Category: Giving People Hope For Their Marriage

One: Marriage benefits men much more than women.

Contrary to earlier and widely publicized reports, recent research finds men and women to benefit about equally from marriage, although in different ways. Both men and women live longer, happier, healthier and wealthier lives when they are married. Husbands typically gain greater health benefits while wives gain greater financial advantages.

Having children typically brings a married couple closer together and increases marital happiness.

Many studies have shown that the arrival of the first baby commonly has the effect of pushing the mother and father farther apart, and bringing stress to the marriage. However, couples with children have a slightly lower rate of divorce than childless couples.

The keys to long-term marital success are good luck and romantic love.

Rather than luck and love, the most common reasons couples give for their long-term marital success are commitment and companionship. They define their marriage as a creation that has taken hard work, dedication and commitment (to each other and to the institution of marriage). The happiest couples are friends who share lives and are compatible in interests and values.

The more educated a woman becomes, the lower are her chances of getting married.

A recent study based on marriage rates in the mid-1990s concludes that today’s women college graduates are more likely to marry than their non-college peers, despite their older age at first marriage. This is a change from the past, when women with more education were less likely to marry.

Couples who live together before marriage, and are thus able to test how well suited they are for each other, have more satisfying and longer-lasting marriages than couples who do not.

Many studies have found that those who live together before marriage have less satisfying marriages and a considerably higher chance of eventually breaking up. One reason is that people who cohabit may be more skittish of commitment and more likely to call it quits when problems arise. But in addition, the very act of living together may lead to attitudes that make happy marriages more difficult. The findings of one recent study, for example, suggest “there may be less motivation for cohabiting partners to develop their conflict resolution and support skills.

People can’t be expected to stay in a marriage for a lifetime as they did in the past because we live so much longer today.

Unless our comparison goes back a hundred years, there is no basis for this belief. The enormous increase in longevity is due mainly to a steep reduction in infant mortality. And while adults today can expect to live a little longer than their grandparents, they also marry at a later age. The lifespan of a typical, divorce-free marriage, therefore, has not changed much in the past fifty years. Also, many couples call it quits long before they get to a significant anniversary: half of all divorces take place by the seventh year of a marriage.

Marrying puts a woman at greater risk of domestic violence than if she remains single.

Contrary to the proposition that for men “a marriage license is a hitting license,” a large body of research shows that being unmarried—and especially living with a man outside of marriage—is associated with a considerably higher risk of domestic violence for women. One reason for this finding is that married women may significantly under report domestic violence. Further, women are less likely to marry and more likely to divorce a man who is violent. Yet it is probably also the case that married men are less likely to commit domestic violence because they are more invested in their wives’ wellbeing, and more integrated into the extended family and community.

Married people have less satisfying sex lives, and less sex, than single people.

According to a large-scale national study, married people have both more and better sex than do their unmarried counterparts. Not only do they have sex more often, but they enjoy it more, both physically and emotionally.

Cohabitation is just like marriage, but without “the piece of paper.”

Cohabitation typically does not bring the benefits—in physical health, wealth, and emotional wellbeing—that marriage does. In terms of these benefits cohabitants in the United States more closely resemble singles than married couples. This is due, in part, to the fact that cohabitants tend not to be as committed as married couples, and they are more oriented toward their own personal autonomy and less to the wellbeing of their partner.

Because of the high divorce rate, which weeds out the unhappy marriages, people who stay married have happier marriages than people did in the past when everyone stuck it out, no matter how bad the marriage.

According to what people have reported in several large national surveys, the general level of happiness in marriages has not increase and probably has declined slightly. Some studies have found in recent marriages, compared to those of twenty or thirty years ago, significantly more work-related stress, more marital conflict and less marital interaction.

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1. Boundaries: Where does the line around the couple go? Who is in it, and who is out of it? Do both partners agree on how much interference will be tolerated by relatives and friends? How many and what kind of activities will you each do without the other partner?
2. Investment: How much time and effort does each partner feel the other should be putting into the relationship? What expressions of caring do partners prefer? Gifts? Physical touch? Words of affirmation? Acts of service? Quality time? Are your expressions of love meeting the receiver’s needs and not just your needs?
3. Control and Power: Is power shared? How? Who makes the decisions? Do both partners feel they have influence in the decision-making process? How do you communicate about important issues?

Therefore, we need to do four things about expectations in marriage:

1. Be aware of what you expect. Unless you and your mate have been purposeful about discussing your expectations, you likely bring many to your marriage of which you are not consciously aware or you never made clear. Does your partner know yours? Do you know your partner’s?
2. Be reasonable in what you expect. Just having an expectation does not make it reasonable or realistic. Is it an expectation you, as a couple, can meet or might it need to be adjusted?
3. Be clear about what you expect. Expectations must be expressed. Love doesn’t turn people into mind readers. Be willing to express your expectations in a respectful manner. If necessary, evaluate, discuss, and adjust them. It isn’t the differences in expectations that are harmful, but the lack of communication about those differences.
4. Be motivated to meet your mate’s expectations, even when you don’t have the same expectations. Early on in relationships, partners are attentive to knowing and meeting each other’s needs. Unfortunately, as our lives become busy with other things we sometimes forget to pay attention to those needs. Make a conscious effort to know and meet your partner’s expectations.

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“The ark of God remained with the family of Obed-Edom in his house for three months, and the LORD blessed his household and everything he had” (1 Chr 13:14)—Notice the close connection between “family” and “household.”

We must conclude that while the term “family” occurs regularly in the Old Testament and once in the New Testament—the term occurs 123 in the King James Version, only the occurrence in Ephesians 3:15 is outside the Old Testament—there is no definition of “family” given in the Scriptures.

While we don’t have a definition of “family” in the Bible, we do have clear directives concerning marriage, the interaction between husbands and wives, children, and their interaction with their parents and parents’ interaction with their children.

Another problem we have in thinking about “family” is that people, even Christians, think of “family” in different terms. The only experience we have when we marry is our family of origin. If our mother always had supper on the table when our father came home or our father always brought home roses on Friday, it’s easy to see how we expect the same when we get married. On the other hand, if our father verbally abused our mother and our mother regularly gave our father the silent treatment, that’s likely what we’ll expect when we get married. Research has shown that adolescents and young adults develop expectations for family life from television, and that these expectations are associated with the degree of satisfaction they experience in their families. Previous relationships also teach us what to expect from marriage. What friends and former dating partners wanted or needed in a relationship may train us to think that everyone in a marriage acts that way.

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When the Israelites were unable to conquer Ai because Achan had taken spoil from Jericho, we read that the LORD told Joshua: “In the morning, present yourselves tribe by tribe. The tribe that the LORD takes shall come forward clan by clan; the clan that the LORD takes shall come forward family by family; and the family that the LORD takes shall come forward man by man. He who is caught with the devoted things shall be destroyed by fire, along with all that belongs to him. He has violated the covenant of the LORD and has done a disgraceful ting in Israel!’ Early the next morning Joshua had Israel come forward by tribes, and Judah was taken. The clans of Judah came forward, and he took the Zerahites. He had the clan of the Zerahites come forward by families, and Zimri was taken. Joshua had his family come forward man by man, and Achan son of Carmi, the son of Zimri, the son of Zerah, of the tribe of Judah, was taken” (Jos 7:14-18). Do notice, however, that family doesn’t include all people of common ancestry, but simply from grandfather to grandson.

In the narrative of Gideon, “family” is generally described much more closely to what we think of as the traditional “family.”

• Jud 6:15: “‘But Lord,’ Gideon asked, ‘How can I save Israel? My clan is the weakest in Manasseh, and I am the least in my family.’”
• “That same night the LORD said to him, ‘Take the second bull from your father’s heard, the one seven years old. Tear down your father’s altar to Baal and cut down the Asherah pole beside it. Then build a proper kind of altar to the LORD your God on the top of this height. Using the wood of the Asherah pole that you cut down, offer the second bull as a burnt offering.’ So Gideon took ten of his servants and did as the LORD told him. But because he was afraid of his family and the men of the town, he did it at night rather than in the daytime” (Jud 6:25-27). Notice the close connection between family and father.

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This is where we will spend the majority of our time this semester, but even the traditional family—two parents rearing their children—poses a problem from a Christian viewpoint. It poses a problem because there are times when because of no immorality it is not possible to have two parents raising their children. Sometimes similar situations occur because of the unchristian actions of just one spouse—perhaps a spouse commits adultery or abuses alcohol or has a terrible temper he or she takes out on the children.

The third definition also poses a problem, for it adds the following: “any of various social units differing from but regarded as equivalent to the traditional family.” Again, this opens the door to people living in immorality having the same status as those living according to biblical principles.

How does the Bible define “family”?

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We Christians affirm that we all have common ancestry. Eve is the mother of all people: “Adam named his wife Eve [which probably means “living”], because she would become the mother of all the living” (Gen 3:20). The Great Flood destroyed all living things except those on the ark. Noah and his family are likewise the ancestors of all of us: “God blessed Noah and his sons, saying to them, “Be fruitful and increase in number and fill the earth” (Gen 9:1).

Each of us, therefore, not only has a common ancestry, but we can often find that we are related to most of the people we know. I’ve done some genealogical research and have found some interesting data:

• My wife and I—even though we are from different parts of Kentucky and never met until we were both in our twenties—are 10th cousins 10 times removed.
• I have traced ancestry and found the following people in a branch of my family tree: Queen Elizabeth II, George Washington, Jimmy Carter, Princess Diana, Alexander the Great, and Charlemagne. It is believed that every person of European descent in this country is descended from Charlemagne.
• I even discovered that my wife is a very distant cousin of the elders’ wives where I preach.

The question is: “Are these individuals really a ‘family’“?

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