficult discussions, but they are vitally important.
Until the turn of the twentieth century, most mainline protestant churches held the same position as catholics on birth control; that is, that the only acceptable form is Natural family planning (NPP) and that no form of artificial contraception is acceptable. The first is that couples engaging in intercourse but impairing the potential for pregnancy are seen as embracing a part of God’s gift while rejecting another. They are blocking God’s ability to bless them with a child and are therefore impairing his ability to fully bless their union, moving and acting within it as he so desires.
A second reason protestants and catholics have historically opposed artificial contraception goes back to the discussion mentioned earlier on the messages being communicated in the sexual act. if a couple is saying with their bodies, “lam giving you every part of myself, and I want to have every part of yourself” but are then placing a barrier between themselves to block their fertility, they are not actually giving and receiving every part of their beings. They are sending conflicting messages in their lovemaking.
Most every protestant denomination now accepts various artificial means of birth control, and studies show that even many Catholics do not follow their church’s teaching on this issue. There are some logical arguments to be made in favor of contraception, but the protestant church still has a long way to go in developing a true theology that supports artificial birth control.

For those who do elect to use contraception, there are  host of other decisions to be made. All forms create greater freedom and spontaneity, but each has potential consequences. The pill causes many women to experience hormonal imbalance and decreased libido (sex drive). It can also cause the abortion of a fertilized egg. Condoms generally cause decreased sensation and occasional allergic reactions. Diaphragms, cervical caps, and spermicidal sponges carry the potential for infection and, on rare occasions, toxic shock syndrome. Intrauterine devices and the so called “morning-after pill” cause the abortion of a fertilized egg.
Vasectomy and tubal ligation are perhaps the most effective forms but are fairly permanent.

All of these concerns make this yet another issue that requires couples to talk, read, pray, and consult with physicians and/or their clergy to ensure that they feel peaceful about their decisions. As difficult as these discussions can be, each result in a deepening intimacy for couples who are learning to really know each other.

Infertility

One of the most painful struggles many couples face is the inability to become pregnant, or to sustain a pregnancy, when children are greatly desired. Few things introduce so much tension into the bedroom and threaten to reduce lovemaking to a mere duty. The various fertility tests and treatments available can be a wonderful blessing, but they can rob any feelings of privacy, mystery, spontaneity, or passion. The pain of disappointment month after month easily becomes paired with sexual union, requiring couples to aggressively guard against emotional withdrawal and disconnection.
Unless friends and loved ones have experienced this struggle themselves, many of their attempts at encouragement will only worsen the pain. Couples struggling with infertility often withdraw from social circles because of the constant reminders of how friends have been blessed when they have not. Even simple things like seeing a car seat in an automobile or passing the nursery  wing at church can be overwhelming.
As in every other area of sexual difficulty, the most important response is for couples to talk-openly, honestly, and frequently. There is a grieving process to go through, grieving the loss of something they never really had, or had only briefly. And there are options to consider, options that sometimes threaten one’s beliefs and can cause division in the marriage.
Couples are encouraged to seek out support groups and / or professional counselling in addition to medical advise if they are unable to conceive when trying to do so for more than twelve month.

Conclusion

We can only touch on some of the things that can threaten to spoil the richness of God’s plan for marital sexuality. If it has fostered a clearer understanding of the spirit of making love and of the messages couples communicate through those acts, as well as a greater awareness of the things that can enhance and diminish that connection, then it has accomplished its purpose. There are few things in marriage that are so difficult but so important to discuss, and which can yield such sweet fruit or bitter harvest depending on how they are handled.

Questions to help You

1.   What do you believe are the ways in which your sexual union could be most threatened ?
2.   What subject covered in this chapter is difficult for you as a couple to talk about ?
What do you think makes it difficult ?
3.   What is at least one area in your sexual relationship that you are determined to talk through more,
read on, pray over, or seek help with, to deepen your experience pf truely making love ?
For further help
Please feel free to write us in any way you have need of our help. We shall be willing to render further help to smoothen any rough-edges of your marriage.